Tag Archives: prose

2024, essay, nonfiction, Ohio River Valley Literature, prose, river life, the no-scape, Working Class Literature

Swing Shift Watch: The Time Between

This is the transition hours. She’s.next to me, askeep. I’m dressed for work and drinking coffee, waiting for the first of my two overnight watches for the week. We had a nice supper together.: bow tie pasta with roasted tomato, pesto, and sweet Italian sausage. One of those suppers that was so good, we talked about it an hour after, along with ways to make it even better or change it up a bit. This is what we do.

An old standard from classic BBC TV is playing on the TV: As Time Goes By. I’ve been watching this show for years. I first watched it on PBS when I was a kid. Saturday nights . The Red Green Show, As Time Goes By, Keeping Up Appearances, Have You Been Served?, Waiting on God, Last of the Summer Wine. I introduced Amanda to these shows after we got togther. I never get tired of them. I don’t know why. I’m not what you’d call an Anglophile. But there’s something comforting about them.

She’s sleeping hard. It’s been a long week for her, and it’s only Wednesday. Me getting back to work on the wharf after my hip replacement surgery has been an adjustment for both of us. She likes having me around, and I like being around, though I do get antsy if I stay around the house too long. I don’t light out on the road anymore, so I pour that into work, into the river.

On Swing Shift, we only sleep at the same time 2 nights a week. This makes the time between that much more important.

I’ve got about an hour left before I need to finishing puttering around and leave for work. The weather is warmer, but wet. From the weather reports I’ve read, I expect more thick fog and then rain after 4 in the morning. I pay attention to weather forecasts and river forecasts, even when I’m not working. Work didn’t make me this way, being on the road did. The weather and river patterns give me something to obsess over. It’s a sort of passive obsessiveness, always running in the background.

I’ll leave soon trying not to wake her up, and disturb the dogs as little as possible. She’s deep into one of her complicated dreams. I’m going to head out to mine soon enough.

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2023, Poet's Life, poetry, the no-scape, Working Class Literature

Versations: Machine Function

Over the past week I’ve read of the deaths of two Palestinian poets, Refaat Alareer and Saleem Al-Naffar. More in the wake of the US vote defeating the UN call for ceasefire, and the Biden Administration’s insistence on funding Israel without strings or accountability. Selah, it is all the same. We’ve been here for generations, and our foreign policy in the Middle East is based on a post- World War II strategic decision.

And no. I’m not saying the Holocaust didn’t happen. That is an undeniable historical fact. Neither is the fact that the death of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazi Death Machine was the culmination of centuries of antisemitism. But insisting that a blank check to Israel to blanket bomb Gaza is a moral high ground and not a 75-year-old rinse and repeat military strategy is also ignoring fact. Selah, it is all the same.

All the World Death Machines are running, and the sky is cloudy with blood-soaked exhaust. This is the way of those machines.

But there are other machines working, too.

I figured out a long time ago that this world is machines layered upon machines. Somewhere underneath them all, there are other machines, organic machines, that continue to run. And that’s only the machines of this world. Down on the river, the great wound of the world, in the early hours of the morning, the curtains between the worlds get thin, and if you look you see other machines. This world is machines atop of machines atop of machines. Selah, it is all the same.

There are calls to strike, to close shops. Shows of solidarity, I suppose. This assumes that there are enough small businesses that could stop the corporate machine. I’m not optimistic enough to think that’s so. If these closures happen it will be a minor inconvienence and it will probably only really inconvience people who are sympathetically minded. Everyone who wants to feel like they’re doing something will feel it. The other machines, including the Death Machines, will continue to run.

The only thing I know to do is write and keep writing. That is the kind of machine I am. I write and in writing, I remember. Because we must, we must remember.

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2023, essay, nonfiction, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, prose, the no-scape

A Brief Note on (Poetic) Composition

There are as many poetic craft and composition regimens as there are poets. Some have more ritualized processes than others. Some can only write in the morning. Some can only write late into the night. Some carve their time after supper and when the kids are in bed. Some write prolificly. Some are slow and steady crafters. Some write every day. Some only write when they feel properly inspired.

There are no writing practices that are more correct than others. They all work or don’t depending on the particular poet and their particular life.

Nearly all of my poems and 95% of my prose, including this bit, are written in the moment. I revise very little.

Lately I write in brief down times during my work day… raising steam or working the throttle on the Belle of Louisville tends to have a similar effect on my writing.

Sometimes I start out with the intention to focus on a particular style… a sonnet or a tanka or a ghazal or a haiku. Mostly I let the poem lead. Sometimes the poem allows me to lead. The relationship is an organic one.

There are times when the poems drive themselves daily and more often. Sometimes there’s a bit of gunk in the line, and the poems drive slower, or not at all, and not necessarily to my satisfaction. In that case, I revisit themes, the landscapes ajmnd geography of things I’ve written, or I read a new poet or I find an poet I’ve read before and I read them again. Sometimes I read something other than poetry.

So if there is an apparent haste in my poetry or it slows down in number or in quality, I generally don’t dwell. I just vent the burners and fire again.

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