{"id":29276,"date":"2013-07-25T16:50:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T16:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=29276"},"modified":"2013-12-13T19:33:48","modified_gmt":"2013-12-13T19:33:48","slug":"dascott","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=29276","title":{"rendered":"You Are Your Text"},"content":{"rendered":"

When\u2019s the last time you went to church\u2026you go to church?<\/em><\/p>\n

His eyebrows were raised to punctuate the question that seemed to come from nowhere. Here I am showing him poems from my collection about the residents of Jonestown, Guyana: How\u2019s my technique? Tension? Meter? And he\u2019s asking me about my religion, which is, in my estimation, like asking me what color panties I\u2019m wearing: it\u2019s impolite.<\/p>\n

Marrow<\/em> has been a collection of stops and starts, so daunted am I by the crossroads it represents: You are a resident. You know you would\u2019ve been there, right? You are your text. <\/em>He tells me with the assured wisdom that in not-quite-a week at this writing workshop I have come to respect and crave from him.<\/p>\n

Fear, shame, revelation: they all feel the same after my workshop leader\u2019s pronouncement, and for the next week and a half of being in the writing workshop, I tackle the text feverishly. That was in May; I have been tackling it with a similar nervous urgency since.\u00a0 Here are drafts of a couple of the texts that I\u2019m working on. They came from that workshop:<\/p>\n

Hot Child In The City: The Haircut<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love myself too
\nmuch.<\/p>\n

Belly playing peekaboo
\nas I claim the sidewalk,
\nsmear its cracks under the balls
\nof my feet twisting decidedly
\nthick hair
\nI part before bed
\nto scratch sand caught
\nin its dense springs.<\/p>\n

I need a lie
\nto give in my place
\nso I shave to prickly
\ncommunism pinch my thigh
\nblue and break the mirror
\nwith my boot.<\/p>\n

How many days I
\nspent culling a cadence
\nwith my gum for the
\nboys at the
\ncourts.<\/p>\n

Scissors
\ncrunch to
\ncrumbs
\nJohnny, Leroy, Dave, Carroll, Junior.
\nTufts flurrying to my feet
\nlike snow.<\/p>\n

And my nails
\ngrow these days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

###<\/center><\/p>\n

What We Talk About In Our Cottage<\/strong>
\nI. Want
\nlack; not enough and claiming
\nmore; a need met in tandem:
\nif all else fails. Because we can\u2019t live without it.<\/em><\/p>\n

II. Will
\nUnderstand:
\nthe flesh is not dots and dashes
\nhas no patterns; is an insistent knock alarming
\nsleep from its corner trembling
\nface hidden.<\/p>\n

III. Athlete\u2019s foot
\n<\/strong>cover of make believe manages
\nabsolutes clumsily\u2014<\/em>
\nCrazy equals foolish, near-sighted;
\nlaughable and common,
\nthe work superfluous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

###<\/center><\/p>\n

(Poet darlene anita scott is a regular contributor to <\/em>the jonestown report. Her complete collection of writings and poetry for this site may be found here<\/a>. She can be reached at <\/em>darleneanitascott@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When\u2019s the last time you went to church\u2026you go to church? His eyebrows were raised to punctuate the question that seemed to come from nowhere. Here I am showing him poems from my collection about the residents of Jonestown, Guyana: How\u2019s my technique? Tension? Meter? And he\u2019s asking me about my religion, which is, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":29487,"menu_order":17,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-29276","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29276"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52079,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29276\/revisions\/52079"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}