Homeschooling

David Winter

 

Misreading The Teenage Liberation

Handbook transformed my truancy

into a study of haggard sunlight

playing across the stereo. I loaned

the Handbook to another soon-

to-be drop-out, relieving the schools

of our anarchic hormones. Guitars

shattered around him while I just stared

at the mirror in the ground, reading

my own lips through their fine film of dirt.

I came to prefer silence, or music that sprang

from bodies I knew by their slow breaking,

over the professional angst on the airwaves.

But every band we formed wandered drunk

through bad weather while I waited downstairs

for practice to begin. When night imposed

silence I’d tramp through snowfields

where each streetlight resembled a moon

held up by one of God's wooden fingers,

until the sun rose in an odd signature

above a roof where each of us sprawled

waiting for a different dissonance to resolve.

second draft // Weather Report From Liberated Territory

 

At fifteen I led the way, unschooled myself

and studied music. I laid out my curricula

 

as the future cast out its prisms, one

by one, remaking mirages I meant to bang up

 

with my soft hands or saw together

with my teeth or slither through

 

on a pretense. Others pursued me, briefly,

signing their names backwards to unburden

 

the state of their anarchic hormones. I listened

for hours to the mirror in the ground and began

 

to prefer silence or music that sprang

from bodies I knew by their slow breaking

 

over the professional angst permeating the air.

Every band I formed wandered drunk

 

through bad weather while I waited

in the basement for practice to begin.

 

When night imposed silence I left town

or wandered snowfields where each streetlight

 

resembled a moon held up by one of God's

wooden fingers. The sun rose unexpectedly,

 

in an odd signature, above a roof where I sat

among others like myself, each of us waiting

 

for something entirely different to happen.

 

first draft // untitled

I was fifteen the year I quit school

to study, preferred silence or music

that sprang from my own body

or those I knew by their slow breaking

over any of the catchy radio songs.

Every band I formed appeared to wander

drunk through bad weather while I waited

in a basement for practice to begin.

When night imposed silence I left town

or wandered snowfields where each streetlight

resembled a moon held up by one of God's

wooden fingers. The sun rose unexpectedly each day

above I roof where I sat waiting,

among others like myself, for something

utterly different to happen.

 

David's Commentary

I first drafted “Homeschooling” in a workshop I led for New York Writer’s Coalition, which focused on creating a safe and supportive space to generate new, often risky material. The workshop members and I would write in twenty-minute bursts, then read our work aloud before we had time for second thoughts. Once I had that first draft, which I think of as a structural sketch with a few major images, I began working over the less-interesting language, aiming to enact the disorientation of a drug-filled adolescence without ever allowing the reader’s attention to wander. Breaking the poem into couplets served as a way to manipulate the sentences more deliberately while also taking control of the poem’s visual form. In moving toward the final draft I sought feedback from a number of writers I trust, and stripped away unnecessarily confusing images while attempting to preserve the poem’s sense of mystery. I also heightened the tension by breaking lines more sharply against the syntax of the sentences. When variation in line-length made the couplets awkwardly uneven, I condensed them into a single stanza to maintain the appearance of fluidity.

 
 

David Winter wrote the chapbook Safe House (Thrush Press, 2013). His poetry has also appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Four Way Review, Meridian, Union Station, and Forklift, Ohio, among others. He recently completed his MFA at The Ohio State University, where he taught creative writing and composition, and served as a poetry editor for The Journal. You can visit him at davidwinter (dot) net.