So(MA)tic Poetry Exercises

by Maggie Cramer & Emily Cramer

after CA Conrad

1. This is best with bare feet. Even better naked. Walk from one end of your home to another. It doesn’t matter if the children are awake or asleep. You’re naked, but they’ve seen all that before, known it all intimately. You must have bare feet. Nakedness with slippers on doesn’t count here.  As you stroll, your feet will encounter objects. Small beads, old cheerios, bits of bread. Perhaps even a blueberry from breakfast. If you do encounter a blueberry, or fresh fruit of any kind still in its whole form, roll your heel over it carefully until you feel its juices through all of your cracks and calluses. Take care not to wipe off your feet in this process, as they are collecting important artifacts. Keep strolling until your feet seem satisfied with what they have gathered. Then take them into the bathroom, or wherever the lights are harshest in your home. Turn on the light and behold! Hold your soles up to the light, bring your face close and allow all of your senses to absorb what is there. Then, furiously write a poem about it. There is a poem there, trust me.

2. See if you can find a red head with a buzz cut who is also a boy and aged five. Ask him to complete a series of tasks in this order: 1. Pull on a pair of small, tight ankle-cut grayish white socks that no longer fit him. 2. Tie a piece of string into a knot and then un-knot it. 3. Eat cous-cous (the super, super small sand-nubbin kind) without spilling a single cous (cou?) into his lap. Then, sit back and refuse to speak until he has completed each endeavor to perfection. As you observe him struggle and complain and then eventually give up on the first step (he never even tried the other, did he?), tie the string around your head like a crown. Moisten your face with a damp cloth and then apply the green-bottled aloe-infused Vaseline Intensive Care lotion liberally to your face. Gently lower your head into the bowl of uneaten cou until you have a bit of a coating going on the cheeks and nose and chin. Especially on your eyelids and eyebrows. Say out loud to the boy, “Maybe THIS will get rid of the wrinkles!” Write down what happens next.

3. Open the bathroom door as wide as it will go. Agape would be a good word here. As agape as a door can be. Then undress and turn on the shower. Submerse yourself fully. You may be interrupted as you undress or while you’re in the shower, the door being so open. The children might happen upon you and point. What is that? They might ask, pointing. Again, agape is a good word here, now referring to them, their mouths. You might remind them all of the ways that your body has sustained and nourished them, despite its present format. This is my body, you insist. You are allowed to insist. This is what connects us, you also might say. Or whatever you feel like saying to defend your present vulnerability. Or say nothing and just get going with your scrubbing. This is excellent practice for creative work of any kind. So carry on and breathe in all that steam quickly dissipating because the door is, of course, wide open.

4. By God, throw away the coloring pages. Someone else’s outlines. You want them to create their own boundaries in this life, to discover their own edges. Same goes for sticker work, stamp work, and sticker-by-number work. There isn’t time for it. By God, they can make their own mosaics. Gather the relics of a walk through the grasses. The leaves! Save the leaves for Christ’s sake! And the small seeds slipped into your pocket. All you will need is some non-toxic cement or whatever it is that hardens to hold the smallest treasures. And maybe some wood frames, you know, with depth, to highlight the complexity of their findings. And there you have it: a relic of their being, an artifact of their holy transformation. Write the poem about it. Or maybe you already did.

published in Mom Egg Review (online), December 2024