Writings From a Past Life: Plumbing, Fables & Piercing Social Commentary
For your reading (and mocking) pleasure, here are three poems from Justine’s juvenilia we could all live full lives without.
Drip
I shouldn’t have to deal with that
wacky faucet.
Hot to cold, cold to hot.
Unbearable.
If it had ears, I’d tell it to
pick a temperature.
The Ugly Duckling
Just come right out and say that
it’s not okay to be different.
I hate hidden morals.
And last but certainly not least, the young Goldberg’s take on the state of American culture, education and the cult of consumerism:
A Lesson in History
There’s this commercial that I always see
for a used car garage somewhere that doesn’t matter.
The crook on the screen is always too excited
over nothing and everything.
“Comes complete with a V6 engine,” he boasts,
and freedom too.
He likes America.
He likes the Constitution and the parameters it sets for him.
He likes to tell his customers to put their
John Hancock on the dotted line.
He brags about the cherry tree that he keeps in his backyard
and all that he’s learned from it.
He wishes top-hats weren’t out of style.
He’s a small man but everyone I know seems to think he’s real big
‘cause that’s what they were taught.
Watch out, Jon Stewart. I’m nipping at your heels.
[…] cute or downright wunderkind good, send us your early words and we’ll show them off for you. Explicate your work yourself, if you wish, or have me provide a probing analysis. (An analprobing, if you […]
[…] cute or downright wunderkind good, send us your early words and we’ll show them off for you. Explicate your work yourself, if you wish, or have me provide a probing analysis. (An analprobing, if you […]
[…] Since my disaster of a thesis defense—a hideous story for another time—I had developed some nasty creative habits. It’s a complicated business, writer’s block, but suffice to say that I was a.) not writing, and b.) excusing myself with the self-destructive conviction that I was simply too busy—running a business, loving my boyfriend (hi, honey), chasing my sanity, washing my hair, relacing my tennis shoes—and my artist self was starving. I was feeling bad 99.9% of the time, disappointed in myself for ignoring the powerful instinct to write that has gripped me since childhood (oy, and oy again). […]