Artists Among Poets - Emily Cyr

Curtain Call The hollow pounding of the wood underneath my terrified shoes I emerge into the screaming light, blind and clouded I speak, the words blast into the air and slap the crowd with ferocity My words slam against the wall, melt into the floorboards and stain the carpets The seats dissolve underneath their tremulous weight Each step I take echoes into the night sky They shoot through my tiny body as I shrink underneath the lights Stale wood and fog asphyxiate me as I struggle to find the words My hands reach out to grasp them but they turn to sand and fall to the floor People trod upon their dust as I slink away from the light The frozen darkness consumes me as I escape My hands return to me as my steps become soft and delicate I prance through the shadowy figures who pass solemnly among me I cannot make out any faces, yet the silhouettes haunt me with wisps of memory Careful not to touch them I move faster towards another light This light is softer, kinder to

Okay, Let's Warm Up For four years I spent my days in the theatre and the choir room And there are things that we did every day Things that sometimes took up a full hour of my time And these are things that one begins to resent after a while For me, particularly, I hated those circle games that relied on rhythm The games where someone started snapping and I had to E-n-u-n-c-i-a-t-e And I had to say, In unison with 40 other people, “If I had been so lucky as to have a steady brother who could talk to me as we are”- I won’t do it all, it’s way too long. I hated those focus games like pass the clap where I had to look someone in the eyes and *pause* *clap* And don’t get me started on P T K F SH, the only vocal warm up where you needed a rain poncho for. The worst ones were the tongue twisters The red leather yellow leather blue leather green leather The unique New Yorks The mommy made me mash my m&m’s And then there was the solfege practice

My Opinions Regarding Nighttime Can I tell you something? Can I? Can will. There is too much. Too much? Too much very much too much. Can I just Can I just alone. Alone is almost very always alone dark can I? No, I'm not. No really! Can I tell you something? Dark and with arm, arm at my bed Shadow everything everywhere, everything everywhere shadow. Can I just tell you something alone? Nothing, absolutely nothing, absolutely everything, and then absolutely nothing Waiting and and ...and Can I just tell you? Nothing, nothing, everything and nothing Always heat, shadow. Maybe then, maybe then now? Maybe then later. Maybe then while. Too much? Possibly maybe dark, shadow, always alone. She told me dark and alone and now is never never always later Waiting. Can I? I don't want to maybe yes maybe no. That arm, that arm at my bed. Nothing, nothing, nothing maybe everything. Too much? Always too much but also never enough dark enough shadow Shadow, shadow, sh

For My Hometown To the little blue house in the center of the cul-de-sac To the big brick house right in front of the pond To the harsh winters and the mild summers To the dirty lakes and the clean ones as well To the massive hills that you barely notice until you're biking up one To the occasional tiny corn field To the big and knotted oak trees To the little house behind the Dole, where I learned how to paint To the elementary school by Gabi's house, where I made my first friends To the middle school next to the church, and the blacktop I spent my recess To the high school across the street from that awful sewage plant that reeked on hot days To the theatre inside where I would spend hours upon hours inside To Downtown Crystal Lake, where I spent most of my summers To the Starbucks in the square, where I spent most of my money To Kara's ratty, broken down Jeep that she drove me around in for 2 years To Brandon's basement, where I had my first kiss

1.) "The image is the poet's pigment. The image is not an idea, it is a radiant node or cluster. A vortex through which and from which and into which ideas are constantly rushing. It is as true for painting and sculpture as it is for poetry." 2.)  When writing poetry, I often opt to break the lines the way they make the most sense. That being said, I usually resign to making each line a complete sentence, and rarely ever venturing into the territory of cutting off a line at a point where it is grammatically incorrect. It has been rather difficult for me to through caution to the wind structurally in my poetry, primarily because I've been taught that breaking the grammatical structure in anything is about the worst offense any writer could do. Upon reading Hirsh's response to how to create the lines in poems, I found that my method of organizing the structure of my poem is a very normal and natural response to poetry. However, I've also learned that there