Tag Archives: poem

Goodbye to Goodbye (For NaPoWriMo, Day 6)

And this is the thanks I get for saying goodbye
to so many things: I am calcified, or made of
some type of sinew or jerky. Tougher.
Toughened. I’m not sure which is better:
to always be on the verge of tears, apt to
overshare with anyone who gives even a hint
of asking, or to shut that all away somewhere
in a private heart. I will not say I am wrong.
I will not say that mourning was better,
or that it is worse to live. (And living is
forgetting—you think it won’t be, but
it is. The good thing is that this becomes
less terrifying.) But I do miss some of its
crazy permissions, the feeling that if I was
up and moving, that was enough, more
than enough, and anything else was extra.
Now, there is less margin. Now, I am
expected to do normal things—and I can
do them. And I do them. And I enjoy them.
That’s the most surprising thing.

 

 

NaPoWriMo, Day 6 prompt: Write a valediction, which is a poem of farewell.

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Crocus (For NaPoWriMo, Day 5)

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 … 

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Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill (for NaPoWriMo, Day 4)

With a hundred blue eyes, the scallop detected
certain changes in light and shadow that led her
to believe she’d soon have another meal, perhaps
her own larvae, which were always delicious,
in their way—and besides, she lacked a siphon, so
she might as well enjoy. Or perhaps the moving
form that she sensed was another scallop,
a male scallop. She was not as excited by this
possibility, being both male and female herself,
and thus, not in need of any assistance or
company. But she always felt that it was only
sporting to release any roe she might have,
if another’s visceral mass seemed to be
calling out to hers. It was easy, living like this.
It was easy, even for a hundred eyes, to miss
the glint of the knife just before she saw,
at last, everything—but most of all, the sun.

 

 

NaPoWriMo, Day 4 prompt: Write a poem using as a title one of the fanciful spaceship names created by science fiction author Iain M. Banks. I got my scallop facts mostly from this Wikipedia page. Make sure to check out the diagram, too — it’s in color, so you can see the blue eyes. Truly, science fiction is real, and it’s all around us.

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Three for Barbary Joe (for NaPoWriMo, Day 3)

With rum and a dog
and Barbary Joe,
we set sail with a
Yo, ho, ho!

’Mid following wind
and isinglass seas,
we played on the pipe
and we took our ease.

Oh, one for the rum
and one for the dog
and one for Barbary Joe,
Yo ho!

’Twas first watch when
the storm blowed in,
and we set to work
with a clattering din.

Oh, one for the rum
and one for the dog
and one for Barbary Joe,
Yo ho!

The wind, she howled,
and the dog, he leapt,
as Barb’ry o’er the bow
was swept.

The rum went, too,
and down she sank,
and that was the last
that any of us drank.

Oh, one for the rum
and one for the dog
and one for Barbary Joe,
Yo ho!

Now, I’ve been dry
for many a year,
so I’ll sit by your fire
and have some cheer.

Give me one for the rum
and two for the dog
and three for Barbary Joe,
YO HO!

NaPoWriMo, Day 3 prompt: Write a sea chantey. To be honest, this one filled me with a little bit of dread when I first saw it. But it turned out to be pretty fun. The name “Barbary Joe” came into my head while I was cleaning this morning, and then most of the chantey wrote itself while I was walking to pick up my son at preschool. I’m guessing that motion helps when writing a chantey. Yo ho!

Also, many thanks to David J. Bauman (aka The Dad Poet) for his kind words about my Cummings-inspired poem from NaPoWriMo, Day 1. David is a great and very original poet himself, and he also does much to spotlight other poets’ work — particularly in sound. Plus, he’s funny. The same post where I’m mentioned also praises my poet-blogging buddy Jennifer Bullis. Her poems reveal a steady confidence and a fierce intelligence at work — and at play. One of the best things about NaPoWriMo is hopping around and visiting a lot of blogs — I urge you stop by and visit both David and Jennifer!

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Liar (for NaPoWriMo, Day 2)

I was once the world champion
in candlepin bowling. This was
three years running, in the ’80s.
(I no longer apologize for my
teased bangs in all the photos, or
my acid-washed bowling pants.)
I keep all my trophies in a case
that my father made for me—
hand-carved, gorgeous, with a
glass front that I dust using the
first-shorn wool of only my best

llamas. (I saved my prize money
carefully—that’s how I bought
this ranch.) Llama ranching has
its own satisfactions, ways to
stay competitive: fiber length
and fineness, for example, or
guarding tendencies—but not
meat production, though this is
a line I’ve been asked to cross,
many times. Nonetheless,
there are times when I miss

the circuit. Candlepin bowlers
are a tightknit group, and my
hand still longs for the ball,
my ears (I can admit this) for
the twin hushed crashes of
pins, then applause. This, not
cruelty, is why I often dream of
lining up the baby llamas, the
crias, quietly knocking them
down before their mothers
even know that they’re gone.

NaPoWriMo, Day 2 prompt: a poem that tells a lie. Oh, jeez, and it’s also Open Link Night! Will link there this evening.

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Anyone Was Not Sipping His Coffee (NaPoWriMo, Day 1)

anyone lived in a pretty how town,
but I never visited anyone very often.
Even my thoughts are orderly and
punctuated (though we often tried to
work them into some kind of disarray).
Many nights he tried, poor anyone,
until I rolled over into the welcome,
dark silence—my failure. I was annoyed,
once, when anyone forgot to meet me
at the station. I had to carry my suitcase
several blocks past the square, down
broken sidewalks and misspent alleys,
until I reached anyone’s door and pushed
my way in because anyone never did
answer even the loudest knock. He was,
that day, musing by the kitchen window;
it was open even though the first day of
spring in anyone’s town is never to be
believed. Anyone was not sipping his
coffee, which looked to be many days
old, thick as a mud puddle, with a skin
on top, taut and shiny as the face
of a balloon. I was fuming. But then
anyone smiled, raised a cloven hoof
in greeting, and there we were.
(and there we were)

 

 

NaPoWriMo, Day 1 prompt: Borrow the first line of a poem and write a new one. This particular first line is from e.e. cummings. I was going to choose something more obscure, but this poem mostly wrote itself while I was walking from my daughter’s school to my train station.

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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”).

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In the Beginning, There Was

My children talk about what the beginning
of the world looked like. It was pink, says
my son, with total certainty, almost as if
he remembers the beginning of his world,
which was not the beginning of mine,
but close: If we’re talking billions of years,
then what are my 35 before he was born?
Is it possible that at age four, he can
still hold the memory? I’ve heard that
we all retain everything we’ve ever
experienced, that we only forget
because so many things are layered
over, and perhaps because to remember
so much would be unbearable, even
immobilizing. At seven, my daughter
is shedding memory so rapidly that
preschool, which once seemed
indelible—which only ended
three years ago—is now mostly
gone. This is necessary, I know:
new experiences overlapping,
overtaking, replacing the old.
But if my son could remember
far enough, beyond pink beginnings,
further back even than his dividing cells,
those of all his human relatives, past
primates, further back than mammals,
past an egg tooth and a leathery shell,
beyond a pond somewhere—the
simplest beginning of the simplest
creature—beyond all that, back
and back to atoms, and past that,
all the way to nothing, would he have
an answer? Would he see the divine,
the void, the ways in which the two
are one and the same? But this is all
too cosmic. I wanted to say a true thing,
and somehow I ended up at imaginary
space dust. As if flesh is not enough.
Flesh. Sunlight. Water. Love.

Enough.

 

 

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. Please check out the many other fine poets who link there every Tuesday p.m.!

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Purpose

Somewhere, there is
a pile of scissors,
all waiting for
a guiding hand.

Safety scissors compare
stubby tips with nail scissors;
surgical scissors and kitchen shears
talk over finer points of tendon, bone.

All have platinum-white blades,
gold handles. All lie jumbled
in a drawer, waiting, hoping
to someday be

useful.

 

 

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

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Very Excited for Next Month

… because April is time for NaPoWriMo, which was so much fun last year. Similar to NaNoWrIMo but geared toward those of us who wri pos rather than nos (when it comes to fiction, I was always pretty good at setting the scene and developing characters—I just couldn’t figure out what should happen to them), NaPoWriMo is a daily writing challenge created by poet Maureen Thorson in 2003.

Each day in April, a prompt is posted, ranging from a general topic to a very specific—and sometimes very unusual—poetic form. You can write based on that prompt or just write any kind of poem. If you don’t have a blog or a website and don’t wish to create one—or if you don’t want to post unpublished poems on it—that’s all there is to it.

But to my mind, the real fun comes if you do have a blog and are willing to post poems there (more on that in a minute). I did NaPoWriMo for the first time last year and was just astounded by how much new traffic I got that way, and by how many outstanding poets I encountered for the first time by bouncing around the page of links to participants’ sites. Some of those connections remain to this day, and I treasure them.

The whole experience was so reinvigorating and enlightening—and fun. I highly recommend it.

A word to those who are new to poetry or who are writing again after a long lapse: Go for it. If you’re thinking you could never post a poem and thus make it available for public comment, please know that there are (in my experience) very few trolls among the writers and readers of poetry blogs.

Members of this loose community all seem to understand how difficult it can be to express so much in such a compressed space. Whatever your style and whatever your level of experience, you are sure to find appreciative readers this way, and any suggestions you might receive will be gentle and constructive. April would be a great time to give it a try!

And, for the more experienced, a word about the relative wisdom/foolhardiness of posting poems that you might want to submit for publication someday: I know the risks, but I go for it anyway—weekly year-round, and daily in April.

Why?

For one thing, there no longer seems to be ironclad consensus that a blog-posted poem counts as a previously published poem (which, as you probably know, is the kiss of death as far as many publications are concerned). Things seem to be easing up a bit, and if you ask around—as I have—you might find—as I have—that editors at some very reputable publications will consider poems that have been posted on your own blog (as opposed to in online literary publications).

Also, the poems I write for challenges of this type don’t tend to be the ones I submit for publication. Sometimes the exercise is enough, and it doesn’t feel as if I need to do anything further with them. Other times, they might be perfect additions to a chapbook manuscript (and for chapbooks, it’s totally fine if individual poems have been published elsewhere) or a springboard for something else.

And it’s just fun (which I think I’ve mentioned). It’s so much fun that I almost don’t mind it if I am “wasting” an entire month of poems. That is, even if they all bear the dreaded PP badge and are banished to the land of wind and ghosts, it would still be worth it. And again, no poem is ever wasted—because one that I post in April might spark an idea for something else entirely a few months down the road.

Also in April (and again in November) is a poem-a-day challenge through Writer’s Digest. I’ve done that one before and have enjoyed it but will not be doing it this time. I feel pretty busy lately and would like to focus on just one daily writing challenge; two felt like a bit much last April.

I chose NaPoWriMo for this year because the action is mainly at the individual participants’ blogs, whereas the Writer’s Digest one lives mainly in the comments section of a particular blog at the WD site. There are workarounds—you can certainly post on your own blog as well as in the comments—but the daily ping ping ping of new visitors and the fun of visiting other poets’ blogs make NaPoWriMo impossible for me to resist.

To each his or her own, though, and that comments section at Poetic Asides—the WD blog that hosts the other challenge I’m talking about—does become its own sort of community, which has its own appeal. It just depends what you’re after, and you should definitely check out both. 

Will I see you in April? Whether you take up a daily challenge or not, I hope it’s a big—and fun—month for you and your writing!

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