How to Peel an Egg

Put your thumb in;
make a crazed dent
in a world made of
chalk, white as that

and as dead, because
no rooster was present,
no chick begun like a
wet, unraveling spark.

Think about those
hundred year eggs,
or tea eggs, all the
many ways an egg

can be etched by time
and yet, somehow, too,
preserved. Think what
a shame it is, to break

something so complete;
slide a thumbnail now,
lift off shell and also
membrane, that skin

meant to protect against
predators like you. But
protect what? It’s a dead
letter, a false promise,

something silent that
should not be so inert,
lying there on the plate
naked, without feathers.

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 17 (prompt: a how-to poem).

What He Made

he made, all his dealing days.
I meant to say, he made
some really bad ones.

excuse, please, if I
leave things out at times,
words, punctuation,

capital letters. those can
be heard, you know. or
you hear when they

are missing. missing.
anyway, jim and all his
dealings, he never made

anything much good
except two children
with Irene who always

said he should stop
making deals because
great as it was to have

a huge fish or a pop-up
camper, there were times,
too, when jim got took,

knew he got took,
banged his head
on the door jamb

it’s a long way down
to where you’re crying
in front of your wife,

those kids. those kids
always wondering
what daddy had

in his pockets. irene
wanting to know
what jim had

to show for himself.
not enough, is it no
never enough

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 16 (prompt: Use the last line of yesterday’s poem as the first line of today’s).

Deals

You will never star in Titus Andronicus,
but on the other hand, your hair will
never be flat, and you will be impervious
to insult, real or perceived. Most of us

will hate you, but how you will deal
with that is to build yourself a hut
out of Styrofoam in the middle of
a major grocery store somewhere

in a town of your choosing, and
hand out cocktail franks on picks
until you are escorted out by
store security, your hut broken

into tiny pellets that someone
will have to sweep up. But that’s
not your deal, the sweeping.
That’s up to the guy with the

broom and the whistle in his heart,
and the hump on his back, stooped
under the weight of all the deals
he’s made, all his days of dealing.

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 15 (prompt: a poem about trade-offs.)

Stuck

I live with a turtle,
a box turtle with a
high, domed shell.

At times, during
his daily cruises,
when mounting

shoes, which are
surrogate mates,
or toys, which are

vantage points
from which to
survey his land,

he will flip over.
He holds still,
then, for a time,

does not soon
begin the fight
to gain purchase

on wood floor
with head, limbs,
or stub of tail.

It’s as if he fears,
after fifteen years
with us, that a hawk

might yet appear
in the dining room,
or maybe a raccoon.

Something. It pays,
he knows, to always
keep one eye open,

to keep one’s
orange eyes open
all the time.

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 14 (prompt: Write a stuck poem).

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).

Invention

If I ever made a waffle iron
that could render any image
crisped in golden batter,

I would make sure it had
a battery pack and a strap;
then I’d sling it over my

shoulder and hit the road.
I’d stand on bridges in the
cold, gray morning, call out

to people who seemed to
most need waffle portraits.
This I would do for free,

and I’d turn down offers
from Bisquick, Hungry Jack.
The local media would

get wind; I’d make waffles
of weathermen and anchors,
on-the-scene reporters,

all displayed over the last
notes of the theme song
that brings the morning

news to a close. It would
go downhill from there.
I would be accused of

making someone’s wife
look “too doughy,” and
IHOP would post notices

in all its prefab chalets
saying I was a threat
and possibly insane.

Eventually, I would write
my goodbye in a waffle,
leave it for the pigeons,

melt away just as the sun
slides over the earth’s
heavy, broken edge.

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 12 (prompt: write about a technology that doesn’t exist yet).

A Veteran

I was a nurse in the Army,
you know, during the war.
World War II. It’s easy
to forget there have been
other wars, because that’s
the one I saw with my own
eyes, the one where I
sewed up wounds with
barely enough anesthetic,
and nothing, nothing at all
to take the real pain away.

At night, sometimes, all
the boys would lie awake,
raving, still hearing bombs
even though all was quiet
then. You don’t know what
quiet is, or noise, until
you’ve been the only one
in her right mind on the ward
at night, all the doctors
off somewhere else,

sleeping, I guess, or else
forgetting in ways I never
could. I was allowed to
give something to help
those broken boys sleep,
and sometimes I did,
when a needle seemed
kindest. More often,
though, I sang lullabies,
asked about mother,
sweetheart at home,
patted the place where
a hand used to be.

Funny thing is, sometimes
I could feel the gone hand
squeezing mine. I still can.

I still do.

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 11 (prompt: a poem from a veteran’s point of view).

GAFFE!

Often when I make a mistake,
I imagine that I am in some
mod French movie (oh, sorry—
film) where the action screeches
to a halt, and over everything
is superimposed the word
GAFFE! It helps

to make my mistake
more glamorous, not an
ugly smallness, but a gaffe,
something worthy of notice
by, say, a poodle or an old man
in a striped boatneck sweater.
(I am trafficking in stereotype
here, but this is my fantasy.
Am I not allowed?)

Gaffes are not the end
of the world if they mean
I can retreat for a moment
into this faux French scene
of cafés and umbrellas
where I am not

the worst person
who ever lived, but
just another poor
être humain

stumbling on
cobbled streets
in the rain of
my error.

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 10 (prompt: a poem with a foreign word in it).

Gone

When he’s gone,
there is a moment when
his shadow registers as
its own kind of presence,
a hole in the shape of him.

When she’s gone,
she’s just gone.
Gone, baby, gone,
instant as a vapor.

Funny how two people
can have such different
ways of disappearing.
It’s as if they’re in two
entirely different states
of matter.

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 9 (prompt: When he’s gone).

Promises

So your love is like a red, red rose.
Congratulations, Bobby.
Talk to me when your heart is
an ornamental cabbage, at best,
when it seems to be choked
by some ugly vine intent on
sapping the life out of everything—
yes, even love. Oh, I know.

Your love is like the melody
that’s sweetly played in tune.
Well, that’s great. Maybe
her melody jangles sometimes,
goes all cymbals and harmonicas,
accordions and tubas, all in a
different key, keeping different time.
Can she enjoy it anyway? Can you?

It is easy to make promises about
things that haven’t happened yet—
your drying seas and melting rocks.
And doesn’t it feel great to leave
with some high-flying pledge
to come again someday?
Bobby, what is she supposed
to do with that—

pine for you as she watches
vines grow over the cabbages
and the tubas come marching in?
Go back to her, Bobby. Let
your love be something else,
something really useful, like
a loaf of bread to sustain you both,
and a knife to cut it with.

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge Day 8. Prompt was to answer a dead poet. I chose Robert Burns.

Marilyn Rauch Cavicchia

Tag Archives: Poem-a-Day