I make everything
easy for you now
easier than it needs to be
like some kind of
cyclamen
or
a coin-shaped
geranium petal
as big as the sun
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For the PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 10. Prompt: “_______ Trouble.”
Tell me again how I burst forth,
reaching for the sky with immense
petals from some rainforest where
my ancestors came from, but I
sprang up from nowhere, arrived
in a dark green vessel, unmarked
and unheralded. Tell me again
the story of how you didn’t
know me and then suddenly you
did, and how you watched me
every day, how I sat on your
windowsill and performed the
superhuman act of making you
happy in the middle of February.
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For the November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 4. Prompt: a superhero or superheroine poem.
In case I haven’t mentioned it, besides pushing myself a little by writing directly here rather than in Word, which is my usual, and which gains me a modicum of editing time before I post, I’m also not looking at the prompt until I’m actually ready to write. That way, I don’t prewrite by mulling over ideas all day long. The poems you see this month are as close to my “first mind” as you’re going to get.
Hey, big news! I just found out that I get to be part of a reading at Woman Made Gallery here in Chicago on Sunday, December 7. I hear it’s a really great space, and I’m honored to have been selected. I’ll be reading from my chapbook Secret Rivers. If you’re in Chicago, I hope you’ll come out. Also, there will be snacks.
Have you thanked a solitary bee today? Have you
put some pollen in the pockets of its pants?
Whether you’re a squill or a crocus, a snowdrop
or a winter aconite, your local solitary bee is ready
to assist you with all your reproductive needs.
Discreet. Friendly. Professional. That’s the kind of
service you can expect when a solitary bee comes
to drink your nectar with its strawlike proboscis
as its head wings legs pockets collect your pollen
and as you realize–for the first time–why it is
that you’re alive. So don’t be shy. Don’t be lonely.
When a solitary bee comes knocking, open up
your sepals, your petals. Stretch out your stamens.
Bloom.
For NaPoWriMo, Day 10. The prompt was to write a poem advertising something.
Death is a preventable fiction. I am blooming now
like never before, standing tall and so healthy that
surely I will be passed over. Only someone truly
cruel would look at my orange petals, the mosaic
I have made out of sun, to represent the sun,
and say I should not live to see December, then
another spring, another summer. I will be the first
of my kind, in our portion of earth, to make it
through to the other side—because I have
made myself beautiful. I have been useful.
The bee came again yesterday, but she was
slower, less hungry. Still, she whispered her plan
to me, how she will fly so fast, up into the cold sky,
that no one can catch her. I told her I will be here
when it’s safe to come back. I will feed her then.
Check out Open Link Night at dVerse Poets every Tuesday p.m.
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.
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.!
Hello, baby. How is
life treating you?
Buzzing bee,
is life a kind of flu
since you flew
away from me?
Tell me true—
are you blue,
are you blue
like me?
Please visit Open Link Light at dVerse Poets.
The bees
find a lit fuse
inside each purple bloom,
then gather up the sparks to make
bright fire.
Look! I made a Crapsey! NaPoWriMo Day 5 prompt was to write a cinquain. I am not at all sure I got the stressed and unstressed syllables right. I find it very hard to hear these things, which makes meter a real challenge. Also, “fire” kind of has a hidden second syllable in it. Ah, well …
Poetic forms often scare me, but this was fun as a mental exercise, if nothing else. Also, you might think I’m now all caught up, but that sneaky NaPoWriMo lady gave a prompt right before things kicked off. So I’ll eventually post my effort for Day Zero (which sounds a little ominous).
Violet Triolet
What can I tell you about the violet?
It might grow wild, all over your yard.
I pick up the phone, begin to dial it;
what can I tell you about the violet?
Some people pot it and try to style it,
but those people are trying too hard.
What can I tell you about the violet?
It might grow wild, all over your yard.
Marilyn Rauch Cavicchia 