Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

Maybe the Rosemary

Time to write about religion now,
after buying bananas and escarole,
after passing up a rosemary plant
that was blooming, which I have
never seen, which sent me on a
whole series of associations
(gardens, my mother, whose name
was Rosemary; she was a pilgrim
in the garden, always a transplant
and always seeking something—
blooming vigor, a pleasant surprise
brought about by her own two hands:
Oops! Look at that—this thing I have
tended, not even knowing for sure what
it was, is now exploding in splendor.)
But anyway, I was buying onions
and carrots, basil and bread,
showing Betty, my daughter,
how the eggs we buy are cage free,
certified humane. I was cringing
at my ostentatiousness, how I
justify myself out loud, and my
children were fighting, mainly
Joseph, my son, relentlessly
needling Betty because he is
smaller and knows he is smaller.
They both got cookies anyway,
which I can’t justify except that
being smaller can be difficult,
and sometimes I am too tired
to mete out life lessons, so I
give out cookies freely and
allow cookies to be given.
Now I think maybe I’ll buy
that rosemary plant someday,
for a friend of mine who just
turned 50 and who watched
our goldfish this weekend
so he wouldn’t die, which
he likely wouldn’t have done
in three days’ time, but I felt
better with some eyes on him,
and precise instructions on
when to drop in his shelled peas,
cucumber slices. Maybe the
rosemary would grow on her deck
all summer, and she’d think of me—
perhaps even my mother, whom
she never met—each time she
stepped out to snip a sprig here
and there. Now I have to write
about what it is that I have faith in.
It’s everything I just told you, though
I’d like to add a number of things:
mainly James, my husband, across
from me at the table, and the birds
outside, singing in the gray.

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets (aka “my Tuesday thing”).

Standard

Passing

God was in the hush under
the soft-needled pine tree that
reaches out over the sidewalk
and is now freighted with snow,
late-winter snow, wet and heavy.
Stop, I told my son. Look up.
Isn’t it quiet? Do you feel it?

But then a man, whose
irritated presence I had not
felt, appeared beside us
and then in front, having seen
that we and our grocery cart
were not going to step aside,
let him pass without

having to step into the street,
or a high drift, spilling snow down
inside his boots. Then I was
a spiritual dilettante, an oblivious
seeker of capital-E Experiences,
and everything was complicated
again, not simple after all.

 

 

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

Standard

Book of Myths

Over the canned announcements on the train,
she continues to tell me about the birth of Titans,
how Cronus swallowed his own babies, and how
you would think the world began with Zeus,
but he was once a baby, and the world began
instead with Gaea, Mother Earth. I wanted
to tell her that it’s all myth—not just those
ancient stories, but others, too:

the patient turtle that holds us upright,
we people made of clay and rib. So many
ways to organize a world. So many things
to understand, however we can.

Left unfinished is any idea of how
to tell her our myths, too, the ones
I spent Sundays learning, week by week,
craft by craft. Apostles’ boats of Ivory
soap, woven willow twigs signifying
something (baskets, perhaps, for loaves
and fishes?). It’s different when
the myths are still living, still asking
to be believed, when there is
a prickle you can’t deny

before you throw away the Bible tract,
when the church bells sing a song
you still remember.

Someday, I want to give her
these things, too:  a giant boat,
a pillar of salt, a god-man-ghost
leaping, unseen but recognized,

welcomed.

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

Standard

Stemmons Freeway

In Dallas there is
an empty place
equal to nothing
I’ve ever known.

It glitters at night.
Flashes of neon,
LED, a million

separate impulses
luring the eye
to come and see

nothing.

An open range
with no cattle,
a banquet set

for nobody.

In the historic
West End, near
the place where
JFK was shot,

a bus drives over
brick streets.

It is spotted like a cow.
It moos.

Somewhere in my head,
an argument begins.

There is something here.
Every place has something.
I know it is here—I saw it;
I took many cab rides
in order to see it.

Undoubtedly, this is so.
Undoubtedly, I am being
unfair.

And yet,
memory insists upon

clouds and wind over
Stemmons Freeway from
the smoked glass windows

of the Hilton Anatole, where
cowboy ghosts could wander
for days, unseen, unfelt,

lost

amidst glories of Asian art.

 

 

To be linked later today for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

Also, I did enjoy Dallas, and I hope no one is hurt by the rather jaundiced view in this poem. It is just one facet of my impression of that city, and I could easily write an entire chapbook about all the great experiences I had there.

Even the hotel I reference was lovely and very, very impressive — just separated from everything by a giant freeway. I am used to walking around big cities and exploring them that way, so this is my impression of a city that has many delights but also big stretches that are only navigable by car. 

Standard

Exciting news!

I was out of town recently, and while checking email from a super slow FedEx Office computer at 40 cents a minute (side note: I’ve vowed — again — that this is my last business trip without some type of smartphone or at least my very heavy laptop), I got a great surprise: A poetry collection that I edited over the summer has now been published.

Signal from Static, from Chromatopia, LLC, is available on Kindle or in paperback. I knew I would receive an editing credit, but I was really floored to see my name on the cover. How gratifying!

My own ego aside, I’m excited about this book because the poetry in it is so fresh and original. There are a lot of different styles and a range of subjects, but all the poems are united by the fact that they push boundaries and are vivid and emotionally honest. I truly enjoyed reading them, and I know you will, too.

The all-star lineup of poets includes several with whom I’ve since crossed paths during Open Link Night at dVerse Poets (aka, that thing I do each Tuesday, except for this most recent one — see the first paragraph of this post).

Chromatopia, LLC is one of many endeavors by the indefatigable Anna Montgomery, who is — among other things — both a poet and a visual artist herself. It was a joy to work with her and the individual poets in this collection, and I could not be more thrilled to see it come to fruition!

Standard

Sofia Elena, Driver, Nissan Altima

My mother told me it is cold here.
I thought Ohio is near West Virginia
and West Virginia is near Virginia,
and this is in the south of the country.
But now there is snow. I have called
the woman at the real estate office,
the woman who showed me the
apartment in the fall. I have said
that I don’t know how to drive
in the snow, and also that I
do not have the clothes
for cold weather.

She has told me nothing,
this woman. I think that she
and I will not be friends. Her
voice says to me, Why did not
my husband get this job? Why
are you coming here? Her voice
laughs at me because of
these questions.

I think that this is not my fault,
that the company believes
an engineering degree is
necessary in order to
schedule the workers.
I have this degree.

If I am not coming here, I am
working at the dam in Brasil. 
My mother prefers that. It is
closer. She thinks that I will
fall in love, stay here, even
when eight months is over.

I do not see anything to love.
I know there is shale under the
snow, and gas inside the shale,
and money to keep me here
for eight months.

That is all.

 

 

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

 

Standard

Shawna, Driver, Toyota Corolla

I’ve been thinking a lot about how everything is connected.
One time in geometry class, we had a sub who talked to us
about Fibonacci numbers, fractals. A lot of people were like,
whatever, but I took notes, looked it all up later, at home.
Sometimes I talk about it with Ben, on the way to and from
school. That’s one reason I rescued him from the bus—
because I knew he was someone I could talk to like that.
I know things about Ben that he doesn’t even know yet,
because he’s younger than me, but also because that’s
how I am. It’s not always so great, because I can’t
turn it off, and there are times when I would like to.
It would be nice to just go to the football game
like everyone else, you know? Not think so much.
Just be a kid, I guess. I don’t know what I am now;
I just turned 18, and a couple girls in my class have
babies already, and I swear, one of them has like
a 5-year-old. But do I feel like I could move out today,
get a job, be a real person yet? Probably not. It’s hard
to imagine being somewhere else next year, either
a couple of hours away or more like seven. We’ll see
how it all works out. My mom is still pushing hard for
Belmont Tech or OU-Zanesville, living at home, how
So-and-So found that they saved a ton of money,
it still felt like being at college, and then they didn’t
have all those loans. She and I both know that’s
not going to be me. I do think about Ben, what will
happen when I’m not here to give him rides, keep him
from getting picked on. But at least there’s Skype, or
we both got iPads for Christmas—still not sure how we
managed that—so now we have FaceTime, too. I think,
even though it’s not like we’ll ever get married or anything
(we don’t like each other like that), that Ben and I will
always be in touch somehow. It’s like how I’ve read that
in the ground, under all the rock and stuff, there are
secret rivers, and that’s where our water comes from.
We’re like that. Two secret rivers, side by side.

 

 

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. (Please sample some of the other fine poems, too.)

 

Standard

Nancy, Driver, Toyota Avalon

I used to carry a paper bag
with me, to breathe into.
It’s true. I kept it right here
beside me, and I used it
at red lights, to keep
the panic down. I had

a whole system of
back roads and no
left turns, or at least
none without arrows.

I was hypnotized a few times,
laid out in a recliner, told that
my car was a sanctuary, a place
of great peace. I drifted along

on that idea, and then
went back to back roads
and paper bags. One day,

I got on this interstate, I-70,
by accident, merged onto it
while I was thinking about
something else. And that’s

what did it, I guess. No bag
since then, and I can pretty much
drive anywhere, make left turns
whenever I want. Sometimes

I imagine we’re all white blood cells,
platelets, I don’t know—something
in the blood—moved by a great

muscle, a heart I can’t see
but can feel. Shift into drive,
foot on the gas, breathe once,
drop into the bloodstream.

Go.

 

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

Standard