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Alexandra Walston
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Action Require: Document Review and Signature
25 Sep
Download the DocuSign AppSome Infographics for a Fanfic I’m Writing
10 OctI’ve been out of the poetry blogging business for a while because I’ve been writing fanfiction and original fiction instead. The following infographics are supplements to this Devil Wear’s Prada story.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/71716636/chapters/186675756
Found Poem: WE’VE BEEN TRYING TO REACH YOU…
30 AprI get these fliers like once a month from one of those shady “we buy houses” places, and I’m honestly getting tempted to call them. So I did a little blackout poetry to try to dissuade myself from what is probably a bad idea.
Transcription
ATTENTION ALEXANDRA:
I want
I have been trying
Unfortunately,
I am not sure of the condition inside
needs some work.
ask them
be willing
You can choose
you want fast
I don’t care.
Please take a moment
Please try
I hope that
we can work something out…I am
you
Regular Poem: The End
29 Apri’ve never felt particularly compelled
to finish things
one time i read all but the very last chapter of a book before i decided
it just wasn’t worth it anymore
i’ve got tangles and tangles of fishing line tumbling around in my garage from when i made a diy bow to play musical saw
but discarded that when i couldn’t get more than a squeak out of it
one hundred thousand words of that vampire novel
with no discernible plot and no end in sight
but then again
i did listen to all twenty two discs
of east of eden
hating it the entire time
just because it was part of a reading challenge that i was adamant about winning
so i don’t know what my deal is
what kind of goals are effective
what objectives properly motivate me
what rules and regulations do i respect and which do i ignore
whatever i guess
i’ll be on another project next week
and maybe i’ll interrogate the process
but interrogating processes is another project to be abandoned in itself
Regular Poem: Essential Workers
27 Aprhaven’t punched my red cross card yet
i’m saving it for when i’m
sufficiently lonely and restless
but considering
quik trip is still open
i don’t know when that might be
because even before
sometimes when i’d get lonely
i’d make up a reason to go to quik trip
because quik trip
exclusively employs attractive polite cashiers
who want to engage with people
just yesterday that nice pretty boy ringing me up
talked to me about my dog and the weather
and smiled and made my day
three months ago that nice pretty girl ringing me up
talked to me about her favorite gatorade
and smiled and made my evening
a year ago that nice pretty man
mistook me for someone else and talked to me about relatives i didn’t have
and smiled and made my week
several times over the course of a few months last year
the beefy blond found me at the fountain drinks and told me
he was glad to see me and that i always make his night
(it’s a pheromone
i think
that makes me especially enticing to gas station clerks
whatever it is it’s a mutual appreciation
a reprieve
an anonymous pleasant interaction)
i’d feel guilty about it
except it’s so brief
you can wash up before and after and pose very little risk to anybody
i’d feel guilty about it
but from everything i’ve read it seems quik trip is an ethical company
compensates their employees well and looks out for their best interests and even has a gentleman’s agreemant with other gas stations to not encroach on their turf
i’d feel guilty
but i don’t
i need certain stimulation and i think they probably do too
Regular Poem: Hypothetical Casting Call
26 Aprthat before time
back when i had regularly scheduled extracurricular activities five days a week
all kind of blurs together in my memory
just as the days do now
with no discernible time markers or dialogue tags
a block of indistinct happenings both before and now
i’m going over vague events and trying to piece them together
as fully as i am able
to extract some joy from them–
in remembrance create hope
that similar things might occur in the future
when the fuzzy now time is over
when the malaise of this current season dissipates.
an anecdote i suddenly remembered today that made me smile:
the hottest soprano in praise band
(she is not my soprano
i’m alto b and she’s soprano a
but c team was on mic for the evening
so we were in the front row of the worship center sitting next to each other
because she likes to make fun of me for texting so much during rehearsals
and i like to make fun of her for balancing her checkbook during rehearsals)
and i
for some reason i do not recall
started talking about musical theater and that quickly devolved
into a flirty fake argument about which one of us
would be the better sandy in a production of grease
well you already know from the exposition i provided
that she is both very attractive and a soprano
what you don’t know is that her singing is like if there were a disney princess who was voiced by a ’90s country-western-pop-crossover diva
what you also don’t know is that my singing is more a ’30s cabaret alto who might voice a disney villain
(when her assigned alto is indisposed and i fill in
or when my assigned soprano is indisposed and she fills in
or when soprano c is doing keys 2 and alto c is out of town and we’re the people available
or whatever other circumstance forces us to sing together
we blend so well
sound so good together
and look so good together as a bonus
[in my opinion alto c is the hottest alto
but my proclivities for 60-year-old women with sharp jawlines are not ubiquitous unfortunately
so in popular opinion
i’m the hottest alto])
so she’s the obvious choice
for this not real production
but the way she was issuing challenges to me and waggling her eyebrows and flipping her long straight blonde hair and laughing to expose her slim pale throat
made me realize she was adamant that we should have some kind of manufactured rivalry about it
just for the fun of it
and she was so flirtatiously competitive
that it made me want to be equally flirtatiously competitive
and belt out the correct lyrics to the chorus of “hopelessly devoted to you” after she had botched them
(don’t worry
rehearsal was over by this time
so we weren’t being disruptive
as we sang at each other
increasingly ardently
in a showdown at the metropolitan baptist corral)
it concluded when i capitulated by saying
“i’m more of a rizzo anyway”
and that seemed to satisfy her
because a sandy is not actually a sandy
without a rizzo to be contrasted against
Regular Poem: Trauma Response
25 Aprsomebody told me the other day that i’m
so empathetic
in context it made sense
and yes
i do tend to think of myself in that way
but i immediately started questioning it
anyway
because
it seems like the sort of characteristic
that should be universally evident
and yet
who else might describe me that way
and who else wouldn’t in a million years even with a gun to their head
it’s one of those innocuous things
that serves as a traumatic trigger for me
‘nam veterans have fireworks and/or wet shoes
and rape survivors have their attackers’ faces and/or smells
i’ve got sudden movements in my periphery
and comments about my personality that people in positions of authority have denied are true
i shouldn’t so freely equate myself with people who’ve endured so much worse
but then i look at my discolored and highly scarred forearms
and think maybe trauma is trauma is trauma
and it effects the psyche in similar ways regardless of severity
and also
just because i knew the reason i was being attacked
doesn’t mean it wasn’t scary and didn’t hurt
oh
oh shit
maybe that’s why
the gaslighting sticks with me more than the physical pain
because i didn’t and still don’t understand the reason for it
i can reconcile why an autistic schizophrenic man might tackle me to the ground and punch me repeatedly in the face
but i can’t reconcile why nobody with any power to do anything about it didn’t believe me when i told them he was dangerous
i have no ill will toward that man who punched me as i jump out of my skin when someone a few feet away extends an arm very quickly and jerkily even though his erratic actions conditioned me to this heightened response
i have nothing but contempt and rage and deep sadness about those people who dismissed my concerns when someone calls me perceptive and i question that analysis because those people’s actions conditioned me to self-reflection and self-loathing
look
i know i’m too much up my own ass
spend too much time thinking about
my own problems and my own personal attributes–both positive and negative–and how those attributes are both utilized and perceived
but
trauma responses
respond the way they do
in whatever iteration they do
for a reason
and that’s just science
Regular Poem: You Keep Using That Word…
24 AprI’m suspicious
these folks don’t know what
feral
means.
It doesn’t mean
nuts to the max.
It’s not shorthand for
uncontrollably excited.
It’s not synonymous with
rabid.
It refers to a previously domesticated animal now living in the wild, reverting to a natural state,
which I guess in some contexts
fits what they’re trying to say.
But really,
technically,
it’s a neutral word–
doesn’t have the feverish fervent connotation
they want it to.
Therefore,
say,
a opossum
(yeah I use that indefinite article;
the o is silent)
hissing in a dumpster
is not feral.
She’s just
pissy
that you interrupted her.
I’m being pedantic about it tonight
because I’m so tired of seeing it–
overuse of an initially innocuous maybe even pleasing phrase is not only annoying in its own right
but also especially annoying because the more I see something
the more I’m inclined to analyze and investigate it
and be pedantic about it,
and heaven knows:
pedantry [even from me, who is very pretty and very clever]
is very annoying–
And also because I recently did a bunch of reading on so-called wild horses,
and technically these pockets of free-range mustangs in the American West
are not wild but feral,
and I still haven’t stopped thinking about that.
The idea of feral horses
with the connotation of feral so often in common use
is hilarious and sort of frightening.
They’re so big
and so skittish and so weird, even when well-trained.
I bemusedly found myself at a horse rescue a while back,
and the gal running the joint was an old hick lady,
so of course we got on well,
and anytime you get on well with any old lady
there comes a time in the course of the interaction
where she’s forgotten her reading glasses somewhere and squints at her phone and pulls it away from her face and brings it in close to her face and pulls it back again and finds the correct distance where she can see
and then scrolls through a bunch of pictures of restaurant menus and blurry shots of grandkids
and finally finds the things she’s actually wanting to show you
(I have always loved old ladies,
and now in this current technological landscape
they’ve really brought their a-game to changing with the times but still retaining their old lady essence, and I hope to follow their example as I age and gradually become an old lady to some younger woman who will laugh at me and with me and love me and appreciate me at the same time).
And the thing she wanted to show me was the horse bite
on
her
fucking
face.
She has worked with horses her entire life. Some of the horses have lived with her for decades.
Every single horse at this place
came from abusive origins,
and yet in the five hours I was there
I didn’t see a single one startle.
They were all gentle and socialized to people,
ate right out of my hand,
nuzzled my neck–
what a testimony to the sympathetic and comprehensive care this woman has shown.
So if a sweet and well-loved horse can do that accidentally
(the biting horse had been in and out of consciousness while giving birth at the time of the incident)
what might a feral horse be capable of?
I’m kind of arguing against my own point,
but also no I’m not.
Most animals–domesticated, tame (tame is on an individual level rather than a species level which is where domesticated lives), feral, or wild–are just minding their own business,
reacting to stimuli,
defending themselves if need be.
They don’t typically
actively seek out conflict.
When you’re at the zoo
and
see a tiger pacing its cage
or
a polar bear swimming figure eights
they’re not biding their time and planning something.
They’re just understimulated–
what they’re doing is called a stereotypy,
and they do it when they as LeAnn Rimes would say
got nothin’ better to do.
In conclusion,
feral
doesn’t mean
wild
unrestrained
unhinged
on-the-edge
always ready to bite and scratch and commit crimes.
It’s just animals being animals
after they’ve been pets or livestock.
Author’s Note 1:
Language is a device
with frequent updates.
Maybe feral does mean what you want to pretend it means;
as long as whom you’re communicating with understands,
no harm no fowl (pun!).
I’m just in a mood
and still
perpetually
thinking about
feral horses
as a phrase as a concept as an actual thing that exists
and needed to talk about it more.
Author’s Note 2:
Most animals are just minding their own business.
Except the domesticated cat.
Whether a housecat or feral, cats are dicks
and do very much seek out whatever trouble
they find themselves in.
TheBestofAlexandra
