Existence Process Poems

NEXUS POEMS:
Poems that Chronicle the Connection to Everyday Things
Brandon Cesmat, M.F.A.
CPITS, San Diego County Chapter

Aristotle said that the creation of metaphor was a sign of genius because it was the recognition of the connection between apparently dissimilar things. For readers of poems, seeing new connections is one of the greatest rewards. So in our poetry workshops, we want to experiment with metaphor to look for valuable connections.

I use my poem "Pomegranates" as a model for writing poems. It has anaphora and similes. Students should easily recognize the comparisons of pomegranates to Christmas bulbs. Less obvious will probably be the metaphorical language of "The peels gaping...." A lesson could be built around the energy released when using an actor (peels) and action (gape) that aren't usually used together.

But the main connection that I ask students to note is between the pomegranate's conclusion in the mouth and its origins in the rain. I try to show the nexus between what we consume and where it comes from. The link here is not necessarily the link of genius but the astonishing link of a process many of us have forgotten or overlooked, a process that nourishes and, in effect, kisses us.

Pomegranates

In the windbreak along the avocado grove,
pomegranates brush against the coyote’s fur,
forgotten even by him as he trots through the bushes
and puts his paws on the tree limbs to reach the lobes of golden green.
The red globes not as shiny as Christmas bulbs.
Their peels spilt in ecstasy, showing hundreds of bloody teeth.
Ah, they stain these Santa Ana winds!

Don’t deny the juice and leave the
pomegranates on the branches for crows,
or order a mai tai or tequila sunrise
and watch the bartender pour in grenadine ribbons.

Taste the juice as it slides from the fiery seed.
Let your mouth gape with the bloody rain from a kiss.

THE EXERCISE

Consider all the things around you: the bricks in the wall, the glass in the window, the paper this page is made of. Choose something that interests you, and ask your self, "Where did this come from?" See if you can trace it back to its origins, listing words as you go. Use concrete/image/picture words. What are some of the plants, birds, animals, or people in its place of origin? Are there any similarities between the place of origin and the place where the thing is used? If so, write them out as similes or metaphors.

Write a poem that shows the reader the common thing in its place of origin and then links it to our everyday use. Feel free to make a simile qualified by a slight difference, such as, "The red globes not as shiny as Christmas bulbs." Also feel free to exclaim in true awe, as in "Ah, this stain on the Santa Ana winds!"

Once you show the object at its beginnings, show the object as it is usually seen, and somewhere in the poem, direct the reader to the connection between the thing's ordinary use and its origins.

THE OBJECTIVE
Sometimes students give up too soon on a good idea. By following the process of cultivation and consumption, students have a plot that stretches their observations and--with some luck--makes an astonishing connection.

STUDENT EXAMPLES

Old Nail

It feels sharp and cold in my hand.
Made in a factory were machines clash and clang.
Burned in fire,
then bellows like the wind,
like a lion’s roar, came and blew it out,
the fire like a day in Hell, burning, raving, killing.
Oh, rusty, worn nail!

You held up palaces, hotels, buildings.
Now you sit in my hand, silent, still,
quiet like Death Valley.
Oh nail, like a wise old man, then forgotten like a moment,
at last lost like a memory.

Rachel Paarman
4^th Grade, San Pasqual Union

Diamonds

It was molded in the molten mother.
It was under the world above.
It gleams shinier than light,
it’s walls reflecting the rainbow.
The hot, sweaty, unforgiving chamber.
Oh, the pressure of the world’s weight.

I don’t want you just to wear it.
I don’t want you just to flaunt it.
I want you to travel below
where the chamber walls steam, and the diamonds mold.
I want you to experience far from society.
I want you to nurture your sight of molten mother,
like a protégé.

Alison Gabriel
Grade 12, Scripps Ranch High

The Worn Sky

The full electric-blue moon
lights the field below.
The bowls of cotton shine
like blinding stars on the earth.
I stand amidst the radiance,
my midnight-blue jeans up-lit by the ground,
iridescence shimmers up my new skin.

The fields continue to flow and wave into mid-day
when the sun burns the cotton dusty brown.
The dirty cream strings worn from the hem of my jeans
stroke my leathery feet as
they slide along the dusty clay of the earth.
I am wearing the old and used cotton blue sky.

Laura Rose Dutkiewicz
Grade 12, Scripps Ranch High

Samba, Samba

It was born in a dirty favela shack
crowded next to another,
outside a Brazilian city
on one of those hills that bears no name,
fathered by the hands of an unknown drunk
and baptized by child’s tears,
then stolen from an unsung musician and
the river of poverty took it away.

Upon your hands this song now lays
pleading to drum its unfamiliar beats,
dying to tell the sufferings of its people.
As it sits upon your unknowing hands,
don’t play its sacred rhymes once or twice,
corrupting it as if it were one of your foreign songs,
for it was made to tell the common story of a poor man’s life
through a sambista’s chanting voice.

Paula Encarnacao
Grade 10, Scripps Ranch High

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