Scene Description Exercise-Part 2

White light seeps across

Mottled walls,

Chaotic desk.

Scraps of paper,
Half-a-dozen paper dolls,

Roll of duct tape,  

Roll of masking tape,

Books—

Poetry, devotional, play, biography

Borrowed from friends who probably want them back.

Textbooks—

Art history, political theory, philosophy.

They never went home.

Jeans, note paper, spool of thread

Peanut butter in a blue mug.

A children’s story book about dreams.

Relient K with “Sadie Hawkins Dance.”

Sonnet

On Soren Kierkegaard, Regine Olsen, and Fear and Trembling

You know I gave a sacrifice of my

own reputation, thinking it might be

enough. But that cheap offering God despised.

On the altar what I first withheld must bleed.

My God has power to make me just. So I

must act believing. Trust the strangers who

speak for me: “steady hand, unflinching eye

hide shaken, doubting soul.” They know the truth.

In slaying your heart I transgress, but not

as in refusing to accept the word

of God, or counting grace’s paradox

too hard upon impossible or too absurd.

This Abraham, knife raised, finds grace enough.

He must obey his God and not his love. 

For this poem's context, see

this and this

Scene Description Exercise

The white light from the window seeps across the mottled wall and spills onto the chaotic desk. Scraps of paper, half-a-dozen construction paper dolls, a roll of masking tape, a roll of duct tape, and a sheet of bubble wrap cover one half of the desk. Books cover the other half, as well as the shelves. Some stacks are tidy—the Pixar movies from the library; the poetry book, play, Henri Nowen devotional, and Charlotte Bronte biography borrowed from friends who probably want them back by now; the two Philosophic Classics anthologies; the political theory books from last semester that never went home. One collection of books used to be orderly, standing upright in a row on the shelf, until the art history textbook at the end tipped over and the others followed. Near the books, and beside the bed, sit several purple, blue, and white t-shirts, a deconstructed pair of jeans, a few spools of thread, and a pincushion. The computer cord stretches from the outlet across the t-shirts, makes several knots, and connects to the laptop. The laptop rests on the painted sky of a children’s picture book cover, which nestles among the wrinkles in the bedspread. Strewn on the bed beside it are a book on law, a plastic binder crammed with note paper, a coffee mug with smears of peanut butter inside, and a sweatshirt. From the computer come the twangy strains of Relient K’s “Sadie Hawkins Dance.”

Poetry

Poetry trickles like a stream gone dry or rushes like a cataract that carries away its banks. It hums the working-song of a bee or growls the warning of an empty-stomached bear. It sings like a wavering kindergartener in a school chorus or ripples and glides over notes with the skill of a virtuoso. It whispers unguessed secrets or shouts the truth that we all know inside. It lives. 

Rambling Brat?

From "The Author to Her Book"
By Anne Bradstreet

"Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, exposed to public view...
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My RAMBLING BRAT (in print) should mother call..."