Lorrie, Joanna, and Me

In accordance with the pledge I made in, er, November, to share my writing more regularly (actually I think I said "daily" and then begged for reinforcements of flattery), here are a couple of pieces which have come out of my recent poetry and creative writing workshops. Open to critique.

In this class exercise the idea was five minutes to write a scene in which infidelity is revealed, using the style of an author we had recently read. I chose Lorrie Moore. 

She is in the middle of apologizing to him for the bruise on his face,  a by-product of last night's vivid storytelling gesticulations, when he tells her he's been sleeping with his secretary. The air immediately surrounding her head reverberates with the echoes of a half-million decent screenwriters cringing at once. She drops her coffe cup. 

Here is the picture: white sofa, silver chair, basket of oranges on the dark wood table, morning sun, curtains half-drawn, coffee--two sugars no cream--on the carpet. She is standing. He is sitting. Somewhere, Woody Allen strikes a typewriter key and changes her fate. 

This poem draft is the result of an exercise in which each class member selected words, lines, or phrases at random from another poet's published work, then altered, arranged, and added to those lines to create a poem. So I can claim the beauty in arrangement here, but the majority of the words belong to Joanna Klink. 

Beyond the crumbling walls,

Pale pink as the daylight, 

A woman sifts through paper.

Barely perceptible, she becomes forceless. 

Close to animal, the man understands very little.

He forgets her. 

I can think of three ways frost burns, 

But reason wilts like other things. 

The woman dips her hands into the river,

Gratified to think no one has noticed her. 

But we are here, 

Beyond the crumbling walls,

The man and I.