Tag Archives: poem

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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Watch This Space

This blog has existed for a little over a year now, and I’ve had so much fun with it — more than I ever imagined I would. I have “met” some truly great people, and I have been energized by the exchange of opinions, ideas, and support from people who love poetry — both writing it and (rarer still) reading it. As one year turns into the next, I thought I’d share with you my blogging plans for the next year:

  1. It has become painfully clear that I need a new theme. I say “painfully” because I love the aesthetic of this current one: the colors, the faint grid, the ’80s retro look, everything. But there are certain things that I can’t do with this theme, and now I would like to be able to do those things. Bonus points for any theme that will allow me to post poems with lines that are longer than usual. A month or so ago, I got really into poems with long lines, and the results were not pretty.
  2. Widgets. Facebook buttons. A blog roll. All that “stuff” that other bloggers have and that I can’t seem to figure out, so that this blog will be as connected and social as many others are, and so it will look nicer, too — not just a big text hole surrounded by broken things.
  3. Hey, did you know I’m an editor who is looking for freelance projects? And who has edited a few creative manuscripts (both poetry and prose), and would like to work on more of them — and is willing to do so at a very affordable rate? Well, how would you know? I have not done a great job of getting the word out — which was my primary purpose for this blog, before I discovered how much fun it is to just post poems. In the new year, I plan to make that information much easier to find. But I’ll make sure that art and commerce are separate enough that you don’t come for the poems and end up with a sales pitch (like a “free” visit to a time share community).

I am in over my head with a lot of this stuff, which is why I’ve hired an expert: Dan Kittay of Kittay New Media. (Some of you know that Dan works for me as a freelancer at my “actual job” — so I will hasten to say that he is charging me the same rate that he would any other client of my type, and that I cleared it with our general counsel first.) Yes, I know there’s a handy WordPress tutorial. It’s just that … sigh. Anyway, Dan says he can get things all straightened out and more functional for me and then show me how to maintain it.

Thank you so much for a great year, and please watch this space!

 

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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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Do You Know What Today Is? (It’s My Blogiversary)

So, a little WordPress icon tells me that today is a big milestone. I knew it was coming up but had forgotten the actual day.

Once I found out, I was going to wax eloquent about what a great year I’ve had with this blog, what lies ahead, etc. and so forth, but what I feel like doing is just saying thank you so much for following, commenting, liking, or just dropping by now and then. It has meant so much to me. Truly.

Thank you, thank you, thank you … And now, here’s the song by Tony! Toni! Toné! that gave rise to the title of this blog post. Enjoy the slow jam (perhaps with that special someone?), and I’ll be in touch again soon with some thoughts on what I’ve learned this year and what I might do next.

 

 

 

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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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A Bad Fall

Someone keyed my Corolla,
the one my parents leased for me
(electric green with a spoiler
and a gold package—ridiculous
and loved). As I looked at the
scratch, the gallon of milk I had
just bought, just splurged on,
tumbled off the roof, hit the
asphalt and exploded, ran
in all directions even as I
indulged wild fantasies of
somehow scooping it up,
or getting back in my
scratched car, driving
back to Kroger, getting
a replacement as if
any of it was the store’s
fault, what happened in
my apartment building’s
parking lot, under a stupid,
stupid purple twilight sky.

 

For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 30 (prompt: milk). OK, that’s it for the daily poems. April is another daily posting month for me, and between now and then, you can expect a poem each Tuesday and occasional musings on writing and publishing. Thank you so much for reading, liking, and commenting!

 

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Fact

When it’s all done, you are wearing enormous mesh underwear
and a huge maxipad that’s also an icepack. The emptiness shakes you
for a while, and the sleep-nonsleep of the hospital begins while you’re
still looped on whatever hormones got you through, whatever made you
think of your grandmother and wolves, whatever put you in a tunnel so
you were totally alone, apart from speech, your own voice and others’,
out of range of any soothing words or hypnotic suggestions or whatever
it was you were supposed to learn in weeks and weeks of classes that,
as it turns out, were total bullshit, completely insufficient. The good news,
the great surprise, is that you were sufficient. Now you are glad again
that your husband is here, that the chair reclines enough that he can drift beside you, pretend to sleep sitting up as carts clatter in the hallway outside your pretend door with no lock, as you pretend to sleep lying down on the pretend bed, amidst all the pretend comforts of this pretend room. There is, somewhere, your real baby, in your arms or in the plastic box. This is where
it all begins.

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