Joyce Sutphen's Poem Journal 9-17-2013

            Joyce Sutphen’s poems all have images in common with each other regardless of the many topics she writes about.  Much of her work describes thing in detail, like most poets.  But what makes her work unique is the sensory detail: how she writes about “listen with your eyes” in her poem How to Listen.  In this poem, she writes about how not to listen with just your ears but with your eyes, to pay attention to the situation at hand or the gratifying moment.  Otherwise you might miss it or “your whole life might depend on what you hear.”  Sutphen’s poem My Father Comes to the City describes imagery with not just vision but as if you could feel it as well.  She describes the imagery of seeing her father’s hands not just with sight but how it would feel: “fingers thick as ropes, nails flat and broken in the trough of endless chores.”  These few words effortlessly give an image of feeling what it would be like to do the work that he does, the “endless chores” around his home, which is most presumably a farm because that’s where Sutphen grew up.  Her sensory imagery again pops up again in her poem Death Inc.  She writes “high on meth, tires screeching.”  Just her choice of words here sends a clear message of visuals and sounds: a man high behind the wheel, tires screeching into the distance, black marks on the pavement.  All together, Sutphen’s imagery in her poems uses all of the senses to experience what she wants her readers to feel.

Inheritance Revised

I don’t blame

Either of my parents

For what they

Passed down to me.

Mainly because

Most of it

Is some form of

Genetics.

Genetics

Is a fickle thing.

How one child has brown hair, the other

Red.

How one child 

Is short.  The other

Tall as the sky

Itself.

Yet not all traits

Are passed down 

By genetics.  Some by

Inheritance.

Wit, kindness,

Personality, you 

Name it.  Some is nature,

Other is bred.

I've learned the hard way

To be proud of 

What you have, though you may not 

Like it.

Waste

food and paper plates,
bottles and soda cans
Litter the Mountain of Trash.

shirts and sunglasses,
shoes and nail polish
Stock the Virtual Black Market.

movies and shows,
games and commercials
Transform Libraries to Deserts.

words and blabber,
gossip and secrets
Destroy the Heart's Castle

Equality: a Right for All

Imagine a world

Where we equal

Each other.

Define it, you say?

Ancient two words,

Golden rule.

Treat everyone just

And kindly, yet          

Honestly.

No matter color,

Gender, age, or

Religion.

Sexuality,

Beliefs, as well

As mindset.

We are all human.

            We are equal

We are one.

Inheritance

I don’t blame

Either of my parents

For what they

Inherited to me.

Mainly because

Most of it

Is some form of

Genetics.

I’m glad that

They passed on

What they could

To me.

Intelligence,

Kindness,

Generosity

Wit.

They passed

All of these traits

On to me

And my brothers.

Thank you

Mom and dad,

For what you could do

But I’m hoping for the long health

Linguistic Failure

I don’t know how to roll my R’s.

“It’s quite simple”, they say,

rolling their R’s day and night.

Spanish, Italian, Russian,

so many languages require the rolling of the R,

except for English.

English is a funny language.

With its odd grammar nuances and vocal

conundrums, it makes the language harder to learn

for foreigners.

Yet for a native speaker like me,

I never learned how to do

a rolling R.

Granted, I can make the sound of a “chet” in Hebrew,

an unpleasant guttural sound from 

the back of the throat.

No pretty rolling R’s for me.

Only the guttural, back-of-the-throat sound.

So much history comes from words,

vowels and sounds yet each one has its own history.

I don’t know how roll my R’s.

Some tell me I can learn,

others tell me it’s genetic and

I can’t.

I will never.

C’est impossible.

I try

every day.

Sometimes I can fake it.

But ultimately the journey is fruitless.

Hunting the Right Car, a Haiku

Cougar, Jaguar, Lynx

Thunderbird and Firebird

Fox eats the Rabbit

Bella

Brooklyn, 1997

A girl was born.

Many were born this day,

but she was different.

Purple fog surrounds

her future

and travel envelops

her past.

Two came after,

a boy and a girl.

They moved from place to place:

Brooklyn, Twin Cities, Mexico City,

and back.

Dissatisfied with chasing money,

misses the city.

She doesn't, we don’t

live in a city.

Two dogs comfort her,

her thoughts deep in the memories of the subway,

synapses and synapses

relaying dreams of writing novels.

Tamagotchi,

60’s-80’s fashion.

She keeps her vintage style,

yet forever not “hipster”.

She differs from the average

persona of her school.

She plays sports,

yet is interested in other ideals.

Culture and heritage,

the arts such as writing,

a girl who once dreamed of novels

became a writer of

poems and

short stories.

Her bedroom,

once decorated with hot pink and zebra

became a soft peach

and rebellious musicians glorify the room.

Music from all genres,

But not the mainstream pop and rap

blast through her ‘buds.

Rockin out to her jam.

She keeps the songs

in her heart,

next to her child stories,

“The Itsy-Bitsy Spider went up the water spout.”

……………………

Brooklyn, 1997

A girl was born.

Many were born this day,

but she was different.