Intro to Creative Writing Portfolio

Normandale Community College

Creative Writing Portfolio

Lisa Dominique Ronan

Introduction to Creative Writing

Thomas Maltman

March 22nd, 2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note ...............................................................................................................         3

Poems

January 2007....................................................................................................        4

On the Spanish Steps.......................................................................................        5

A Widow Waiting by the Water......................................................................        7

Coming Home In the Evening.........................................................................        8

Essay

Going by Train...................................................................................................     10        

  

                                                                     NOTE

In all cases of poetry and essay I have tried to add sensory detail and have compacted or eliminated narrative description or kept it to a necessary minimum.  I have changed titles, except for 'At Home in the Evening,' in an effort to experiment with titles that give some information about the text.  In the poem 'January 2007' I added a stanza and combined the last two stanzas by cutting out narrative and description of my feelings, keeping the focus on describing my memory of my mother. I did not change the poem 'A Widow Waiting by the Water' after the revision that I emailed but would like to work on 'rendering swollen bodies.... waste to lives'.  In 'On the Spanish Steps' I condensed the narrative and eliminated some wordiness.  The essay 'Going by Train' sees a scene added and I have added sensory detail in several places.  I adjusted the paragraph about sleeping at the Paris train station and tried to separate the comparison with the Grand Canyon. I briefly added insight about my thoughts on travelling.

Through this course I have been surprised see my production of poetry.  I enjoy short story writing and had not considered poetry much, but see that I can tell a story with different means through poetry.  I am very aware now that I use sensory imagery at times and then drift off into general or abstract writing.  I look forward to improving that.

Playwriting will challenge me to find a controversial position to present as a focus to the story.  I am excited to start short fiction.  I enjoy stories and storytelling but find I need to be pushed into a topic before I come up with a focus.  I would like to work on finding inspiration and focus on my own for stories, or poems and plays for that matter.   I find that I sometimes get an inspiring beginning and then am not sure which is the most exciting way to take it or it becomes too abstract. 

I would like to learn more self guiding in my writing, to be able to notice the weak spots in my writing.  I am looking forward to contributing to the writing contest at Normandale and to learning about submitting for future use as well as the end chapter in our text book about getting published.

January 2007

My mother's purse

rests on the fireplace. As if she has just

gone out to get the mail. Droplets of

water form on the windowpanes,

unshovelled snow lies outside.

She will walk in through the door, smiling.

Say she forgot her keys, pick up her black bag by the straps,

check for change in her billfold and,

fastening the round button at the neck of her red coat,

hurry out into the January wind.

I wait.  Time out paces me, unyielding,

while I haltingly take in the loss.

Stunned that I can no longer make amends to her for my lacking.

Willing to bargain with God, beg for one small exception. 

So she could stay a while longer.

On the Spanish Steps

I saw her on the Spanish Steps asking for money,

while the February sun shone bright and warm.

She came at me with a smile, I skirted wide around her.

Sneaky smiling like that, I thought.

If she returns home without sufficient money will she be beaten?

Round faced and so small that she looked like a child.

I would rather watch the ancient white fountains

spraying in the square  than contemplate

her fate.

A wad of paper bills saved for a sweet perfume that I had not wor n  in years.

I suddenly desired  to smell the honeyed aroma on my wrists,

to make myself special to no one else if not me.

 

The oily scent rubbed warm on my skin would transform me,

make me more worthwhile, to whom and why

I could not say.

I find her on the doorstep of the shop emanating  vanilla and sandalwood,

my long saved treasure in hand and a tiny bit for lunch

to celebrate myself all at once.

 She has forgotten me,  already moved on to the next stranger,

but the perfume conquers me no more, nor am I hungry for my little lunch.

I will not give her my petty cash, nor will I spend it on myself.

I will keep it for another day, for something that I desire intensely

like the sweet smell of orange blossoms and musk to anoint my arms.

Now she has forced herself into my mind and

there is no more room for me.

A Widow Waiting by the Water

She sits on slate grey rocks,

inert, suspended and prayerless.

Silently watching the sapphire Mediterranean sea

that has become a graveyard.

Rendering swollen bodies, swallowing hope, laying waste to lives.

A kiss lies ready on her lips for him and her child.

The moment they embarked the

dilapidated carcass set recklessly adrift,

a ceaseless memory that clouds the days and years

pounding in her head, begging to be released.

Numbly clinging to it

and the moment when they held hands,

sliding weak and

exhausted from hers,

despite her pleas.

Leaving her abandoned in the

biting, black waves,

waiting and wish-less,

with no one to call

her own.

At  Home In The Evening

She tripped in the door, grocery bag in hand.

From the sofa the gingerbread man turned his rigid silhouette angled at the doorway.

Looking askance, he gestured for her to sit next to him

on the seat of pins and needles.

The smell of dinner burning came from the kitchen.

'I'll clean that up in two shakes of a lamb's tail'

-her grandmother said things like that -

and off she went.

The gingerbread man didn't like her doing that.

He offered her the remote control, she could push the buttons and everything.

But off she ran to  clean up the burnt soup. 

She sure had a mind of her own.

When she came back the gingerbread man

had an upside down smile and one of his black currant eyes had fallen off.

He looked lopsided and queer and

sinister.

He offered her the seat of pins and needles.

Again.

The remote control and the i-pad were on the other seat so

she had no choice.

'Kiss me,' he said.

She contemplated the upside down smile; muddy pink frosting that

would stay like grit in her mouth.

'Better go check the washer,' she said and dashed away.

The gingerbread man complained that she always had something better to do.

With one black current eye, brown stumpy arms crossed,

he looked at the t.v. and

pushed the buttons on the remote control.

What a life, spent sitting in front of a television, she thought.

Sooner or later the other black current eye will fall off,

then the sugar buttons will go.

Before you know it he will be good only to be put outside for the birds to eat.

Maybe that's not such a bad idea. 

She nearly smiled.

Just in case, before going back to the living room,

she stopped in to see if she could help with homework.

Going by Train

      At 18 I flew to Paris, took a train to the South of France bringing my disassembled blue race bicycle in an enormous box, nearly abandoning it at the top of the stairway in the Gare du Nord  because I could not carry the large suitcase and huge bicycle box up and down the stairs to the train platforms. There are no elevators in the stations in France or Italy, or anywhere else for all I know, but definitely not in France that day in July.  All summer I rode the train back and forth from a tiny hamlet outside Draguignan where I stayed, to the white beaches in Cap d'Antibes, the town that Picasso once lived in and painted, Nice, San Raphael, or glamourous St. Maxime.  But the place I loved the most was Eze Bord su Mer.  As its name implies, Eze is along the edge of the water and the small town attracted no tourists, the beach was empty, except for me. I sat on the beachin Eze, leaning against my backpack watching the waves roll out of the sparkling Mediterranean while I read, trains passing overhead on a personal bridge of tracks, carrying passengers back and forth from Nice to Villefranche, Menton, the ancient fisherman's village, or Italy or whichever small town lie in between. That summer the newspapers carried a story about a girl disappearing from the beach there, presumably kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking. Not even that would shatter my fascination with the world.

      The following summer I travelled with my younger brother.  Again by train, to Ireland and London, first by train then boat to go over the English Channel.  We boarded rickety trains through Innsbruck and Switzerland and trekked to hostels in forgotten corners of Germany. One hostel was a castle on the hill, reached by dint of train then bus and required walking up a steep hill with loaded backpacks.  The astonishing view of the valley below was well worth the exhausting pilgrimage. As the cities in Germany became one indistinct blur we stayed at another hostel that invited the inhabitants to exit at 7am, the doors then locked until evening. I discovered that summer that Germans have their points of reference and saying 'Rouse, rouse!' at 6:30am to sleeping teenage backpackers slumbering in their youth hostels is one of the more substantial ones.  My crowning achievement that year though, was sleeping at Paris train station with my 16 year old brother because we missed the last train.  Fearful of a lecture, I never told my parents. That experience has become the measure against which we evaluate the unsavoriness of a situation. Much later, as adults, a family vacation saw my brother, me and our two families as well as our aging father, strapped in saddles aboard stubborn, lurching mules descending awkwardly on narrow 6 inch paths into the Grand Canyon.  A spectacular view and a dangerously sharp drop down the canyon side. Each time one over our oversized mules noisily hit a rock causing it to clamor down the canyon, I winced and turned to count that there were nine in our group.  My brother and I looked at each other, as we often do and silently evaluated how it compared in danger with sleeping at the train station in Paris.  We cringe at the memory of how we put ourselves in danger's ugly fist that night, taking turns sleeping and changing spots outside the filthy train station when drug addicts or sellers got too close. Our objective was to survive from around midnight until the first train early the next morning.  The specifics of train schedule elude me but hunching over our green backpacks, foreheads resting on our arms and taking turns closing our eyes, never sleeping is impressed in my mind.  I wonder why we took such risks and why we continue to travel.  I am unsure where the allure for such endeavors come from and asked my brother, 'Why do we do it at all?' He responded, 'Isn't that just what you do?' 'Yes,' I thought.  I could not imagine life without travelling, whether on noisy trains as a teen, kayaking in the milky waters of the Gorges du Verdun in France or watching the volcano in Stromboli erupt from a row boat in the water at night, I truly cannot.

      The pokiness of trains exasperated me, the lurching progress, bumpy ride shaking me to my wits end. The new fast trains, Alta velocità, travel at 182km/hour between Milan and Bologna.  The trains slow to 78 km/hour because of the mountainous terrain between Bologna and Florence, while lucky travelers from Florence to Rome zip speedily by at 254 km/hour.  The ride is smooth and quiet, often lulling passengers to sleep. It whisks me through the familiar countryside taking me from Milan to Florence in an hour and 40 minutes to escape monotony, see the friends from the school where I taught English years before and other friends, some now divorced or separated.  The bored, the divorced, the separated and the busy converge at a Balducci's in via Marconi for un'aperitivo - before dinner drinks, which often turn into an extended drinking dinner always cheerfully noisy and chatty and warm and friendly as are the Italians.  I listen to stories of cheating mates, unpaid child support, laughing at anecdotes of  potential love stories, I am introduced to friends' husbands and current students of the school where I once taught.  An attractive young man, nicely dressed, on virtue of overhearing my name, introduces himself.

'Are you Lisa?'

'Yes,' I respond, surprised to be recognized by anyone in this din.

'Sono figlio di Roberto.' -I am Roberto's son. 

      I hesitate, recalling the name Roberto, one of five brothers.  Andrea was married to my then-fiancè's twin sister. Roberto, his brother, lived next door to me and my fiancè.  A reel of images goes through my mind of the 15 years since I have moved from Florence to Milan.  Roberto's son, Nicolò Ruby, was four when I left.  I take in air with surprise, I am moved to see Nicolò a man and touch his cheek as if he were still a child.

'O, mio Dio!' 'You were a child.' I say unbelievingly.

'Mi ricordo il tuo viso.' I remember your face, he says

       I smile and hold back a momentary burning in my eyes. I tell him he has grown up to be handsome and wonder how his family has fared. Remembering and seeing this child now a man is disorienting, like being, on a cloud. Briefly, I feel like I am hovering above the street, watching everyone.

      Binario 21, track number 21 is situated underground at the Milan train station.  It is the track from which train cars carrying mail were loaded and unloaded,  mail cars departed from here.  It is not accessible from the main station but from a street running parallel to it: Via Ferrante Aporti.  Between 1943 and 1945 deportees were loaded onto the cargo cars by means of kicking and shoving from soldiers and began a journey which, for most, was one of no return.  Prisoners were loaded like parcels on the cargo cars below ground and the entire windowless cargo cars with 50 to 80 'passengers' were raised by elevators to the level of the station where real passenger trains departed.  When the cars hooked up to the rest of the train convoy, a 7 day journey directed to Italian concentration camps Fossoli and Bolzano or Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen in Germany began. No one apparently noted the unusual maneuvers. In December 1944 Bergen-Belsen held just over 15,000 prisoners.  Josef Kramer, previously commander at Auschwitz, became the new commander and four months later 60,000 prisoners were being held there. The camp was built to detain only 10,000. Deaths in the camp rose from 7,000 in February 1945 to 18,000 a month later, the dead bodies were burned in trenches.  There were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, the 50,000 POW's, Jews, Czechs, Poles, homosexuals, Catholics and gypsies died of starvation, disease and exposure.  The expected period of survival at Bergen-Belsen was 9 months.  It is where Anne Frank died. Over 20 convoys of prisoners left binario 21, not everyone arrived alive. On January 30, 1944 605 prisoners were deported, 22 survived, among them men, women, children and elderly.  The memorial has been left dimly lit to evoke the original atmosphere. When a train starts its run, a disorienting loud noise overwhelms everything for several frightening seconds.