Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

All Right for a Girl (after “Brand New Key,” by Melanie)

I roll around the world,
the lonely round world,
and I sing in a different key.
I jolt awake and see that  
I’ve been skating all night,
trying to reach your door.
My bicycle rides without me
sometimes. You’ll find it
under your window
one morning, when I am
least myself, and most,
when I am not driving,
but walking, not singing,
only talking—
talking to myself
about you, or how
everyone says
I’m doing all right,
for a girl.

 

 

If it’s Tuesday p.m., check out Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. Also, I’ve started a month-long series in which I’ll write a poem based on a different  song each day. (Here’s the one that inspired today’s poem.) If you have a request (any style, any song, any artist), please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

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Precise Increments of Actual Fact

Let’s not be arbitrary about this,
our memories of wooden decks, nesting yellow jackets.

Don’t forget what you always wanted:
this empty sore, this ravenous ache.

All is forgiven, and on its way to being forgotten;
a little more memory goes down the shower drain each day.

Sometimes mine sings as it leaves me:
No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more Mr. Cleeeeeeeean …

Someday, we might all erupt somehow—
but probably not today.

 

 

If it’s Tuesday p.m., check out Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

 

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Open Link Eve

I’m taking this one off.
I have too many bees in the head.
A beard of bees. Bread and cheese?
I’d love a sandwich, thanks.

Too many cows, and I cannot
churn butter, not with all these
flies in the ointment, a whole
continent of lies; they buzz

the same as truths, only louder.
Louder, you say? I suppose
I could yell, but when I’m yellow
like this, and underwater,

I’m not sure it matters much. Yello?
Yello? Now I am at the last payphone
on Earth, with a fistful  of quarters
and nothing left to say.

 

 

 

If it’s Tuesday p.m., check out Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

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San Francisco Unseen

Don’t talk to me about the automatons—

Laughing Sally at the Musée Mécanique,
how she cackled and seemed to whisper
my name as small, cracked bells chimed

over an artificial bay where robotic sea lions
(with convincing stench) formed my initials
while decommissioned battleships, perfect
scale models, kept watch. Even now, doll-size

Beats stagger outside false City Lights,
and Chinatown, that phantom diorama,

rises, falls, breathes real fog.

 

 

 

If it’s Tuesday p.m., check out Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

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Pictures of Our Potato Bugs

I can provide pictures if interested.
But why would you want to see
pictures of our potato bugs, the ones
that congregate in the mossy drip
under our air conditioner, the ones
that my son calls Tater Pals, or
Tater Tots if they’re small? He and I
go out in the morning to our front gate
to pick up our newspaper and greet
the day—and the potato bugs. He is
often barefoot, wincing over hard
little fruits from a certain tree.
We say they’re nuts; we’re wrong
about this, too. Just like, of course,
the potato bugs, which are actually
sow bugs or pill bugs or roly polies.
But one day we called them
potato bugs, and thus they remain
potato bugs, and an entire
architecture of words has been
built around them, tiny scaffolds
to protect small, gray cousins
of lobsters, not even bugs at all.

 

 

Be sure to check out Open Link Night at dVerse Poets every Tuesday p.m.

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Helen’s Flower

You know Helen:
Either she’s sorrowing
over being kidnapped
(twice), or she’s

putting on her makeup.
Flowers made of tears.
Makeup made of flowers.
Either way, Helen wants us

to notice Helen. The great
beauty. Look at me; my face
launched a thousand ships.
My parents mated as birds,

and now a flower grows
with every precious tear!
You know what I say?
So what? Who cares,

Helen? Her flower,
how many people
love it? How many
gardens is it in

right now? Three?
Four? Four hundred?
It doesn’t matter.
My name is Rose.

 

 

Check out Open Link Night at dVerse Poets every Tuesday p.m.

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Let Me

 

Let me be your friend who
keeps you in touch with

pop music.

Let it now be known that
I do not hate

pop music.

I know I should call it
inane and corporate,

pop music.

But in any car,
it’s all I want,

pop music.

How about your car?
Will your radio play

pop music?

Let me hop in,
let me turn it up loud,

roll my windows down and cruise
oo la la, that’s what I like
you’re the one I want
I know you want it
I love it

pop music.

 

 

 

Is it Tuesday p.m.? Check out Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

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Achillea Millefolium

Yarroway, Yarroway, bear a white blow,

One of the herbs dedicated to the Evil One
yet daubed by Achilles (except on his heel?),
loved by butterflies, hummingbirds, bees,
none of whom need to know if another
loves them back, none of whom need
any secret spells to determine by.

If my love love me, my nose will bleed now.

If my love love me, we are only in the garden,
crushing aromatic leaves in our fingers,
ignorant of any history less happy than this
present, blameless of curses, spells.
Devil’s Nettle. Bad Man’s Plaything.

Bitterish, astringent
yarrow.

 

 

 

 

 

Check out Open Link Night at dVerse Poets every Tuesday p.m.!

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