An Oriental Iced Bed

 

 I lie in a bed of ice,

Numb, and wondering

If anyone was coming 

Soon to my rescue.

 

The water had frozen

In the dead of winter

Crossing this river

Was open casting for certain death.

 

Tired, and starving,

I could walk no longer.

I try and think about the summer days

In Taiwan, where bowls of soup 

Would be served so hot

The steam would be certain

To melt off my face.

 

The images aren’t working

As my shivering stops

And realize hypothermia  

Is creeping 

Into my every bone and nerve

In my body.

 

Angel of death,

Won’t you spare me this day,

And give me some strength to get up and

Continue on?

It seems as though 

You took the day off

For there is no response 

And Jack Frost is slow as a slug,

Turning inch by inch of my body blue.

 

Here seems like 

a good place

To rest.

 

 

 

 

 

Stephanie Guerrero

Chance Writing

Ca175 Tues. 1:30pm

 

Creative Process for: Oriental Iced Bed

 

This assignment was a great learning project. I learned a lot about my creative process and how to get to where I want as far as being happy with a product. For this Chance writing assignment, I text messaged 5 of my friends and asked my roommate to tell me a noun, any noun. I got:

Ice, home, water, soup, Taiwan, and bed.

I mixed them up, face up, and tried to make sentences out of them or at least get an inspiration for any ideas about the poem I was about to write. 

I first started with bed and home. I began to write a poem about being at my parents house, in my cozy bed with my loving family all around. I got to about fifteen lines and was finished. I read it. I liked it. I read about 3 more times, and still thought it alright. Then I realized that this is not at all pushing my creativity or giving me a challenge. I deleted it. I got rid of it because I realized that although these words are random, I was just fitting them into a regular “Stephanie” story about my home life. I found this to be incredibly boring and non-creative. 

 

I wrote a few more lines using other words, re-read it, and hated it too. Finally, I began putting words that do not normally go together, together. “Bed and ice” caught my attention, because it arouse a feeling of being incredibly cold in something that is supposed to be warm and cozy. Next I thought about this bed of ice and how I got there. I pictured a trek through the woods in the middle of winter gone bad. From there, I wrote as if I had lost all hope and knew I was never to be found in such extreme cold and wrote my poem. I was determined to make this poem a page in length, digging deep into feelings of differing temperatures, as if I was the poor person freezing to death. 

 

I have never written anything like this. I usually write about love and heart break, but this exercise was cool because I got really into explaining what I did in this poem.