Radiator rattles in the corner

Today, I was sitting in my apartment by my window that overlooks Saint Nicholas Avenue. Beside the table where I do some work, I heard a hissing noise. My window is open behind me -- I'm actually not facing the window, as sometimes I get too distracted by the goings on in upper Harlem. The cars and trucks and people provide an interesting background soundtrack to my work. The noise is unfamiliar to me. I realized, my radiator started emitting heat. I moved into this apartment in Spring, so I've never experienced the radiator music. But it is saying: Fall is here. Fall is here.



I want to write a more writerly post here, since that is what I sort of started this blog for. I mentioned last blog that I started this bigger project at school, and I'm most excited about it. Books I'm reading that are inspiring me:



Lorca's Poet in New York (and indirectly, Reyes' Poeta en San Francisco)

Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah (most of all the books)

Sanchez's Does Your House Have Lions?



I've done probably more prose writing around this project than I have poems. Here's a list of poems (titles are stand-ins, maybe. I might keep them.)



Gryphon's mother makes a promis to God

Gryphon & the flashing flames

Gryphon as a young boy

Gryphon's mother: dream one

Gryphon & Toby & Tutu



I recognize that these titles mean nothing to you right now. Who is Gryphon? He is a young boy coming of age in Charleston, South Carolina. He and his mother are fighting this battle, concurrently, against each other, with and against the world. It is about a house and a turtle and a young boy and his mother. The rest of the family is second to this storyline.



About the prose writing: I'm finding that because I sort of have a larger story that I'm trying to break into smaller poems, I do a lot of thinking. I decided to do my thinking in one journal, the same journal where the poems originate. So I have one journal that has my notes, my thoughts, my connections, my questions. It is serving very helpful to my busy lifestyle, also. This new life I've been given has forced me to stretch myself in new ways. No longer does my muse speak to me in whole poems in one sitting -- as it once has! -- rather, I am never really sitting around in one space long enough (in truth, I called out of work to have a few moments to sit down) for a poem to come. So I get glimpses and snatches and write them in this one journal. So all of my thinking that I would do in one sitting, I sort of dump into my journal and then when I sit down the night before my class to write the poem, I don't feel overwhelmed at the blank page, rather, I find I have pages and pages of notes to cull from, and starts and images. And a poem soon emerges.