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Poems Martha Wrote
(But Lieutenant Cross Never Read)

Your face did not rot No matter how hard I tried To imagine The flesh Falling Off Revealing the Crimson Blood Stained skull beneath.

Your feet did not drop off No matter how long I made you stand In the snow Shivering Skin turning numb Black with frost bite.

Your hands did not weld together No matter how long I made you beg Squishing your flattened Palms into prayer Forcing you to your knees Pleading with me.

For all the hours You knelt Your knees did not lock Into that humbling position Nor did your lips obtain Third degree burns Despite the thousands of Adoring kisses You Gave Me.

But—Your heart It did not withstand My fierce blows. You grew fonder and fonder Of me Until with one Adulterous Wallop Your heart Froze Paralyzed With the anguish I bestowed

—Until it melted Sinking deep into the crevasses Of Our body Where no light entered And it hardened Into a Lifeless Hunk of Worthless Organ Never to climb back Up to its rightful home.

No—Your face did not rot Your feet did not fall off Your hands did not fuse together Your lips did not suffer burns Nor did your knees lock into a kneel But your heart—It melted And fell Hiding far, far— away

On the Rainy River

The chapter “On the Rainy River” takes place during the summer of 1968 when he receives his draft notification. He had up until that point, been and anti-war advocate by writing editorials for the school newspaper. He thought that he was above the war; that he was of more use as an intellectual. He was furious and believed that if the war should be fought by those who support it, not by those who are drafted into supporting it. O’Brien spent the remainder of the summer working on an assembly line at a slaughterhouse. While working he has nothing put time to contemplate escaping to Canada. He considers the risks of humiliation and being caught, but one day, the urge to run overtakes him and he goes.
He travels up the Rainy River which borders the USA and Canada and stops for a few days at a rundown fishing resort. Although the owner, Elroy, didn’t ask questions, O’Brien was sure that he knew exactly what he was up to. He then spends six days there doing handy work for Elroy. When it came time to bill him, Elroy figured that he owed O’Brien money. Although he refused it, Elroy left the money for him as an “Emergency Fund”(O’Brien 57). The next day Elroy took him out fishing on the river close to the Canadian border. O’Brien is overwhelmed by the decision that he is faced with and just cries while Elroy pretends not to notice. During this time, O’Brien is convicted and believes that the entire universe is watching him betray his nation and he is overwhelmed with the embarrassment of it all. He doesn’t ever jump out, but goes back home and later to Vietnam.
O’Brien starts off the chapter with a guilty conscious confessing that “This is one story I’ve never told before. Not to anyone. Not to my parents, not to my brother, not even to my wife” (O’Brien 43). It is as if he is going into confession, not really on his own free will, but because he cannot stand the shame of what he has to confess any longer. He feels he is a coward for trying to run and failing. But most of all, he feels that he is a coward for submitting and going to war. This chapter is about O’Brien reliving a time when he could have changed any number of things in his life and come out the other side with his dignity still intact for doing what he believed right. But instead, he gave into the high (stronger and more armed) power and went against everything he believed in and went to war.

Reaction to The Necessity to Speak by Sam Hamill

I thought this was a very powerful essay. I did not read it so much for the creative content or his advice to writers but merely for what he had to say; and it was a lot. Sam Hamill was raw in his writing; to the point, and open about subjects that most people will not even allow themselves to think about, let alone put down in carbon form. Not only was Hamill crude in the thoughts he conveyed, but he was also graceful in the way he articulated them.
My boyfriend is a psychiatrist major focusing on family systems. One class he took primarily focused on family trends such as physical abuse. This, and others, are issues that Hamill addresses, “The battered child will grow into the child batterer”. (Hamill 547) He addresses the larger issue that allows for so much abuse to go on inside the home and even in public in the following paragraph.
We lend a helping hand to the mugger when we don’t educate our children (of both sexes) about self-defense; we lend a hand to the rapist when we don’t readily discuss rape. Our silence grants permission to the child molester. Because we have not learned to name things properly, the batterer beats his child or lover in public, and we stand to one side, crippled inside, fearful and guilty. (Hamill 553)
I image Hamill being a very strong political activist, or at least someone that I would listen to and join. But what makes him strong to me would turn off most others. His willingness and boldness to speak what we all fear hearing is strength in my eyes and shows the commitment of someone who knows that change Must happen in order for our survival. Even at times while I read this, I grit my teeth, knowing that he is calling me out on my own faults. As a child, I was spanked when I would misbehave. I still remember the belt my father would pull off; it was black leather, with a fake gold Mickey Mouse buckle. For years, I have said that when I have children, they will also be spanked for being naughty even though I have my own doubts as to the effectiveness of this form of punishment. Does the child really learn what is right and what is wrong? Or do they simply learn how to not get caught and to not seek their parents for advice if they think that they might be doing something wrong? I do believe that by spanking a child you lose the ability to communicate with them.
In the last few years, laws have changed about what is considered abuse in the home, and it is no longer acceptable in the eyes of most to spank children. This change in mentality is long over-due, as is how we see and portray homosexuality. In high school, there was a group called the Addison County Militia (ACM). Their reason for existing was to weed out all “gays” and anyone who supported them. This meant that they targeted the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) and anyone involve. As you can imagine, a place that was supposed to be a safe haven turned into a place of even more fear. When one of the teachers who was running the group began to speak out against the ACM, they retaliated. Her house was egged and her car windows all shattered. She received threats and the local officials did nothing. You might be thinking, “This must have been in The South” but it wasn’t. This was Vermont; a place long known for their large homosexual population. As was done for domestic violence for years, everyone, including myself, turned a blind eye; hoping that you would not be the next target. We “refused to make a personal issue of the problem” (Hamill 553).
Sam Hamill published this essay nearly twenty years ago and yet the issues he presented are still relevant today and will be for all time. He presented countless issues in this paper that should have been seriously addressed by our nation years ago, but as he said, we stay silent “to protect our own beloved innocence” (Hamill 550). And I am as guilty as the next person.

Hamill, Sam. "The Necessity to Speak." A Poet's Work: the Other Side of Poetry. Seattle, WA: Broken Moon, 1990. 546-53. Print.

Reaction to Poetry

Reaction to Photograph of September 11, by Wislawa Szymborska and Compendium of Lost Objects by Nicole Cooley

I remember that day clearly. I was ten years old. My parents were on a Mission’s Trip to Wales with their God-thumping band. They were scheduled to return home that day, I didn’t know how or exactly when. Either way, I couldn’t wait. For the last month I had been hustled around from one family to the next. That night, I had stayed the night at my teacher’s house. When I woke up that morning, to my horror, I had wet the bed for the first time in years and was of course, too embarrassed to tell anyone. I new it was going to be a bad day.
Math class was about to start and I was too busy passing notes via paper plane back and forth with Nate to notice Mr. Sweet get rushed out of the room. He was angry when he returned and told us to go sit on the floor in Mr. Stapleford’s room. We blamed our punishment on each other as we shuffled through the hallway. Turning the corner into his room, we were greeted by the other 5th and 6th grade classes. The television fifteen-inch was rolled in. I have spent the last nine years trying to purge the image that was funneled into our eyes from my memory. Airplanes were crashing into the World Trade Center, those magnificent Twin Towers that I longed to stand on top of every time I saw them out in the distance as we drove by on our way to the Jersey Shore. But here they were, on the screen front of me, smoking, smoldering. A new image appeared which at first just looked like fiery debris falling off the sides of the buildings. Julie raised her hand to speak as we had been taught, but no one was paying any attention. She turned and asked me instead, “are those bodies”?
“Not bodies” Mr. Sweet had overheard, “They are living people”.
It was then that I was roughly awoken from my youthful sleep, forced to consciously face the reality that is our world. These were images that I had almost forgotten until reminded I read Photograph of September 11. I am glad to be reminded; I feel it is the best way to honor the men and women whom perished that day. I believe that Wislawa Szymborska gave those men and women great respect by “not adding a last line” (Wislawa).

The eighteen-wheeler backed into our school parking lot, pushing behind it a square cargo container that was larger than my house. We all knew why it had arrived; to collect supplies to bring down to Louisiana to relieve all whom had been affected by the ferocious storm christened Katrina. None of really understood what that meant, but we knew it was bad. The closest we could relate to these people thousands of miles away was when the ice storm of ’98 blew through, leaving us all without power for weeks in the dead of winter.
I was joining up with a group from church that would be going down the following week. Even looking back now, I cannot comprehend the destruction that we were met with upon rolling into New Orleans. Even though it was four months after the hurricane hit, bodies were still being found. We found endless remains, but since they were not human, we left them to continue to decay. The stench of people’s rotting lives; their houses, their furniture, their pets, their livelihoods; all rotting.
This poem remains me of the countless personal treasures that we found, and trampled on. All covered in silt and squished deep into the slowly drying mud that caked the entire city. So many lives were destroyed and yet, we rebuild? Of course we rebuild, how could we let a city, so rich in culture just disappear? More storms will come, and New Orleans will hold fast and shout in the face of each on coming hurricane; “Bring it on”.

"Wislawa Szymborska." The Poetry Foundation : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry. Web. 17 June 2010. .

"Compendium of Lost Objects." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 17 June 2010. .

A woman has been creating art out of the wreckage left after Hurricane Katrina.

Video about me

Sorry this is so crackly. It is the first video I have ever made...

A Good Reader?

Vong, Jean. "The New York Times Log In." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 1999. Web. 14 June 2010. .

Ok, here we go. Vladimir Nabokov believes that a good reader should have imagination, memory, a dictionary, and an artistic sense. I disagree with these rules to being a great reader almost entirely, but I will get to that shortly. Nabokov doesn’t think that a reader should “identify” with a character or a situation in the text. I both agree and disagree. A reader, or anyone for that matter, should not trap themselves in their past by only reading texts that remind them of said past. That being said, it is for many, including myself, part of the healing process to occasionally linger in that past in order to appropriately dive into the future. Again, it is important not to then entomb one’s self back into that past but merely keep it as a reminder. In addition, Nabokov calls emotional readers lowly, but isn’t art supposed to evoke emotion; the most powerful of which interpreted as vile disgust in the onlooker?
Vladimir Nabokov wrote about a good reader having to be artistic. I do believe that everyone has an artistic self, but not everyone is able to connect with it. Are these people bad readers for being more logical and scientific in thinking? Nabokov describes many times how poor readers are an insult to the author, so should those of us who cannot connect to our artistic self, or whom choose to read for emotional thrills, not read to spare offending the author? To me, it sounds as if Nabokov wrote this from a place of great arrogance (although, I do love his book Lolita).
I think that a reader, a good reader, should be able to submit to the text and while reading critically, should simply enjoy whatever it is that delights them; may it be an idealistic science fiction novel, a crunchy geological survey, or a titillating romance. If a person chooses to read in order to gain knowledge, they should still enjoy the reading; otherwise they should find a more pleasing way to gain that information.


As I said, art should evoke emotion. Writing is art, but here is an example, not of writing that evokes emotion. It is not a fluffy picture, so count this as your warning before opening it. While it is staged, it is still gruesome.