Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in little_odd_duck's LiveJournal:

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Monday, October 19th, 2009
5:07 pm	Teaching I was told, going in, that if you make it beyond Halloween than you are going to make it as a teacher. It is nearly Halloween and I already feel like I need it to be summer. I think my biggest struggle is trying to manage the classroom, despite this being the main thing we concentrated on in our summer training. It's interesting, though, because I don't remember any of my teachers needing to scare us into submission, nor do I remember having to constantly go over the rules of the classroom while in middle school. None of my peers would back-talk and rarely did we not turn in homework (even if it wasn't always perfect). I have now entered a world where half of the phone numbers I am given to call parents do not work, or the students I have are in foster care and rotating their foster home, or they are living with a parent who is never there. 3 parents showed up during the last PTA meeting. I am teaching in a world where nothing, and I do mean nothing, is like my world. I have never claimed to know what my kid's lives were like. I knew going in that I was not going to "get" all of them nor was I going to make all of them have any interest in being there. I have had one suspension, one in-class fight, 4 paper airplanes, countless phone calls home, 4 parent meetings, 1 physical assault, and a partridge in a pear tree. I used to look down on teachers who taught in "tough" neighborhoods and then left to go to the suburbs, but i think i now have a different understanding. When they say teaching is tough, this is all i can think about. Teaching is easy, getting kids to listen is the tough part. I am teaching in a world where most of these kids have little or no discipline in the home and thus we are left to help raise them. 1/4 of my students are now in either their first or second year of school EVER so they have very little idea what is expected of them. Most of them have no idea how to read and there are some who, despite our best efforts, will most likely be pregnant by the time they get to high school. Some of my most difficult students are the ones i adore the most, and others... it's a struggle. So far it seems like half of my day is excellent, I am in a great mood and my kids are listening and on task. The other half of my day is hell, and makes me want to burst into tears. CTT classrooms are my heaven right now. Teaching alone in a creative writing class with middle school students is impossible. I am currently trying to force them to understand the importance of details. If i can get them to be able to write a complete paragraph with sensory details by winter break than i will feel like i have accomplished something for the first semester. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
4:24 pm	Can't Sleep I fell asleep at the wheel once driving home from a poetry slam. It was 2:30 in the morning on a twisted road and I woke up 5 seconds before the wall. No crash that night, kept the window open the rest of the drive. It wasn’t the first time I almost crashed my car, nor was it the last time I drove that late; that tired. We select our lessons like lovers, take the ones we think will benefit us most, pretend the rest are extraneous. I was in love with that drive, that crooked road, never cared how long it took to get home or what kind of weather I’d have to brave. I’ve moved since. Now I take the subway. I fell asleep there, once, too, after the Christmas party at the law firm where I drank so much I sat on the lap of a partner while his wife was there. I was the receptionist. It was my most cliché moment. I woke up in a part of Brooklyn I’d never been before, threw up in a trashcan tried to slur out the question “how do I get home?” A nice man helped me on a different train, rubbed his hand up my skirt as a “you’re welcome.” By the time I got to my apartment, I’d convinced myself I’d been raped. Screamed about it on my bathroom floor. I have dreams of driving off cliffs of sitting in grocery carts and banging into the bean display dreams of being held under water of being shot in the neck on a school bus merrily merrily merrily merrily… At my girlfriend’s house I always fall asleep first and hug the covers like they can hug back. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
4:34 pm	seriously rough draft after a very uncomfortable dinner The scene is charming upper west side restaurant, large tables, linen cloths and family portions all uncomfortable secrets are being hidden in the sauce “pass the me asparagus, the shotgun wedding, the family let-down” we had a table for 12 but I showed up alone was told no one at the dinner would want to meet who I wanted to bring a lawyer, a diet coke lover, a lady. So instead, I sit near an empty chair and answer questions about my new job “so I hear you live in Brooklyn. do you have pepper spray? is it hard to teach welfare children? of course they get a free lunch, family money is all spent on drugs. Tough job. It’s so great that you’re making a difference.” I take small portions so I’ll lose the urge to throw things try to keep the personal criticisms focused on my tattoos my mother is the only one at the table who knows keeps dark secrets of her own understands why I bite my nails through dinner. Finally, what I feared would be asked is asked. “So, how’s your love life?” I wanted to say My love life is perfect, romantic clichés come at me from every angle and don’t make me want to puke I have met a woman who makes me want to be better who keeps me on my toes and keeps me genuine. She is everything I never knew I always wanted and we are in love; bought a puppy together, named her Jezebel. She’s a pistol, dad, you’d love her (the dog) But the girl? She’s a hammer strong enough to break down any obstacle thrown at her strong enough to rebuild what is broken. She’s amazing. I wanted to tell them we’ve only been together for 5 months but have already used each others shoulders through sobriety, almost losing a parent, breaking and mending the heart of a friend, we have shown each other every skeleton we bonded with during our time in the closet she’s neurotic and silly gets so uncomfortable talking about all things to do with body functions (I would leave out the details of our sex life how amazing her neck smells or how perfectly her body fits against mine) but I’d sneak in how delicious her kiss feels how I could sink so deep into her eyes I’d start to see myself differently more rose colored I wanted to say I’ve found it. I’m happy. My life feels like it has fallen into place with a joy I never saw coming. I wanted to say I am so thankful to have family friends who support me whether I need them or not who can see this change in me here at this dinner table and know I’ve got something real. Instead, I see my father the only one in my family who doesn’t know I see his best friend who would disown me and reject my father’s friendship all because of my “sickness.” I see this table of people I have known my whole life, see the apology of “he’s just not ready” I my mother’s eyes and I say the only true sentence that will make them laugh enough to change the subject. “I am simply not interested in these New York men.” (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
6:17 pm	HELP!!! HELP!!! I am starting a poetry/poetry slam club at my middle school and I need to give it a clever name. Ideas??? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 7th, 2009
2:07 pm	I'm having a Jack Nicholson day I'm sitting here on my cluttered bed eating leftover Chinese, watching You've Got Mail, and freaking out about all things regarding my first day of work/school. I start teaching Wednesday and I am scared to death that I'm going to suck at it. I KNOW I wont actually suck, but what if I'm not nearly as good as I hoped? What if I keep making the wrong decisions? I'm trying to stay calm and not get overwhelmed by what's coming but apparently I can't help myself. On another note, I'm completely in love with my girlfriend. She's amazing and beautiful and sexy and brilliant and so much stronger than she realizes. But this is the first time in my whole entire life that I've been scared of Love. It's like I never knew just how much someone could really become part of your skin like this. For the first time, her happiness is more important than my own (though mine is always considered) and I would actually be heartbroken if she and I were to break up. Crazy? I think so. I Love this woman. And it scared the crap out of me. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
1:25 pm	A cheesy, corny, or any other appropriate food-item-titled love poem for my one and only There are days when I wake up with my arms around you snuggle my face in your wings along your soft, bare skin kiss your left shoulder and give a small squeeze to let you know I’m awake you say “good morning, baby” and our lives feel like home There are days I tease about your one blind eye your butch front, despite your painted toe nails and obsession with make up your lack of hand holding skills or your need to be alone in the shower I can threaten to put my feet on your face or steal the GAP shirt we bought in Florida that I love so much we play like children and I cannot believe that Love has ever felt this true but then there are times when my heart swells with balloon fear when I look at your knees instead of your face because you’ve become so big you change the tides and I worry I’ve forgotten how to swim you have mastered button-pushing a puppeteer of heartbreak a shepherd of slaughtered hearts but then sometimes it’s me the girl who wont yell to make you listen who can change her neon voice so fast you can’t remember if you’ve ever done anything right use everything in my arsenal to keep you from catching your breath convince you everything they say is true before you, I never fought refused to make waves with relationships I would stay for the calm seas and leave at the first drop of rain before you I was afraid of hurting feelings, of looking bad, of being the cliché girlfriend I heard everyone always bitching about before you, I thought honesty was a concept, a suggestion we have cut each other so deep there are stains that wont lift we’ve broken hearts and spirits so easily you’d think darkness was second nature but after all this, after unveiled secrets and broken promises after tear-soaked sofa cushions and emptied liquor bottles we find our way back to the light back to where forgiveness sleeps and shoulders are providing a steady lift where romantic gestures and love poems go from corny to classic through addictions, regrets, and other girls mouths, through heart attacks, comas, surgeries and mean phone calls through coming out, starving, new jobs and no air conditioning we have been there with whatever tools were needed with iphone sleep machine applications to call on oceans or rain to lure us into the sandman’s lair we’ve got this so when we’re laying ying-yang on the sofa watching the 4th movie of the day stuffing our faces with weird dinners and diet cokes and you catch me staring at your perfect mouth or your one good eye and ask “what?” remember baby, it’s nothing. I just think you’re beautiful. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 31st, 2009
11:30 am	The Thoughtful Butcher I felt it, the slow entrance of the knife just above my bellybutton you were gentle with the cut, straight in careful to avoid important organs needed for survival a thoughtful butcher I didn’t cry out, didn’t dare move until the full length of the blade had disappeared and a slow trickle of blood made its way towards my jeans a month later I was used to walking slowly used to ignoring onlookers from the street the skin had healed around the wound a bull’s-eye with an irremovable dart a branding I didn’t see it in you then the plan so carefully worked out every three weeks turning, turning waiting for the perfect moment for the not so gentle cut straight up to the heart (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
11:31 am	Franz Kafka I am reading Kafka's The Trial and it is nothing like what I was expecting. Particularly because it's reminding me a little bit of Alice in Wonderland. Poor Joseph K. is not getting due process and everyone keeps talking to him in riddles. He has NO idea what he's being accused of and all I want is for tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum to come out and talk to him about standing on his head. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 28th, 2009
1:11 pm	my stomach has had more ups and downs in the last month than i care to admit. not all for the same reasons, but mostly. today i had a tummy-turn moment when i realized someone who means (apparently) too much to me was in town and didnt tell me. i know all the reasons why. i even understand them. still brought a sick feeling to my belly, especially since i had to find out she was here by looking back at her old livejournal posts. trying to write some poems today. failing miserably. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 20th, 2009
11:09 pm	new piece, rough The things you’ve done eat away at you and you sit in your $300 office chair feeling like rot and you think you could not possibly get more disgusting, can’t understand why I haven’t left like your watch has my name on it and any second it’ll stop I know she broke you what weapons mothers keep tucked beneath their sleeves I’ve watched how you open your ribs to her and say “Here, chop it up” you think it’s this black little fist disintegrating like ash but I’m taking it piece by shiny red apple piece and tucking it away somewhere even her bloodhound nose wont find it. I’m replacing it with equal parts of mine I’ve got a heart so strong it can take anything even your mothers words so I’m giving it to you piece by shiny red apple piece you are the most beautiful bed of broken glass I have ever seen full of flaws and contradictions completely self-conscious and out of your mind sometimes you are spit-fire cruel, a clipped ego sends you deep into old habits and I catch a glimpse of the girl you used to be words like AK47’s and actions that push all the right insecurities I’ve watched your choke hold and you warn, “it’s nothing” I don’t doubt it, I know what weapons you keep up your sleeves But if you got inside my brain for a day wandered through this labyrinth, saw for yourself the intricacies of past experience that make me possible then hopped on the fire pole, slid down to the little red thing in my ribs, that heart looking thing, you’d see it’s got you all over it like a patchwork quilt. To me, you are perfect, sunset warm, considerate and gentle you carry unstoppable intelligence behind deep hazel eyes like a padded room for your childhood wild and reckless you can’t see the woman who has stepped out refuse your phoenix feathers, call them crow but even crows shine blue in the sun lover, you may push and scratch, choke hold and break me but I can see through you I can see, with my two good eyes, just how much sweet is under all that sour (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
5:21 pm	hells yeah monologue and burlesque for those of you who couldnt make it. yes, i'm wearing pasties. gangsta what? (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
3:49 pm	BURLESQUE SHOW!!! Hey all I'm in a burlesque show tonight in the city if any of y'all wanna come. Details include... One Red Glove One Red Nose, An Evening of Clowning and Burlesque May 22 10 pm at Broadway Comedy Club 53rd st. between 8th and 9th ave Manhattan, NY $10 and two drinks www.oneredgloveonerednose.wordpress.com Show should last about an hour and a half, a bunch of acts but they're all around 3 minutes or under so it goes by quickly and man oh man are they awesome. SO MUCH FUN WILL BE HAD!!! Come and support if you're able! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, May 1st, 2009
1:02 pm	Teaching Fellows Dear Interweb folks, I have been accepted to the new york city teaching fellows! im all kinds of pumped about it but am a little hesitant. i applied in the hopes that i would be able to teach high school english and said i wouldnt take it if i was offered anything else. however, i have decided i actually want to teach elementary school but i have been accepted to teach multi-subject special ed. this means elementary age, so yay, but special education focus. on the one hand, if i took it i'd be getting my masters degree almost entirely paid for and at the end of it all i'd have 2 maybe 3 years teaching experience and a degree. on the other hand, i'd be teaching something i wasnt exactly geeked out about while going to school and having nearly no social life. one friend says its doable IF i'm really excited about what i'm going to be teaching. here's my question. in 3 years, after i get my degree, i'd most likely want to move back to california to teach. i realize every state has its own tests one must take to teach there, but if i got this degree, would it transfer over? if i'd been teaching sped, is it easy to apply for elementary school jobs NOT in sped? or would i have to get another kind of degree? i could always say no, apply for grad schools and take that route. i could also say yes, and if i dont like it, quit. i'd be making a lot of money (compared to now) and it's two birds with one stone. degree and experience. lots of things are leaning towards yes, but if this degree is not really taking me closer to teaching what i want to teach i dont want to do it. i have one week to decide. anyone have any thoughts? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
12:57 am	30/30. done. le sigh. Lover, if you find yourself in Brooklyn meet me at the halfway point between brilliance and awkward, nick-name me lullaby, I will sing you awake, hold me steady over all the things you’ve buried in the ground and I will grow them into sunflowers not because it’s meaningful, but because I think they’re beautiful. paint my nails with your tongue, dance me steady beneath a black light, watch how I glow, cradle my hand in yours like your vision depended on it and I will draw you a symphony so bold you’ll be able to define faith. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
9:43 pm	29/30 not sure about this. the prompt was to write a fear and then make it the town of said fear but i dont really know if this worked. whatever. here goes. in the town of gang rape women stroll down the sidewalk waiting for a car, a pick up truck, a Rolls Royce, a 1964 jet black chevelle a woman is chosen and when the door opens, there is only enough room for one she will be pulled in by her hair sit cramped with the men who all foam at the mouth hungry for the salt on her skin they like to wait until they’ve reached a clearing before going in for the first taste make jokes at her expense, corner her into them until she’s shaking spit on her yell “your throat is a nice place for my dick” to see how many belly laughs they can get from their pack the medical team in this town is there for when she is too ripped too bloody, too soft from the bruising to be any fun they nurse her back to Barbie all slick skinned and tight the girls rotate street shifts when not walking, they live in glass houses the heavy set girls are on 3rd street the black girls on 5th asian women are split by country on every street beyond 9th if you want punk chicks you gotta head to the alleys the good Christian girls took over the old Lombardo Hotel the tomboys were given tents to take to the stadium there are no strip clubs only whore houses filled entirely with men everything for every appetite this town is a buffet a perfect place to show your manhood as long as you come with friends (Comment on this)
Monday, April 27th, 2009
11:33 am	28/30 a day early the man with 5 faces never laid a hand on her kept mostly to himself, picking his teeth in the back eyes in a squint when no one was watching all hugs and smiles in the light yesterday, report of an accident one face caught on fire, skin peeled melted like raw meat slipping off the counter when she saw him again, the only familiar face gone, she couldn’t know him even his posture had shifted she found the face in the local bar’s trash can buried in empty bottles, soaked napkins and cherry stems pulled it up from underneath set it on the stool to her left she put her hand to the pulpy mess invasive, an archeologist of scars slid it down what was once a cheek fingered where the eyes used to be she leaned in close, peeked inside the mouth saw a severed finger with a painted nail a breast, full and bruised, an engagement ring, bent the picture of herself she had given him 10 years ago cut up the middle right between the legs (Comment on this)
10:41 am	27/30 sometimes you lose yourself in the dance sometimes you find yourself there 8 count, go lower, bigger facials, really straighten the arm couldn’t fouette if my life depended on it but could learn a hip hop 8 count after seeing it once faked jazz enough because I knew how to walk a stage a friend once said he was only a poet because no one had paid him to be a dancer or a painter or a musician how do we define our art in one word? joy comes from performance for me I treat all competition the same don’t drop a line, stay in the piece, connect with at least one person or don’t misstep, hold your moves, hit it full out, have a good time never give a fuck about how you place it’s not the accolades, it’s the feeling it’s the family late night rehearsals, repeating repeating repeating repeating knowing you nailed it knowing people are listening, people are watching someone is right there with you and man oh man can you move (Comment on this)
10:07 am	for reals. sorry about the EVALUATION COPY thing, but so far this is the only way that has been successful for getting these dvd clips to be youtube friendly. senior year. i'm second from the left. (Comment on this)
1:01 am	26/30 1. It’s late and my eyes are burning the cat has puked on the decorative pillows again and my ears have been trying to convince me what is being said into them is not true he’s sick. it could be serious. he’s moving. no one’s hiring and he can’t make rent. he’s guilty. he’s really guilty. they say when it rains, well, everything gets wet despite sunny weather, my bedroom is floating I know I can handle a lot at one time I was born with webbed feet for when the weather turned storm but that doesn’t make the paddling any easier 2. this morning when asked by his mother “are we going to play soccer today? are we going to see coach Christine today?” one of my two year olds responded “I’m going to see my lady” and he meant me and it made my day. this evening, she told me she covers my poems made me feel like I was wanted here like I mattered here wasn’t simply tolerated, or dealt with, but respected loved, even like big gushy heart 3. remember silver lining remember webbed feet remember one slow breath at a time. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 26th, 2009
12:44 am	25/30 A Small Something to Consider I’m allergic to grass which makes romantic outdoor activities itchy but I’m still in love with park picnics. if you bring a blanket for two, really good music and goldfish crackers I’ll kiss you at the end of the day. (Comment on this)