Three poems and one prose--for "crafts of writing"

What's the most crucial part of becoming a writer? It's to actually write.

To write down all the trash I have from page -1000 to page 0, so that I will be only left with the good stuff for page 1 to 10, or so said the author Anne Lamott in her book "Bird by bird", the text book for the class I am taking every Tuesday night called "crafts of writing".

It takes 1.5 hours to drive to the class across densely congested traffic in San Francisco at 5pm, and it takes 25 minutes to drive back to my hilly little home in South SF at 10pm. Crossing the new Bay Bridge is always a splendid experience, so is the class itself.

Playing with words and imagination, being appreciated for mess-upness and sensitivity, I like writing because it's exactly the definition of my soul mate: someone who thrives through all my foibles and idiosyncrasies and craziness, enjoying all my dramas, giving me surprises through my own hard work, teaching me a lot about myself, and calming me down from my dizzying existential anxiety in the end.

Here are three poems and one prose I write during my writing practices that I feel remotely happy with for week 1 and week 2:

(1)

Commuter

Avoid eye contact on public transportation,

shoes and pants are extraordinarily interesting

as well as the corner of the automatic door and worn edges of

handbags, and purses and poles and chairs and window seals

Sip diluted life in a cup of coffee

with too much sugar and cream

Time goes by fast if not dense--nothing to linger upon

Sail through without friction,

smoothly 8-hour days turn into nights,

nights into hateful morning alarm clocks,

packed with bitterness and suppressed passion

and the lack thereof

Cold ass professionalism

Stacking boredom into money

or the lack thereof

(2)

Coverage

Which her clothing is apparently lacking

Which her stories are wistfully lacking

Which her childhood is painfully lacking

Which his roof is apparently lacking

Which his stomach is wistfully lacking

Which his pride is painfully lacking

(3)

Accomodate

I am clearly superior

I do whatever I do

You do whatever I do

Everyone does whatever I do

And you all thank me

For my kind accommodation

(4)

My Mom had a very large front tooth, it’s one of the two big front teeth behind the upper lip--for her that tooth is not exactly behind the upper lip--it’s so large, protruding and deformed that her upper lip can not cover it up, unless she tries really hard to wrap her lip around it, but then she will look like she is holding a candy where that tooth actually is.

In all her pictures she smiles with her lips closed (looking like she is hiding a candy), apparently she is very aware of the existence of that unseeingly tooth. She grew up in a very very poor farmer’s family in 1960s China, exactly when the cultural revolution took place--not a good time for finding orthodontists, if they existed at all.

When she was a child, in the morning she got up and carried a big basket on her back and went to the country road through which every family’s cattle will walk to the farm and plow the earth. The cattle’s poop was what she was going for--she would collect piles of dried poops in the basket and burn them to cook breakfast, which is usually made of Chinese sorghum. The regular burning wood is precious and she would not venture to use it except for absolute necessity.

I grew up being secretly ashamed of having an ugly toothy Mom. I worry everyday that I will inherit the front tooth. I check the mirror everyday staring at it waiting for it to disastrously protrude out of my month. It never happened. I ended up having nice straight teeth but I always felt like a teeth imposer.

I wondered how my Dad can stand that, for example, how did they kiss? I never saw them kissing anyway, nor did I even ever imagine that they two, who hate each other with all their determination and creativity, would ever kiss.

Surprisingly after the divorce my mom went to an orthodontist, who exists now in 21st century, and got her tooth fixed. She was 45 and we were walking on the street, and her friend came up and asked who I was. She said this was my daughter. Her friend opened her mouth and eyes wide and said, "damn, I would not imagine you have a daughter of this age, aren’t you like 35 or something?" something along this line. My mom laughed out loud, showing her nice porcelain front tooth aligning just fine with the rest.

She is pretty now, for her age. I imagine she would be much more kissable at this point, nice lip and teeth missed by time and youth and her ex-husband of 21 years.