Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

Joan, Front Seat Passenger, Honda Civic

I don’t know why we have to go to Gratiot
to visit his mother. She doesn’t even know us
anymore—and when she did, she never liked
me, or even the children. It’s all about him.
Always. The number one son, quarterback,
love of her life, because Donny never
amounted to anything, left her—

after he died—in a broken house
clinging to a broken mountainside.
Everything here will collapse
sooner or later. That’s what will come
of all this fracking, though everyone
is so happy, now, to get that check.
Mineral rights. Trucks outside
the Super 8, new motels
going up every day.

New money. New everything,
where everything used to be

so old.

I can’t even see the trees anymore,
snow-covered and sheltering
horses, or cows, some
warm-blooded thing that
has no need to know
the score, no notion

of who’s winning
or what’s on the line.

 

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. 

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The Ache Where I Drink Water

At first, I tried to shiver off these lights.
They scared me because I thought
the stars had fallen, were burning
in my arms. So much is different now,

but I’ve gotten used to them
and the other objects, the ache
where I drink water. The air

is dry, and there’s never any wind.
The noises are all different, the smells.

After what happened that day,
my neighbors and I tried to
figure it out, what we had done
wrong, what was happening then,
what would become of us next.
The wind was everywhere,

and I wasn’t pointed toward the sky
anymore. I am now, I guess. This is
peaceful, in its way. Still, there’s

a crow I miss, and so much
to tell him; I’ll be ready when
the truck comes, any day now,
to take me back home.

 

 

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

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Meetings

Each tree is its own advertisement
against plastic bags. Bare branches
unwittingly hold dirty banners
that mutter there and sigh,
rubbing against the sky
like fingers on a balloon.

Somewhere other than this, the
Young Explorers Club is meeting,
ten boys in a church basement,
community center, or bingo hall,
someplace where it doesn’t
sound ridiculous, this pledge
to be a certain way and do
certain things.

Young Explorers promise, for example,
to remove plastic bags from trees,
when weather permits and when
they have built tall enough ladders
or long enough hooks, over the course
of many weeks. They also pledge

to take notice of things like
dead squirrels in alleys—
not to remove them, but
simply to take note, pause,
when they are out walking.

In this way, the Young Explorers think,
no life can ever be wasted. Crows know
the truth: that nothing ever is, not when
the world abounds with young explorers,

and all of them so hungry.

 

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. Also, it should be noted that the phrase Young Explorers Club is from Jesse S. Mitchell’s poem by that name. The title popped up in my inbox because I follow his blog, and my mind started working. Please be sure to check out his poem, too — it will give you a lot to think about.

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Villain

In line at the Bon Marché in Seattle with my mother,
I heard a high-pitched scream. A woman ahead of us
laughed and said it was probably her husband, who
was afraid of escalators. Life moved on, but my mind
stayed in that groove for a long time—maybe a couple
of years. Somehow, that screaming man became a

villain, Snidely Whiplash-style, with mustache,
top hat, and cape. We moved from Seattle to
Thief River Falls, Minnesota, but the memory
moved with me, packed away someplace
secret, so I could play it like a Disney 45

in my playroom in the basement, any time
I needed to scare myself, any time I needed
to make my formless, nameless fear into
something I could turn on and off, or just
let play, over and over, until it was done.

 

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 27 (prompt: write about a hero or villain). Also for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets, which will open at 3 p.m. EST today (Tuesday).

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Recycling

Let it go, the story still in
the drop of beer in the bottom
of each bottle. Whisper it out

with water; then imagine how
each empty will tell a story
about you: Did you have

a wild party, or did you drink
all twelve by yourself (and,
if so, in what span of time)?

Imperial red. Milk stout.
The names are stories, too.
The labels. The bottle caps.

Your son likes to gather those,
click them together like gears.
What a thing to let him play with,

but there’s no denying that
each one is each one, attractive
to magpies and little boys.

Let him keep them for a while
or a longer while, bordering on
forever, so that a few years

from now, you’ll be surprised
he still has them. How did that
happen? How is it that years pass

and some small things stay with us?
Toss the bottles in the bin in the alley
to be crushed, refilled, made new.

 

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 20 (prompt: gathering and/or letting go). Will also be for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets, once that’s up (links can be posted there each Tuesday, starting at 3:00 p.m. Eastern).

 

 

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Dear Sir or Madam:

I would like to complain to you about so many things,
like the sunlight that still butters the edges of leaves,
some of which are still green. It’s November; if
everything is going to die, I would rather it be soon.
For weeks, I’ve braced myself for it, and yet, I still
see a flower here and there, hanging in, and its
unwinnable fight hurts me more than if it would
just die already, so I could mourn a little, move on,
make myself ready for ho ho ho’s and the exchange
of good cheer. It takes me a while to make myself
feel that, you know, though eventually I do, at least
a little, even in the worst of years. I am not unmoved
by public sentiment, no matter how frothed it is by
advertisers, manufacturers of things. I like things
as much as the next person, maybe more, and I can’t
lie: I especially like things that are not necessary, ones
that are apple-heavy in my palm and make their own
starlight. I would like the world to turn a little, all of us
to suffer now in darkness and cold, because winter
can’t end before it begins. This anticipation, it’s like
waiting for a blood test, sitting there in an awful room
with a TV you can’t turn off (there’s a handwritten
card that says so, in Sharpie, no less—it’s permanent,
you know), and you can’t imagine that your name will
ever be called, the test ever be done, your blood
remaking itself before you even get up to go home.
You can’t imagine home, not when all of you is
wrapped up in dread, suspended animation.
It’s like that, dear sir or madam.
That’s just what it’s like.

 

For NaBloPoMo, Open Link Night at dVerse Poets, and PAD Challenge, Day 13 (prompt: write a letter poem).

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Protection

Left and right,
holding up a crystal platter
of cream puffs, maybe,
or porcelain angels, their wings
already chipped from
a bumpy ride in the back
of a rattling panel van.

Left and right,
holding up a fragile realm
like that, keeping broken things
mostly stable, lest anything
break further, though everything
breaks at least a little in this
unpadded world.

 

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets, PAD Challenge, Day 6 (prompt: left and right), and NaBloPoMo.

 

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OK, I Changed My Mind … PAD, Day 1

As soon as I finish this post, I’ll do another one, for Day 2 of the Poem-a-Day Chapbook Challenge (aka PAD). That’s right — I’ll be posting all 30 of the poems I write this month. Wait … Didn’t I say just a few days ago that I wasn’t going to do that, for a number of eminently sensible reasons?

Yep. I sure did. Yes. But then I realized that:

1) It’s really depressing and isolating to write a poem based on a community prompt and then not share it with that community.

2) The poems I write for these things are often very “prompt-y” and not necessarily what I’d want to submit, anyway.

3) Last year, I talked to a couple-few editors at reputable literary publications who don’t think this kind of thing warrants the scarlet PP (for “previously published”). At least one of my PAD poems (maybe more — how is it that I forget these things?) actually found a home in print.

4) I’m more interested lately in submitting chapbooks and full-length books, and for those, no one cares about PP for the individual poems, as long as you acknowledge where the PP occurred.

5) It’s good to be less precious with poems and to realize that you really can make more. Even if all the poems I write in November are down the well, December will come.

6) This type of challenge, while I do work at it, is also play. If I’m going to play a game, I want to really play it — to go balls to the wall (which, by the way, I recently learned does not mean what I thought it did), as it were.

One thing I didn’t like about PAD last year is that it lives in the comments on someone else’s blog, not on my own. But there’s no reason I can’t post my PAD poems here, too. I also recently learned about NaBloPoMo, which is a challenge to blog daily all this month (you have until the 5th, if you want to sign up and do it, too).

So … I’m going to post daily here and at Poetic Asides (home of PAD). I’m going to link to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets on Tuesday afternoons, as usual, and I’m signed up for NaBloPoMo. If I’m going to PP 30 poems, I might as well PP them all over the place and have a good time doing it.

That’s a lot of talk … Here’s my Day 1 PAD poem, based on the prompt to write about some kind of match:

 

Match

Whittle it down to matches;
the tree is only the start of fire,
sunlight locked in its heart
like a memory of leaves.
No leaves now, it is wood
in a box; strike sulfur tip,
bring to wet, lichened log.
Cousin!, the match says.
I have returned.

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November: No More Contests! and To Post, or Not to Post?

October filled up quickly — I put together a book manuscript and entered it in five different contests (was going to be four, but I couldn’t resist that last one) and also entered a contest for individual poems.

It was fun to dream, but now I have to write. I find I’m either writing a lot or submitting a lot — can’t do both at the same time and give both the kind of focus I’d like.

After some thought, I’ve decided I’m going to do the poem-a-day chapbook challenge again. If you don’t know what this is, Robert Brewer of Writer’s Digest posts a prompt on his blog, Poetic Asides, each day in November. Many people post their poems each day in the comments of his blog, and I did that last year, too.

If you’re less “publishy” than I am, either because you’re content to post poems and get lots of comments, or because you’re just getting started or restarted and don’t feel ready to submit to literary publications, then I would absolutely recommend posting poems there. It’s almost universally a very supportive environment, with maybe an ideological squabble here and there but lots of people who will read your work and give you very specific praise and only the most gently worded criticism.

Don’t think of it as a chapbook contest — it’s not (there’s no prize, other than acclaim). But it is a great way to make sure you write each day for a month. That’s why I’m doing it again, even though I plan to only post on Tuesdays, the same day I post for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

Why hold back? While I was able to place some of the PAD poems I’d posted on Poetic Asides, different editors do have different ideas of what counts as “previously published,” and it was kind of a big deal to end the month with 30 poems that were a bit compromised.

Those who are interested in submitting for publication, I would never advise you to hold everything back and to never, ever post online in some form. Posting on your own blog, a poetry site, or some other online forum can be so gratifying, and again, you will find editors here and there who are willing to accept poems that have been posted. (Do disclose this, however, so there are no unpleasant surprises or hints of deceit — editors don’t like either of those.)

I would advise you, though, to think carefully about what your goals are, and to consider holding back a little something if you can. Do you just want to do the work and get (and give) some comments, and publication beyond the blogosphere doesn’t matter so much to you? Great — go for it! Do you write a bunch of poems, so you can easily spare one each day? Again, great — go for it! Otherwise, I would just say … think before you post, and consider maybe not giving away the whole show.

But what do I know? Ask me in a month, and I might say it felt parsimonious to follow the prompts but not share daily, and that it’s best to go into these things completely open, and hang the consequences. In any event, I intend to comment a lot and post weekly, and thus feel like I’m contributing a little something, and not just mooching the prompts.

Will I see you there? (Or will you be lurking, too?)

 

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