Author: Lisa Marie

BJU Press

We have decided to go another direction in our home schooling. I have ordered the BJU online curriculum. She will watch videos online everyday that cover math and language arts, and through the subject of language arts science and social studies will be studied as well. There are corresponding worksheets to do and little projects. I am excited to get started on this with her. We showed her a sample video of the kindergarten math and she seemed to like it and get into it.

I actually looked into this curriculum months ago. Actually years ago even, as I was beginning to ponder exactly how I was going to homeschool Angelica. I was worried that videos might bore her, and I wondered if she would need me teaching and if the videos would be too much of an easy way out. But as I have found out from having her do the Time4Learning Subscription Service, she loves videos. Or at the very least she loves those. And doing pure workbook assignments with nothing else to go with it, like we did with Christian Light Education, is something she hates. She likes to have audio and visual and colors and possibly to do a little kinesthetic movement. These videos seem to encourage some of that. And it’s a more well-rounded education than what we were using because kindergarten covers science and social studies, even if they don’t have their own videos devoted to those subjects. I watched a sample language arts video and was impressed. I hope that the worksheets are well designed and that Angelica really get something out of them. And I like the fact that each day I have to lay out her work for her and we follow along with the videos and then we do the work that’s assigned in the parent guide each day. I can enter grades for her online through the parent portal. Starting in fifth grade I think students take their tests and quizzes online, but until then I will be grading them, which I think I like just as well.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but I really think that at the very least this will go much better than the last curriculum. I will have so much more help teaching because it won’t be just me and my methodology. She’ll be watching an actual professional teacher teach the first time she hears the lesson and then I will just be reinforcing the lesson. Between laying out her work for her each day, pulling up the videos and being ready to stop them at the appropriate time for her to do activities, and grading her assignments, I will still be heavily involved in her education. But she will have the audio visual stimulation that seems to keep her interested in school, and I will have the assistance of having a professional teacher give her her lessons. So please dear Lord let this work out.

Mutual

During the summer,

shining in my mouth,

the mirror you use

when you delete your names,

hard as dreams.

You will disappear to deny it.

I write a thesis on sneakiness

And thieving.

 

Time of molded bread,

famine dance.

In the background,

a man,

little fire of love.

 

You open the windows to me,

but shut up all the doors,

comment on my perfect blood.

 

During our mutual culture,

your flashlight sprouts at a time

strained power goes out.

 

Guns

in front of my text.

The Last Summer

At my window,

A gun.

In my mind,

extraordinary sexual and living acts

Demonstrated in dark colors.

 

The scales of the grain feed

Swaying with an unconscionable math.

 

After the man’s house grows rats

to provide labels and epidemics,

One will advise you at home while you die

out of the hail of the heat,

found in water spots.

A Living, Breathing Being

A leading word from you,

a call from your clouds,

would flood me,

dry in the valleys

without you.

 

Eating smiles,

You leave your central home without thought.

You do not need shoes.

The world is bearing your hardships,

with broken kingdoms flapping in the wind.

 

Your heart considers me,

My high gloss weeping and homey pleading,

And donates your medicinal attention

elsewhere.

Untitled 71

The clinging skin of hunting dogs
As they trespass on the neighborhood
hungry.
Keep me humble.
Food is an escape artist,
so I have built a gold vault
To secure it while I doze recklessly.
Not everyone has the materials
to do this.
It took me years.
Not everyone has the time.
Some homes shrink to caskets.
Some nations sink to graves.

The faces of the unfortunate
become corn seed.

Pharaoh

Red river conveying women’s hearts
in baskets.
Through windy reeds, a foreign song.

Will the king open up the window sash
to let the lonely wail of bereft
motherhood curl up at his fire
like an unloved cat?

Sitting on the riverbank,
the queen of carnage
sees one glitter.
Wades in.

Misery and Company

My private demon is winning

My wine hazy spirit.

The sunset cools

on a small snowfall.

 

The shining light,

it’s always washed in bleach.

Endless beach,

tears.

Sometimes we cry for our own sake,

cold,

and there are no boxes to contain

our needy mouths.

 

We all have been an empty harvest.

We have not been sown.

It’s easy,

to breathe tears into the body,

eyes to see.

In the fireplace,

every representative of the land.