Senior Capstone

My last semester at college, I decided to push myself by completing my capstone concurrently with my advanced creative writing seminar and Literary & Critical Theory class, ultimately completing a collection of poems, two major papers, a collection of short stories, and a presentation to the community all within two weeks of each other. I thrived under the pressure. It was my favorite semester of college, due in significant part to the difficulty of my classes. That semester proved to me that I could write under pressure, and write well. I could not afford to wait for inspiration; I had to produce creative and analytic writing consistently for months on end. 

Part of the work I produced during that time was my capstone - a collection of 25 autobiographical poems titled "My Mother's Eyes." This work was produced in the wake of my mother's passing, and they explored my relationship with both of my parents through childhood into the beginnings of adulthood as well as my memories of my time growing up. I am first and foremost a storyteller, and these poems helped me to work through my grief and frustration as I struggled to find my place in the world. Technically, I also challenged myself to work within restraints of poetic forms, choosing different structures and rhyming schemes to best fit each memory.

Below are a selection of pieces from that capstone, and here is a link to the presentation I gave (open to the community) about my process and my work.

b=L/4⫪d²
(equation for the relative brightness of a star)
His
love
was a
constant, but
regulated by
distance. A relationship based
on the equation that defined the space between us.
His star carried my heart home to Minnesota, tucked into his backpack on the bus
while I stayed the fixed observer as he grew dimmer--
not enough to change too much, but
enough that I could
always tell
He grew
dim.
Gone.


Naked in Church
 
 Mein großvater ran the childcare when I was four.
I decided to peel off my clothes
When my parents arrived to pick me up.
This was freedom! I reveled in my own skin,
As he had done with the Nazi youth.
(He told me he hadn’t known what the rest of the Nazi party was doing
and he lived in Germany
and that’s what everyone did.)
While I giggled my way around laps of the small room,
Großvater was reading a grown-up book.
My parents froze.
Großvater glanced up,
“She’s not hurting anyone or bothering them.
Why does it matter?” They stared at him,
This man who now honored the Sabbath,
This man who’d traveled the world to explain that not all Germans were evil,
not even all of the Nazis had been.
This man who’d done so much,
seen horrors and then fought to start anew.


Psych 101
 
Group project assignment: In your group, study the section of chapter 6 dealing with your assigned mental illness (depression). You will present your section to the class. Your teacher will act a therapist presenting questions to your group. One person will act as though dealing with your assigned illness, while the other two members of your group present two different methods for treating it.
 
She stands before the class
and stares at her teacher.
She’d volunteered for this role--
it had made sense—but now
she wants to be anywhere else.
She exhales, though the breath
seems to stick in her lungs, choking her.
She just needs to focus, stay in the present.
She’ll be fine.
 
Her teacher begins the role-play
as she pulls up the hood of her sweatshirt
and stares at him.
Her hood is bright red;
it holds her attention at the edge
of her sight.
 
“How are you today?” “Fine.”
It’s only pretend, but as the questions begin,
she’s losing focus.
She struggles to drag her thoughts back
to right there in class. He isn’t her dad;
He’s just her teacher.
Her nails bite
into her palms. The bright pain
helps her think.
 
She’s answering the questions correctly, she thinks,
But she’s not really sure, keeps forgetting this isn’t real
And he isn’t her dad, confused and upset; he’s her teacher.
She’s just fighting for her reality,
Clinging to what she can see and feel in class, in the moment,
But her view is tunneling and she
just.
can’t.
focus.
 
The wall in her head between then and now is cracking.
He’s her teacher and her dad, watching her drown
In the unending litany of questions and accusations
That flood her mind until she breaks down
Into a stream
of don’tlookdon’tfeeldon’tthink.
 
Finally a classmate speaks up, stops the class.
Everyone has noticed something is wrong,
except her teacher.
They watch her worriedly,
While he moves on,
oblivious to the breakdown.
Don’t worry, she tells them.
It was just practice and she’s a good actress.
 
She pulls off her hood. He’s not her dad; he’s just her teacher.
She unclenches her hands, each finger one at a time.
Red half-moons stand out vividly on her skin.
She yanks her mind
back in, regains her focus.
 
With a practice smile, she reassures them
she’s fine while she buries icy hands
in her pockets. She counts her breath, reminds herself that this is real.
Her dad—no, her teacher—talks on, unaware.


Mine 
 
I was possessive
Of the teams I captained,
But this team was special, different, more.
In just two weeks, they had clawed
Their way under my skin until
They might never leave.
And I held them there.
Buried them under my muscles,
Hid them in my mind,
And bared my teeth at the world.
 
They had surrendered themselves to me.
I was theirs, but they were mine.
They handed me their stories
Of heartache and broken homes,
Wrapped in scraped shins and glitter nail polish.
I gave them my heart,
A little bruised but still strong,
And my mind, and my loyalty,
And my fuck-all courage.
 
So when the final game arrived,
They barely glanced at our coach.
They looked to me.
My ankle throbbed in its wrapping,
Twice, like a heartbeat.
We weren’t the best,
But we knew that we would leave
Ourselves smeared across the field
For each other.
 
“Trust each other. Trust me.
Listen and talk out there.
We’re gonna be fantastic. I promise.”
Fourteen heads nodded at me.
I grinned at them,
And if that grin was more of a snarl,
That was because I was going to pull this victory
Out with them and out of them.
And they were going to let me.
They were mine.


My Mother’s Eyes 
 
My dad and I walked our yellow lab Masada
along the warm sidewalks
of our gated, southern California community.
“I didn’t want to go to Vietnam,”
he told me. “Not because I was scared of war.
But because I was scared I’d be good at it.”
Startled, I looked up at him; he saw
in my eyes reflected back
that same certainty.
Saw in the eyes that I inherited,
not from his grey and blue
that flash like lightning
then brighten to charm investors,
but from my mother,
deep and dark, meant
for late night confessions and promises of love.
Eyes that, in my face,
turn black and endless
in a fury that my mother had never known.
We stood frozen
in the soft shadow of an olive tree,
our dog tugging at the end of his leash.
And that fear reflected in our eyes
connected us and I remembered that
I may have my mother’s eyes,
my mother’s mind, but I have my father’s
heart. And together, to save each other, to save her,
We would burn the world.