Monthly Archives: March 2014

NaPoWriMo 2014 is Almost Here!

April brings NaPoWriMo, or as I call it, the month when I throw 30 poems down a well.

Actually, the truth is a little more nuanced than that: I’ve found that it’s possible to get poems published even if they’ve appeared on your blog … IF you first check the guidelines for any statement to the contrary and IF you divulge this sort-of previous publication when you submit. (Editors don’t like surprises.)

Anyway … Starting on April 1, you’ll find a new poem here each day, based on the prompts at the link above. If you’re doing NaPoWriMo, too, please let me know in the comments here, and I’ll make sure to include you on my circuit of blog visits.

And if you are a poetry appreciator but don’t consider yourself to be a poet, I highly recommend NaPoWriMo as a way to try your hand at it. The prompts are challenging but approachable. And while you don’t have to blog your results, if you do take that risk, I bet you’ll find that people are supportive. April seems like a time to try something new, doesn’t it?

See you next month — allllll month long.

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Shopping for a New WordPress Theme

Hi, everyone — I’m tempted by the new Sorbet theme. What do you think? Should I stick with my ’80s gray grid thing (and figure out its widgets and some other stuff, so I don’t have a bunch of nonfunctioning functions)? Go with Sorbet? Or shop around?

I like that it’s pretty text-forward, as opposed to having a very busy background and lots of color. One issue I’ve had with the one I’m using now is that poems with longer lines don’t format correctly. Would this one be any better?

Your thoughts on the best WordPress themes for poet bloggers?

Thanks!

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Home to Roost

Never a twilight kitchen curtain closes—
apple gingham blocking apple tree,
roosting swifts, twittering in aggregate—
as never inside a silence falls, bereft of
any comfort. Never think that these
evenings will be embroidered on towels,
suspended in amber, frozen in memory.
Time has curtains of its own, divides us
from seeing each other, the drift of clouds
scudding treetops, until it is too late.
Listen: All our dead mothers call all our
dead selves from all our dead doorsteps
at all our dead back doors.

 

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Luncheon

Now I am a sandwich loaf
frosted in cream cheese,
with mushrooms and small
tiles of ham. Now I am the
ham, or else I’m still the pig,
caged and oblivious. Now
I am a duck among thousands
starving on the lake ice, or
one of hundreds fishing
in the river water. Now I
am the fish, swimming in
the river or lying on a platter,
a new face drawn over my
old face, in cream cheese
or mayonnaise. Now I am
lighting the candles. Now I
wait for my guests. I will
serve them what I have,
what I was, what I am.

 

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Leave It a Lost Soul Making Something

Writ large on the side of an underpass was this message:
Ham aspic never solved anyone’s problems. Which, if you
really come right down to it, I guess it never has. Still, that’s
quite a thing to read on a Sunday morning, when you’re out
for a drive and minding your own sunny and blameless business.
Who would bother to write that? And what about perfection
salad? Has it ever rendered the world any more perfect?
Somewhere, there is a masked lover of everything gelatinous.
Somewhere, he raises his forearms over his plate, like a
mantis, thinks, “Everything I love only causes grief.”

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It Will Be a Sea Change

Old rockers don’t like eating dinner at 4 in the afternoon.
They know at least a hundred cool ways to die.

Old rockers wrinkle in ways that are bad-ass.
They flash devil horns at the retirement home staff.

Old rockers trick out their motorized scooters.
They never go to bingo night without something in a flask.

Old rockers stare out of smoked-glass windows.
They like to watch the young punks pass them by.

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