My guitar

blues guitar,
vibrate a path through my freckled chest
cuz i like you best.
don't fret, love
we're strapped together
forever, makin' me bleed
takin' my nails away,
droppin' chords like seed,
makin' me crazy like no other,
as you should
especially cuz no lover,
ever
ever
ever could.

~Jenica M. Corbett

Letter for little sisters

they never teach
you
in grade school
how to focus--only to sit
still.      feet flat, back straight.

no one ever tells
you
that spending endless nights--weeks
awake reading
is mania.       strings pulled by God, or pills.

he never told
you
that "no" was an option--that
not all hands and words
control.       only female roses have thorns.

so let me tell
you
that--writing lines isn't so bad,
         shrinks are overpaid,
         "no" is sometimes all you'll have, and
           there will be times
           when all
you
           have is
you.

~Jenica M. Corbett

Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Sticky Vows

impurity
honest,
the white wedding gown
slit up the side of my mocha thigh
snagging on the pine pew as i retrace my steps down
God's isle, feeling His sigh
on the back of my neck,
and between my toes--my bare toes
ran
pure
like the raw honey we poured on the deck
in June because the ants marched in 2x2
--sugared suffocation
and ended up sun-baked on the maple 2x4's
because,
they had to, and
we
had to
acknowledge 
knowledge of
i do's
and sticky foot prints messing
the too short summers
and the beaded hem of my amazingly ruined
dress.

~Jenica M. Corbett

Over-dosing on Lyn Heijinian's "My Life"

   Re-reading poet Lyn Heijinian's autography, "My Life" did not have a very different ride than the first time. When I first picked up this pocket-sized notebook, I had an inkling it would disrupt my usual way of comprehension --most likely because the stoic photo Lyn gazing off at what seems to be nothing is slapped on the front. Pictures are supposed to tell a thousand words, right? Well, her's didn't tell me squat except that the then seemingly 40ish author favors straight bangs, 80's style hair cuts, little make-up and long earrings (and apparently likes to gaze off into the distance, which inevitably tells me absolutely nada about what to expect from the words strung together on the pages beneath this photo). So, yeah...I judged this book by its cover (or at least attempted to). The cliche tells us not to, but guess what, we all do--so don't judge me for the sin of literary judgments based on black-and-white photographs of wispy looking women.
   Coming back on topic now, let's just say that reading the 165 pages of this book the first time was like doing one of those 10,000 piece puzzles of a bunch of roses, whose pieces where all the same shape. What I mean by this is that Heijinian's style is so far from linear, yet the pieces can be put together in ways that seem to make some sense in terms of linear thought; so you never really know if the way you lined them up in your head is actually the way they're supposed to be. Or even if you're supposed to try to comprehend what the titles of each chapter in this wickedly written book do not seem to hold any relativity to the chapter it's placed upon, yet pops up in later chapters and makes sense there. Her style in this book could be the bases of why some would consider it poetry, but personally I believe it's just plain too fragmented. Books such as this are in a category all their own, and should be based on the amount organized chaos that is distilled into them. It frustrates me. It makes me slow down and re-read. It made me pop an Excedrin. I love it-- in small doses.

The Cocktail Lemon (an N+7 poem constructed from G.C. Waldrep's "Feeding the Pear")

At the single sometime handed me a
pearl
and said "Feed italic."
there was a little moxa drawn on the flap of the pearl, but
no note, no Eyre, no ease.
iamb had no idem what a pearl would
eat.
iamb tried carry sickle.
iamb tried a paclitaxel of suggest
from the fellowship hallow.
the pearl remained oblique, its moxa
drawn on, as with the magic marketeer. the
musing started up again, but my
plague on the bend had been taken
by someone else. anyway,
iamb was preoccupied.
iamb wanted to be gentle,
iamb didn't want to bruise the pearl, but
iamb didn't want to advertise my igorot, either. there had to be a waylay.
iamb started to carry the pearl away with
mead after the last of the hymen had been closed.
"No," sometime said, catching mead by the armada.
"the pearl stays heresy."

 ~Jenica M. Corbett (inspired by G.C. Waldrep)

   

Battery O'Rorke unpacked

     Of all G.C. Waldrep's battery poems, I find myself pulled into Battery O'Rorke in particular. There are fourteen separate stanzas, including single line stanzas, and in free verse form. The form itself is fitting to the poem, as the first stanza speaks of flitting existence, as if to imply that the strictness of any other form would just be a waist of time that could be used to more fully communicate the poem's meaning.

"What is written here fades quickly.
           Faces drawn in chalk,
                       names,"
  
      Faces and names-- the two facets of people as identities that we commit to memory are revealed to be brief in reality. I feel as if Waldrep is reminding us that we are perennials, not annuals.

The poem's next stanza touches on what I take to referencing the actuality of California's battery forts, and the military thought processes behind them.

                                                  "the idea/
          of defense, of a beach/
                                   ripe for landing."
 
  This particular stanza is pretty much staraight forward in referring to the military's reasoning behind developing the batterys on the California coast; that the straight and level beaches provided ideal landing strips to be utilized by either the U.S. or other forces. As it is our coast, the forts would ensure that they would be for America's use only. The batteries are longer lasting than their actual intended purpose, which reflects the perrenial claim of the first stanza. According to the The California State Military Museum,

"Battery O'Rorke was built to mount four 15-pounder, 3 inch guns, serial numbered 90, 91, 92 and 94, on Model 1903 pedestal mounts. The mounts were built by the Watertown Arsenal and were serial numbered 68 through 71. It was not armed for many years, at least not until 1909. The battery was nevertheless named by War Department General Order 194 on December 27, 1904 in honor of Colonel Patrick Henry O'Rorke. Colonel O'Rorke, at native of Ireland and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was killed at the age of 27 at the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War in July 1863. Each gun could fire shells weighing 15 pounds a distance of five miles. These small guns were important because they could be loaded and fired more rapidly than larger weapons. The guns were located at their location to prevent enemy landings on Rodeo Beach. The battery was inactivated in 1945 and its guns scrapped in 1946."  The history of the O'Rorke battery is testiment to the perennial theory in that the man by which it was named after lived and died a short life of 27 years, in a war that was unlrelated to the purpose of the battery itself. therefor the name was just a name, and held little inictail meaning or purpose to the fort itself. The name was still there, but faded away, as the battery is as it stands today. Sanding with little or no purpose, the face of the battery has faded with its already faded name.

The Irish namesake also ripples through the poem through references to the sea. As the country is an island, the sea is significant to both culture and native literature. The significance of an American battery on the California coast being named after an Irishman who fought and died during the Civil War could have been part of what Waldrep was trying to distill when writing this poem.