Ellie as Poet [Bryan]

I was rummaging through some old boxes yesterday and found some old papers from Ellie's undergraduate days, including from her creative writing classes. I was impressed. Here are two poems.

Aesthetic (1998)

we are trying
to find what is
which is not
to ignore what is
not but
to peel it
peel it away
peel it away and remove
feathers and veils and sequins
aprons and glasses and clothes
hair and skin and fat
muscles and tendons and organs
bones and cartilage and blood
and
Words
to pour out the
glass of mere existence
to find what is
still full
when everything is emptied
to keep eyeballs and
hold them in
our hands
to keep their big round
black spots
looking at us
to see something in
the Blackness


Poetry Is (1998)

Words that tingle
in the fingers,
Words that tickle -- a feather
in the throat;

Words that pulse red
in the chest,
Words that escape
from guarded thoughts;

Words that hollow
out sensations,
Words that live
in one world and another;

Words that track wet prints
on hard, dry sand,
Words that irrigate, flow
through clouded minds;

Words that seek assurance
in obscurity,
Words that blindly hit
on the mark;

Words that bloom beautiful
in fields of ugliness
Words that float answers
in oceans of questions;

Words that cry with the baby
in the night,
Words that hold the bitterness
of the failure of lifetimes;

Words that tell truth --
Poetry is.