oh my god. yes, yes- YES!
no, that was not an orgasm, nor an herbal essences commercial- that was me, Alison, and the feeling of validation!
oh yes.
i swear to fucking god, if i can get just one of these moments thrown into the mix once every, say, year or so, i'll be set. ::le sigh::
i don't want to be one of those people who blames all their fucked-up-edness on their parents, but i'm really sstarting to think that the reason i'm so hyper-sensitive and emotional and conscious of myself is because of my dad, and how my mom and i have always lived on our toes- never knowing when something small we did would make him blow and i'd spend the nite crying in my room, feeling like shit. wow. i am SO ready for this counselor. jesus.
mr. malcolm- fuck you. fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou. i KNOW i may not have the credibility of our society that kristin has but motherfuck THAT!
she's great, she's really is- and i know that she's got a ton of talent. but, i mean, why can't someone else get a chance? i'm not worse, just different. god, i hope it's only that i'm different.
if i suck at this than everything's down the drain.

letter from ms. coriale to me.
oh god-- i will TAKE IT!



I took a look at "my visible heart" and here are some of my thoughts:
 
First, you did a good job at splitting the poem into parts, although your title really prepares us for the conclusion, meaning a visible, exposed heart, sure of the truth of a feeling that came from her insides.
 
Then, your introduction prepares the reader for the lack of security or optimism that the writer is feeling, "highway warnings, a lamp post waiting to fall, seemingly done, or had they not yet begun.."  There is a heightened intensity from the beginning and I wonder if this is a surrealistic view of a vision that creates futuristic ties: "pretty and captivating and seemingly done or had they not yet begun." This then creates a time change that leaves the reader unconvinced of your experience, yet you come back strong in the end.
 
Then, I wonder about the role of society that perhaps interrupts, yet in this case the vision of infantile innocence escapes the frame of the "transparent glass." 
 
The ending is my favorite where you are the "cosmonaut, warrior, girl" (separated creatively since warrior girl would drown out the effect of your womanhood..The poet is a warrior, a woman and her strength and faithfulness to this love is like a roller coaster of disbelief, release and realism..But, in the end, she reveals her loyalty and perhaps her visible heart..to love "with your insides" is to love internally, despite all of the outside pressure, the "highway warnings, lamp posts waiting to fall and the red that warns us to turn back and flee from what we have learned to be ominous..
 
Alison, you are a talented young poet and when I read your work, I ask myself about your experience, your impetus to write..how is it that you have gained this vision at such a young age..I have heart a lot of poets, academics and others who are trying to get exposed and they do not approach your force..You are also using division well as well as other poetic devices..I tried to look at your poem, draw some conclusions and give you some feedback..I hope this helps and again, thanks for sharing this with me..I really enjoyed it. 

I know this is lame, but I think 'Iris' is really underrated and gets a lot of trashin just cause it was in City of Angels (one of my all-time guilty pleasures, to be sure.).
blargh.

Dear Ex-Boyfriend,
You suck. And by suck, I mean a lot. Like a lot a lot. Like, how much weight that Jared guy lost from eating Subway kind of a lot.
Best Wishes,
Alison.

Dear Friends,
Stop getting boyfriends, I'm jealous.
ROAR,
Alison.


Sorry, I'm feeling very Alanis Morrisette tonite.

translucent orange vials bright like highway warnings. wreck ahead, between big curves and a lamp post waiting to fall, and
i was there! and knowing, determined to see through and catch the red skies in mourning, pretty and captivating and seemingly done.
or had they not yet begun?

not yet begun to see, a small infant freshly plucked and messy. blind, without the aid of transparent glass
everywhere, slid within holey frames,
some upon which we traced in love when the heater made canvases in the nite,
and others that you took off and placed on the table in preparation even after the loving was long gone. (i am trusting that it had begun.)

opaque masses, no question as to their intentions, running into dead ends in the dark
of my convex frame quelling yr concave, only to have it begin heaving again, leaving.

a coup de grace to winter car rides

i will not regret blind faith at 3 am,
playing a cosmonaut, warrior, girl,
massive and unshrinking no matter the signs.

i will not regret this thing,
this that i share with yr mother-
i have loved you with my insides.

there were hearts!spray-painted onto the downspiral
of the pedestrian bridge, that was adjacent to all
that was green and brown.
and there was you; me, blue in jeans and tight
zip-up hoodie against you(r) blushing, against the cool
railing, against
a serene city backdrop that is only unfurled in the mid-afternoon of a chilly june day, when the lucky kids are still
in school and adults are being predicatable, making it easy,
getting divorced,
and we're all burning a bit-         giving off light.

there are cryptic messages
on stickers
on the gray
that paves the way,
and you; i, i smile in appreciation. i kick
the discarded pedal to the next level
of the spiral, i forget
to count the peddlers, i hate
people who are at liberty to hold hands.

it's gone cold now, and there are speed-limit signs.
there are on yr own days and,
i'll be home early to bond with you
days, and they're all the same-
precursors to the two separate beds, in two separate rooms,
and you; me, who doesn't want to be caught crying, speaking up
in foreign tongues that would reveal where i've been since the bleeding started and the rainbows stained
coffee-spoon dips, and i took (in) plunges deep down
sewer manholds, manholes, collisions breaking the
ground- an inverse eruption in slow motion.
right now i'm breathing in the city, breathing in so many different places
confined by so many phi-based relations...

i am keeping busy. baking on the ground, sweating, driving, creating, scanning
the horizon,
searching with baited breath for a sign on the bumpers of
non-descript vessels, being hit in the solar plexus
till i rush back to the stairs and

lips pucker and pop!against the sides of arms whose
grasping hands lead their puppeteer up and down staircases in hot pursuit
of boys that never beckoned to me.

right now i'm breathing in the city, breathing in so many different places,
confined by so many phi-based relations...
save for the consistent erraticism of
my own inner climate.

lights go up,
realclose and unblushing
neath splayed strands and lush pinkiness.
yielding tones
and raspy endings, a paint-chipped radiator to warm yr heart this evening?
slow-moving reflections in TV screens and sliding glass shower doors,
    trace the truth in steam:
         ‘in my mind, everything we did was right’.
dripping wet,
step up and out so the cars rushing past can air-dry you as they honk, and then
leap for the reaching gasp they carry,
tunneled between the root-beer el camino and the galloping town and country, and ride it
until you’re dropped back where you started when the iron bars wouldn’t let you digress and the turn stiles kept you moving.
the windows are all pulled down shut now,
but you remember.
twenty-five cent popcicles and cinnamon lip smackers at lunch time still lay rotting against the roof of your mouth, even at
sweet sixteen, when you’ve done more than one might at ten and eight, or even twenty and one. but
yr hair’s still wet, and when the night wind sighs cold streaks rush across the back of yr neck and down yr chest between yr thighs. so
change gets you going back, yr hands clasping two subway poles. you swingswing back
and forth like yr drunk or high or in love and you lose yr footing as the creaking halt begins to come but then again, don’t you always?
both of you did, that nite at least.

thumping temples kept the beat ‘tween yr ears as
she made her nervous peace with rotating wrists and slinky, drunken fingers
romancing space while her hips upped the pace
and she sunk on down past guilt and deep-lying dis.honesties and so aimed only for the making of happy memories.
like, cactus flowers at sundown in the city.
    it’s too cold to wander around outside, so come on in to beds that slide and gravy bulbs that leave shadows in the corners of yr head and be sure to do yr best not to remember aching little snapshots of a former girl love sucking on rock candy past christmas-tide and humming lullabies to curls caught behind transparent scotch tape.
    try to forget little prince boy, yr art class crush, who liked taking that blonde one into the woods. remember when you went?
they all yelled and you even punched one back off a log, went into the creek to save the tall, lanky one, and was pushed back when she was being dragged off on the ground,
heavy and sick. and you slung her over yr shoulder
and prayed for sobriety
and the blonde one tossed her hair
and... and... “hey, hey, hey-- what’s my name sweetheart? d’you know who i am? wh-what’s my name bebe? stay awake! please, please just stay awake, and, and tell me- what’s my name sweetheart? oh god, stay awake...�
and you laid with her in yr legs out on a dirt road,
tapping         her cold cheeks
until the lights came and stuck her with tubes and said her name and pronounced you dead.

starting a forest fire in winter, yr art class crush had came back monday morning with only gleaming whites and smoke stuck in his clothes,
and you had inhaled deeply over acrylics and smearing lead
and knew you were finished there.

but you got clean, and it was too cold,
so you came in and forgot everything, didn’t you?

stumbling back across kilometers of floorboards, nails coming up and
out and ripping holes in socks only to evoke an unwanted response- giggling,
as he kept her secret and considered telling her one of his own. but her bra landing on the carpet that had faded to the color of her skin told him that she already knew, or could at least guess at it.
so he sprang out
through the window she’d opened with a cheeky grin,
flying the shutter open as she shuddered,
and so let the cold black eye in on their conspiracy.

...

now all their gorgeously-laid plans had been executed and laid to rest
deep in the pit of her
d
owny gut as
she clung to his side, wondering
if her eyes had run down her cheeks, picasso-esque, as
he squinted up at the yellow fan light like
an even younger lover, spread against the great green earth.
you rose and spun round with yr chubby arms out wide, letting the air taste the sticky,

cinnamon
-popsicle juice that laced yr mug and fingers.
sinking back down over me like a cold sweat,
i took you in deeper than e’er before,
till the paint-chipped radiator burst into flames and we traced the truth onto the
gleaming black retina.