NAPOMO November 2013 # 23, 24, 25

American Housewife Haiku 25 (poem remix AHH 8)

Wooden ships sit high
when empty, they can carry
whatever you want.



American Housewife Haiku 24 (Respond-“Buy the best you can afford”)

It’s not for status,
quality will hold its shape-
even when you sag.



American Housewife Haiku 23 (I shouldn’t be here)

Three pounds isn’t much.
It’s enough to grow up with.
They said: Die. Not yet.

NAPOMO November 2013 # 22

American Housewife Haiku #22 (no prompt) on the 50th anniversary of the death of JFK


Who wakes expecting
to die before the sun sets?
I don’t, though I could.

NAPOMO Novenber 2013 # 21

American Housewife Haiku # 21 (secret/coded message)


Talk to each other,
use whatever means you must.
Start with the weather.

NAPOMO November 2013 # 20

American Housewife Haiku # 20 (Always____)


Begging your pardon,
I hold good intentions close.
I’m most always late.

extra (for the upcoming holiday)

American Housewife Haiku (extra)

Not a day goes by
I don't miss the family
I once hated so.

NAPOMO November 2013 # 19

American Housewife Haiku # 19 (a love poem)


I can feel my heart
beat in anticipation.
You’re not even near.

NAPOMO 2013 #18

American Housewife Haiku 18  (forget what I said earlier)


Forget what I said,
the sky is full of promise,
the sun a sweet gift.

NAPOMO November 2013 # 17

American Housewife Haiku 17 (element)

1.
In your element,
you schmooze like a good salesman
tap dancing on glass.

2.
Mama said "Watch out!
The bad boy element thrives."
That’s why I chose you.

3.
Water, earth, fire, air.
Everything we need to be.
No matter? Matter.

4.
Did you know you’re it?
You were tagged before your birth.
God don’t do markdowns.

　

　

NAPOMO November 2013 # 16

American Housewife Haiku 16 (halfway)


I love cloudy days,
no-squint zones where I can see
halfway to nowhere.

NAPOMO November 2013 # 15

American Housewife Haiku #15 (what_______)


Asked: What kind of pie?
The Way We Were, then. Now,
we eat what’s there.  


What say you, daughter?
So eager for adventure,
take the best offer.


Wrapped in endless “What?”
You should have been listening.
Now you’re all alone.


What not to question:
my girth, hair, choice of clothing.
And yes, I love you.


What fools men can be!
It takes so little to woo,
then they fart too much.


What a crock of poo!
Monkey house shenanigans,
just drink the Kool-Aid.


Gimme a what-what!
On the recovery road,
life will still kill you.


Where, why, how, and what-
Tell the story you have to-
the rest is writing.


What time is it now?
Just fifteen minutes later?
Anticipation!


What else do you want?
This is my final offer.
Magic fish wishes.

NAPOMO November 2013 # 14

American Housewife Haiku # 14 (exploration)


Open any door:
there’s another to go through,
even the last one.

NAPOMO November 2013 # 13

American Housewife Haiku # 13 (self-help poem)

When the gym won’t do
and meditation fails you,
Want white wine or red?

NAPOMO November 2013 # 12

American Housewife Haiku # 12 (saddest moment)

I loved a man who
wanted me to be someone
he’d made up. I tried.

NAPOMO November 2013 # 11

American Housewife Haiku 11 (inspired by a photo)


The god of balance
tousled my hair and moved on.
I can’t dance, don’t ask.

National Poetry Writing Month November 2013 (# 1)

American Housewife Haiku  (appearing)

 Look who's coming in
 making it all about you.
 Daylight savings time.


I've been writing and revising my American Housewife Haiku with an eye toward a book in the spring and a weekly subscription base where you get your AHH in your mailbox- watch this space!

I'm using the suggested prompts from Poetic Asides FYI.

shame, despair, and agony on me

What's with the lack of posts??

Lazy.
Tired.
Busy.
Out of sorts.
All of the above.

Working on it.
really.

Doing the daily 'Ku

Doing daily multiple haiku on facebook-

the new version of FlashPaperPoetry may be coming on tumblr

writing .....

and another random bit of prose from way back when

Chapter 2- 672 words

I dream about houses. Sometimes they are almost like a real place I might’ve lived once, but usually they are a strange aggregate of a house and hotels and public buildings. When I am very tired there are stairways and doors, when I feel good about myself, there are big windows with long lacey curtains blown into the room by a slight breeze. Occasionally I am looking for my children or friends, other times I’m being pursued by a person or animal that intends to do me harm. Every few months, I dream I am a child and waiting for my parents to come and get me.. Those dreams leave me disturbed and disoriented the rest of the day.

When I was four or five, Nanny moved to a old red brick house that had red flocked wall paper in the main room. The windows wouldn’t open and the rooms were dark and scary. The worst thing of all were the black floor vents around the edges of the rugs. They scared me just by being there and when the heat came on, it was terrifying. I hated being in that room alone, hated playing on the rug, hated that dark and gloomy house.

Fortunately, by that time my brother Chucky had come along and I didn’t stay with her as much anyway, and nanny wouldn’t really keep anyone but me. For the rest of her life she practically ignored all the other grandkids, starting with Wesley, who was born when I was 2 and didn’t make much trouble. Eventually there were five of us, so Nanny rented every empty bedroom in her house, for money, sure, but certainly so she would have no where to keep us. It was okay, though, cause Momma needed me at home so she could nap or read out back on the chaise lounge and get a tan.

Momma and Daddy used to laugh about how whenever she went into labor, Nanny was nowhere to be found. She had some sort of sixth sense about being needed. She could disappear faster than extra money. I couldn’t tell you where she went, maybe to her sister Ruby’s or her brother Falvey’s but Nanny hated his wife so I doubt that. My Dad would have to haul us to Mamaw’s house (he always called her Pete, I don’t know why) and then go the hospital to find out whether or not he had another mouth to feed.

Chucky had the nerve to be born on my birthday, which is not a present no matter how much they all pretended it was. He was underweight and cried more than any baby I’d ever known. He didn’t thrive, they said, so my mother had the worst time getting him to be happy. Of course, I could calm him. I was four.

He was like the baby in Alice in Wonderland, the one that turned into a pig when Alice got him outside.

When I was in college in Tucson years later, visiting my folks at their crappy apartment near Davis Monthan Air Force base, he hid in the closet and watched me take a shower and then play with myself naked on the bed (they had this huge mirror over the dresser and you could see everything). I would never have know he was there if he hadn’t decided to jack off in the closet. He was 15.

That was the last time I went home, though it wasn’t my home anyway. I was living in the dorm, if it hadn’t have been a holiday I’d never have been there anyway. They didn’t wash their sheets, or towels. The whole place smelled. I gave them all the cash I had left over from my student loan check and made my dad drive me back to the campus. The next time I saw them, they were living in Mesa in a motel room. Four kids, Mom and dad, and at least one cat. But there’s more to that story coming up later.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Chapter 1- 866 words

My earliest memory is looking through the bars of a crib when I was not quite two years old. I know that because Nanny, my father’s mother told me all the time how that old house burnt down, and I couldn’t possibly remember anything about it because it was long gone in early 1952. I remember there was always a radio on in the kitchen and right next to the crib there was a pole lamp with a big cream colored shade with sketches of shrimp boats in brick red all over it.

Nanny would keep a radio on day and night playing songs like “Cry” by Johnnie Ray and “Shrimp Boats” sung by Jo Stafford. She’d sing those songs over and over whenever I’d miss my momma, and when we’d drive down to the docks to buy shrimp and salt-water trout.

That lampshade is as clear in my mind as if it was a photograph, as clear as if I visited that house this morning. I can hear that funny warble that was her voice, singing away with every song that played. Hank Williams was a special treat, and Lefty Frizzell, sometimes Hank Snow.

She must’ve been about forty years old, having had my Daddy when she was sixteen or seventeen. He was twenty-two when I was born. I can remember her face but not my mother’s, or my Dad’s. There’s no one left alive to ask but I must have spent a lot of time with her, my Momma worked as a secretary up until the time my first brother, Wesley, was born in 1952.

The next house she occupied was a lot bigger, there was a patio out back and a room over the garage where itinerant musicians would stay, at least until she rented it to Melba, but that was a long time later. I met Hank Snow there one night. The mosquitos were particularly bad and he held me in his lap and rubbed each bite and said, “it’s all right, little lady, it’s all right.” On nights like that people would come over after a show and drink beer and eat, guitars would come out and there’d be dancing and flirting all over the place. If Papaw was working at the railroad yard, Nanny would dance the two-step with every man there.

There was a braided rug in that house and she’d take out a big tin filled with empty wooden spools. She’d give me that and a big jar of buttons, a million buttons and I’d play all by myself on the rug while she embroidered pillow cases or watched her stories. Rembert would come home from work and start drinking, giving me the business about those spools all over the floor lined up along the curves of the rug. He was a tall Cajun, full of moxie and ready to fight with anyone, even a baby. The drunker he’d get, the less you could understand anything he said, until he took out his teeth, than every word out of his mouth was complete gibberish. Nanny loved him, so my daddy and mom tried to.

He’d pick me up on his shoulders and carry me all over the yard singing songs in crazy french. I’d laugh and if Momma was there she’d get into a screaming match with nanny about how dangerous it was for me to be that high up.

If they couldn’t settle it, my momma would snatch me up and I wouldn’t see Nanny or Papaw for a week, maybe less, depending on whether or not my other grandmother could take me.

That was always problematic. Mamaw was a wonderful old country woman, smart about a lot of things, like cutting up chickens or reupholstering a sofa, but she didn’t know how to read or write much. She also never drank beer (at least not until her doctor told her she had thin blood and should drink at least one Mexican beer a day) .She also had to take care of my grandfather, Albert Lewis, who’d had a stroke and was in a wheelchair. The best thing about her house was the screened in porch. It had a big wooden swing and you could see up and down the whole street, and the big buildings of Houston off in the distance.

There were always storms coming up off the gulf and we’d all sit out there and watch the clouds rumble across the sky. I saw ball lightning once hit right out front and roll out of sight, I was a little older then, old enough to run screaming into the house and hide under her bed until the sun came back out. That was really something!

It was fun to stay with nanny but the food was better at mamaw and papa’s. Of course, Papa would always spill his iced tea at lunch and supper making a big noisy deal out of it and hit me on the back with his cane if I got too close, but rembert, at least once a week, would get so drunk he’d stand up in the living room and unzip his pants and pee all over the floor.

Cut n' paste because I can't seem to fix the other page

Friday, November 11, 2005

Chapter 2

How I became the Grinch

Oh my, Christmas! I love Christmas! Not so much for the gifts, which are eternally lame and mostly useless, but for the doo-dah connected with it- you know, the songs, the lights, the smells, the hustle for time. Everybody wants you but no one wants to really give you what you need, only what they can get a return for. I don’t mean a store return, I mean an ‘owe me’.
The best time I think I ever had gift wise was my second Christmas with my second husband- I gave him a list to choose from and he got everything on it. Went to the specialty kitchen store on Cary Street and bought every single item. And we celebrated with his family in West Virginia.

Of course, it was stuff to cook with- i.e. feed him, to make his life better, that kind of thing. No matter that I use very little of it now- the stainless steel drainer, yes, and....hmm. I’ll have to think about that. It’s possible that’s the only thing left twenty years later.

I don’t cook much anymore. Who does. really? My Thanksgiving turkey comes from Ukrops, so does the Christmas ham- they have these great dinners for $50-70 bucks. Comes in a box with everything: cornbread, sweet potatoes, even green beans that hardly anyone eats. You have to have something green, even if no one eats it. Like how when I was a kid we had the fruit course in the form of Ambrosia Salad Deluxe. Del Monte canned fruit cocktail (thick syrup), shredded coconut (Baker’s only), and baby marshmallows (Kraft). I think the recipe was on the marshmallow bag.

Having an entire meal cooked for you is the ultimate decadence, whether it’s at home or in a restaurant. I’m just that tight-assed Puritan Work Ethic. Having a holiday meal cooked for me is the most irresponsible thing I can do for mankind. And it makes me feel lazy and thoughtless.


"She doesn’t even cook a turkey for her family?"

Fuck that- my kitchen is small, I get not one finger of help and I end up exhausted and stressed from what it isn’t. Buying the turkey pre-cooked is not because I don’t have enough love. I do think it’s decadent, though. And geez- you still have to warm it up!
Not that decadent and laziness are unheard of in my background.

Aunt Wynter used to make pumpkin pie filling in this huge vat, and even then you’d have to stir really slowly so it didn’t spill over the edge. It must have been an old canning pot- the huge kind you use to lower the rack of jars into the boiling water. She’d use canned pumpkin- Libby’s, I think- and then add her own mix of spices. Not teaspoons full, but cups full. Cinnamon, nutmeg- I used ‘Pumpkin Pie Spice’ in one can, Sauer’s here in Richmond, but not her. Every spice was separate, carefully measured, even smoothed over with a knife.

They used convenience items, too. It must have been in the sixties when the pie crust came in sticks, like butter. Uncle Howard would be dispatched all over Houston to get a dozen or more sticks. She’d roll them out to perfection and I’d crimp the edges with a fork- perfectly. Every time, perfectly. I was a crimping fool, flour covered, sticky, tired, but everyone was done perfectly.

She’d be a nervous wreck by the end of it all. I think she had undiagnosed low-blood sugar, depression, and general dyspepsia and melancholia.

Later, frozen crusts became popular. No crimping needed. Only the Pet brand crusts are decent, though. I guess. I’ve never dared try any other. As if I’ve baked a pie in the last ten years. I made a peanut butter pie a couple if times until I lost the recipe. I can’t even remember what’s in it- but it’s no-cook. Ice box pie. Bought crust.

One of the things I asked for and got in the complete list Christmas was a huge canning pot. Not as big as Aunt Wynter’s and never really planned for canning (though I bought a book from the Ball Corporation and another called "Put By" a wonderful old-fashioned term for preserved food).

I mostly used it to make vats of chili and soak Virginia Hams. At least until I admitted I hate Virginia Hams, or more correctly. Smithfield Hams. Way too salty and far too much preparation needed. And the knife. There’s a story.

Digression to the DMV 1971

I worked at DMV- the Division of Motor Vehicles for eleven months in 1971. It was located in the huge airplane hangar looking building in those days, not the slick modern thing it is now, on West Broad Street. The best thing about working there was being a quick walk to the Sears & Roebuck It was a great job in a lot of ways, I learned about the world. I saw first hand how women were treated in the work world, too. No woman in my family ever worked, except Aunt Margaret, and she was single and taking care of Mamaw, since Papaw died in the fifties. All the others stayed at home. Aunt Ola sold butter and eggs, Mamaw altered and made quilts, but all my models were housewives and homemakers. Except Aunt Margaret, but she needs more explanation than I can give right here.

It took me a few weeks to notice all the supervisors were men. It took me a little less to realize all the work was done by women, smart women, some of them, who really knew what was what. It took me hours to figure out Mr. Cooke, my immediate boss, was a creep. He was the kind of mad who got cute girls up against filing cabinets and pressed them into the metal so they couldn’t move. He also had complete control over raises, firing and hiring, and there were no grievance boards in those days. It was a state job, but he was the agent for the state.
I had been given a Virginia Ham and the Boston in-laws were coming for the holidays. He called me into his office and presented me with this long, thin knife. "This is the only way to properly cut good Virginia ham, it’ll cut slices so thin you can see through them. I want you to use it to when your husband’s family comes down." Then he insisted in standing behind me, really close, and showing me, knife in my hand, his hand covering mine, how to cut the ham. He’d lean forward, then pull back, lean, then pull what seemed like endless slices from an invisible ham.

I checked out of my head- it was an accustomed reaction, the next thing I really remember is sitting at my desk with that horrid knife wrapped in the kind of soft cloth you store use to store good silver. I put it under the car seat and didn’t touch it again until I put it on his desk the next Monday, with a little box of cookies and crap from the weekend.

I hated that job because of him (and the other men- there were those who would push up against you in the hallway to the bathrooms, one guy ‘slipped’ and grabbed my breast for balance. I’m not crazy, this stuff used to happen, not everywhere, but some places were worse than others.

My job was to dictate letters onto a tape, put the tape in a box in the wall that opened onto the typists on the other side. Someone would type the letters. give it back, and I’d proof it, put in a request for documents (if needed) by leaving it in another box on another wall where some clerk would pick it up and return it with the documents, and I’d type and envelope and send it to the mail room. When the system worked, it worked well. When there were endless corrections, incorrect documents, or troublesome cases, it all went to hell. We all did everything we could to avoid having to call a supervisor. The women office managers were wonderful, but often mean-spirited and bitter. Why wouldn’t they be? They had zero chance for advancement, low salaries and had to put up with sexual predators. At least the pretty ones had to deal with the latter.

I’d do sixty to eighty letters a day. They eventually put me on ‘special plates’ and problem clients. I was the only one in there who had been to college, and the clearest writer. I learned written diplomacy. Senators would not be re-elected and want to keep their plates, high rollers would want special numbers (and they’d get them) and I got to sort it out. I even met the governor- Linwood Holton? But he didn’t see the stacks of letters they made me hide- we were always three to four months behind in those days.

And I started gaining weight. A hundred pounds went to one-twenty in a one year span, mostly thanks to two mandatory coffee breaks that had to be taken away from your desk. At least we’d walk to Sears during lunch, but we had to go to the break room where there were always, always pastries and doughnuts and I was young and hungry.

Always hungry.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Chapter 1

Sometimes I wake up to the smell of catfish cooking. Cornmeal, bacon grease, the sharp hot odor running in my head so strong I keep my eyes closed a few minutes more so it doesn't go away.
That's how I keep the details from fading away, the red checked oil cloth, open window, real plates, real forks, honest to god cloth napkins. I ironed them myself.

I used to. Iron napkins. Water in a spray bottle, the hiss of the iron on scorched brown cloth. There isn't any smell quite like that one, fresh and clean, old and brown all at once. Makes me think of mamaw and Aunt Wynter and the house on Lake Houston, though I don't think we ever ironed much there. That was for fun.

I ironed at home. Or at Nanny's. I must've started when I was four or five. Handkerchiefs, pillowcases, stuff like that. Things that were flat and foldable. No aerosol cans of starch, just the water bottle. The one at home was a spray bottle, heavy plastic that you couldn't see through. I think it may have come from Sears & Roebuck or Newberry's, it was more like something you'd use in a garden, for aphid spray or something.

Nanny's was a tall jar with holes poked in the lid. She was more enterprising than my mom; she'd use what she had rather than spend money on something she could make. It kind of dumped big splotches of water on what you were ironing, though. Nanny was clever and creative, but Momma had class. Or wanted to.

I grew up thinking I could do anything. But I should do it with a certain finesse, not in a common way. That was the biggest sin I could commit, to be common. You could be a stripper, but you better be like Gypsy Rose Lee. You could be an actress, but Joan Crawford was everything Bette Davis wished SHE was. Class. Jackie Kennedy had class- even though she was Catholic, which she couldn't help, being raised in France.

Momma made me practice how I would act at her funeral (this was before JFK was shot, but when that happened she must have said a hundred times over those three days when that was all the news there was, "There- That's it, Sharon Ann. Look at her standing like a statue, never making a move. Shaking hands with strangers and heads of state. If you can do that, you will make me proud."

I didn't dare cry, or flinch. She’d say all these awful things. how she'd be mangled in a car accident, how she'd die in my arms from a sudden stroke, or how some crazy person would beat her up and she'd crawl home and die on the front steps.

We'd practice this shit, for god sakes. Once a week, at least. I had a hat and a black veil. I was stone-faced and deadly. If I'd known the word sociopath I probably would have tried for that.

Now that I'm older, some people never know what I'm thinking. I have a hard time showing affection, I've been desperately in love a dozen times and only a few friends have been able to read me. It's good in some situations, but it doesn't help when you want to like someone, or them to like you.

In the meantime....

Amuse yourself with this (found when I was searching google for myself- I've found my poems used in curriculums, posted on websites by checking out google every so often- I don't recall running across this before and I had completely forgotten about it)

The Novel Shann

june 15th

Well. I have been working on some writing...

Seriously.

Will post soon.

Promise.

A month of no words

Not entirely true- did a little poetry workshop thing Monday night at the Urban Farmhouse with Tom Prunier (leader), Joanna Lee, and Mark Covington.

Did some scribbling of poems for April but haven't committed them to paper yet-

been very very very busy trying to get the June On The James fundraiser for James River Writers in tow.

Want to come?  Go HERE

Want to help? Email me

Want to donate? either of the above

NAPOMO poems eleven through fifteen

I apologize profusely- I had 2 computers out of whack (one for good- my netbook) and the other restored with a complete clean install. I still don't have the printer hooked up or my word processing programs up and running but I HAVE been writing my poems in notebooks- not having a smart phone- I had to wait to send poems - here are poems
eleven thru fifteen - nine and ten are somewhere in another notebook, maybe at work-


Day 15

So she wins a prize

It’s true, she drops her uterus
like it’s a celebrity, filling the maw
with assorted body parts,
mewling proper names and fluids,

while you, timid sister, stammer
at the mention of pussy ‘n taint
(should I edit, should I?)
ask me again and I’ll tell you

the lips that say love can draw blood,
the sharp-tipped tongue craves
your "demure little asshole"* but
doesn’t linger nearly long enough.

Take you proper nouns and sit
on them, I’ll stay properly discreet.

* from Tony Hoagland



　
Day 14

　
More Cowbell


At the party, I re-met memories, people long out of my life, now back in because of a mutual friend’s natal observance. They spun elaborate tales of medical procedures as I nodded (just right) and said "Oh, my!" with proper concern. We all face our decrepitude with brave faces, canes and baggy dresses, woven wraps, and sensible shoes. Some have stopped celebrating their years, others insist you know immediately just how long it took them to get this far, as if they took the long way (and are the better for it) while you zipped down the bypass using family money. They ask about recycling. I want to say, yes, the crab dip is soylent green and you are what we eat but some have forgotten even how to laugh, if they ever did. I drive home alone, my generation on the radio, floating between lanes, singing along as loud as I ever could.


　
　
Day 13


clip art poem

sunrise, with eagle
new daffodils at the botanical garden
volunteers blooming at the fence
school buses red, yellow, black, slow
farmer’s market kale and gingerroot
biscuits from Hardee’s
hardware store for a hammer
lunch from Popeye’s
nap on an eyelet spread
quick load, colors on cold
healthy stir-fry, orange, green
neighborhood stroll
Maxfield Parrish sundown
guitars on the porch
neopolitan ice cream
cotton floral nightgown, long
fresh sheets
moonlight.


　
　
　
Day 12


　
That cake again

I made you a cake one year
when we were just divorced
red velvet, but it may have been
dump cake, better than it sounds

some recipe your mother gave me
forty-something years ago
I pretended to care a long time
but always made a cake for you.

Twenty years ago I wrote a poem
about the cake, but it was all a lie,
I think it was, the poem was,
after we separated I stopped cooking.

For some reason, I persist in the farce
that there was a cake I delivered
or didn’t, may not have made. I have
made a hundred since, none for you.



　
Day 11


　
She won’t say


what you did, won’t text or call
no indication of the sudden silence-
it may have been something you said

or she could be dead at the landing
from a tumble alone in her big house
blinded by a sudden light from outside.

she could have been hit by a taxi
on her way to the Empire State Building
or taken up in a pre-rapture practice run.

Alien abduction should be considered
though her neighborhood is quiet
and full of frame houses of a certain age.

The twenty-two text messages you sent
may have influenced her invisible state
advised by a girlfriend to "cool it"

she won’t say, you can’t ask
sometimes the best path is to back up,
back off, and go another way home.

NAPOMO poem-a-day April 8

Other recipients:

Right this minute

I am annoyed at how badly I use time

as if there is plenty, as if I have a secret.

Yes, I do have something to keep

from you, there are infinite reasons.

 

Twenty-nine years ago (right now)

my water broke a day early (gross)

Nothing has been the same since,

with great pain comes responsibility.

 

I’m tired of checking your breathing

waiting to hear your car door shut,

There must be a statute to limit

your expectations of how I can help.

 

Apologies your father isn’t taller,

you're welcome for the Palmer charm.

In the end you were cut out of me,

now let go of the goddamned apron!

Show trimmed content

NAPOMO poem-a-day April 7

Light a candle (for Yom HaShoah)


On days like this I leave the house dressed for sun
to warm my skin, enough if I get home before dark,
before the night chill rises around bare ankles.

The car is never close enough these times, the walk
too far, I fold my arms tight around me, hunched
against the cold and dark, uneasy but unafraid.

Then I remember her, the Catholic teen from Poland,
swept up in a raid of her father’s shop near the ghetto
where many Jewish girls worked, some she called friends.

Her father’s protests fell on deaf ears, they took her
and forced the frightened girls to walk to a train
on the edge of the city, wearing thin coats, gloveless.

She was the youngest, believing her family would come,
whispering assurance to those with her, as they huddled
in clumps, pushed along by the soldiers that night.

They sang and hugged on the ride, warmer in the car
with so many others pressed against them, then stood
in lines for separation, for assignment, they believed.

She was healthy, many were, the tiniest and frail girls
taken elsewhere, it was so cold! Everyone prayed,
cried until they were beyond tears, until silence came.

Her story enfolds me, I will light a candle for her tonight,
read an awkward Kaddish for them all, for the six million,
so I can say on the other side "I did not forget you". 

NAPOMO poem-a-day April 6

There is no bad day to die

In my teens I begged for my life

to see what was going to happen,

twenty years later I whispered

silent prayers for another decade

so my children would know me.

 

As time rolled on I wanted to have

all the "things" I’d missed

before the end, leave my mark.

I wrote furiously raw poems,

until I learned to be careful.

 

Right now, I want to sleep

with some assurance of morning,

rest in spite of your snores,

let silence embrace me when

you are gone and I’m still here.

NAPOMO poem-a-day April 5

Bringing them down

Roy Rogers liked rough sex, I can only say,

"Oh, Dale, dearest Dale, did you?"

It’s as if I caught my parents on the couch

naked, I know it happened but I can’t imagine

it was anything but perverse, no love lost.

 

I don’t need to hear what famous men

did with cigars, the stains they left.

How everyone knew (when we didn’t).

No stranger to animal instincts, I have

found solace there, in cowboy hands.

 

To those who live undamaged,

love themselves enough to know

pain is never reward, I offer blessings

and apology, the urban definition of sin

is good, dirty fun: a truthful lie.

 

There are so many transgressions,

so little secrecy, and less discretion.

What childhood hero will be outed next?

Did Eisenhower diddle little girls?

Madame Curie do it in the lab?

 

It’s not the desire to turn a blind eye,

but those pictures were set long ago

before I knew of harsher things.

Let the dead lie in restless peace,

the living keep me busy enough.

NAPOMO poem-a-day April 4

Fashion

Salt is the new lava in lamp-ery, that is

not to say lamprey (better suited to pie

and spice world worms).

 

Sometimes I hold my Himalayan close

longing to lick the luscious pink,

sad cow that I am.

 

It warms my breast as I breathe in,

say: ocean, ocean, ocean,

alternating nostrils.

 

I am what I have been made to be

by The Martin Agency, TV,

classic rock.

 

At twenty I would watch the lava

stoned, a mantra of bubbles.

the rise and fall.

 

This solid rock reassures,

I, too, am not impermanent,

but preserved.

NAPOMO 2013 poem-a-day April 3

Babysitter

It wasn’t hunger that made her

punch through the skin,

scooping soft vanilla wafers

into her waiting mouth,

drove her to lick fingers

and go back again and again

until the Pyrex dish gaped

half empty on the shelf.

 

They had told her "help yourself"

to whatever she wanted

but they couldn’t have meant

the untouched dessert

covered in Saran wrap

well after the pudding set,

the big chunks of bananas,

twice the cookies called for.

 

The baby wouldn’t stir-

her role was watchman, only

there because someone must be.

She rocked in mewling shame

on the Danish modern couch,

house perfectly decorated

in Bayshore Estates, nicer than

where she usually babysat.

 

What remained beckoned her,

whipped cream splotched

in lazy design, the soft wafers,

shut-eyed pleasure filling

empty spaces, she ate and ate

licking her palm clean,

as the sudden flash of headlights

made her heart clutch.

 

Not them. A neighbor.

She filled the sink with water,

scrubbed glass too clean.

"It slipped. I’m so very sorry.

I cleaned the mess." She wouldn’t

work there again. The husband

drove her home, where nothing

would be as good, or all hers.

NAPOMO poem-a-day April 2

April 2

 

Richly colored night (after a quote by Van Gogh)

 

 

There was a time when

drinks in sunrise shades

colored shy conversation.

 

Morning, the last thing

on our minds, always came

too soon, too bright, loud.

 

Walking back to your place

or mine, even the puddles

threw rainbows back at us.

 

My hair was long and red,

yours: plentiful. The moon

washed across our bodies.

 

Thousands of nights passed,

we shut the shades, put kids

to bed, fell into dark dreams.

 

Now we are alone again,

almost strangers. Unfamiliar,

uncomfortable, unsure.

 

The city streets are better lit,

angled, arched in yellow,

spattered with flash of neon.

 

In the old cafe, orange glow

paints our faces smooth, young,

we remember how to be foolish.

NAPOMO Poem-a-Day April 1

Giving up the ghost　

I saw you in the corner of the room

just yesterday, I was humming a song

we sang a long time ago, how was it

you knew to make an appearance right then?

 

If we’d been that connected at the time

you’d still be here or I’d be there with you,

none of this slow fade to forgetfullness

rising everyday a little dimmer.

 

The face I see in my head is not you,

it’s a photograph from the Facebook page

I memorized before you took it down,

your half-smile my addiction, secret fix.

 

If you quit showing up I can forget

but you’re the shoe sticking out from under

the bed I almost fall on each morning

you always kept me slightly off balance.

 

Even this poem is another way you

intrude unwanted when I was thinking spring,

Easter eggs, taking down storm windows.

It was April, I was playing piano.

NAPOMO page over on google +

I'm trying.

Between my connection being cranky tonight my unfamiliarity with the plus,
there will be a delay.

Not a DeMolay (wasn't that like the Mason's for young men, like the rainbow girls was the junior Eastern Star?

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?)

try here: shann's still talking

poem again, who knew?

Lost Vegas

Mamma has a berth, a slot,
whatever at Bunker’s
memorial midtown.

The webpage says
it’s convenient but
only archives thru 2002.

I was there once
twenty-five years ago,
daddy went with us, now

he’s there, too. I was
so afraid of his power
over me I wasted time

I could’ve spent asking
questions like- when
did you go thru the change?

then I remember in 1965
she had a hysterectomy, together
we watched a brand new soap

on TV, The Days of Our Lives,
all that sand going through
the hourglass, all that sand.

must be getting geared up for NAPOMO

The Tawdry Affair

I was undone by you
grommets loosed,
gussets stretched,
petticoats tossed
thoughtlessly

on the chaise lounge
our lone set-piece
draped in drama
where salacious was
too easily replaced

by lugubrious dark,
heavy as a dental drape
to prevent loss of fertility.
your impression, left when
I was undone by you.

a poem for wednesday morning 3am

to be silent


can lead to misunderstandings,
the sky may not have been right
air quality less than desired
humidity off doing its curly work.
in a dark coffee shop somewhere

did you know the actor in the commercial?
I did, but didn’t speak up and now
you’ll never know I was important
before I became a window washer
climbing buildings, squeegee bound.

Why wash glass walls on rainy days?
There are others things we should attend to
one mustn’t be limited by tiny minds,
large panes, pulleys and the inevitability
science brings: what goes up can disappear

I lost two friends today, one to a feral god,
the other to a long line of shot glasses.
One left music, one filled the room with anger,
though both are as lost as keys, gloves.
Next time, speak up- don’t die alone.

I heard it on NPR

Most likely


Though we know little enough about him,
Garrison Keillor said Christopher Marlowe
was most likely gay and an atheist,
yet a brilliant poet and dramatist.

In his lifetime an elite few were educated,
most spiritually curious holy men and oracles
possessed of sufficient cleverness to thrive
within the church or off the gold of betters.

To be a man in Marlowe’s time most likely
involved the perks a penis often brings,
the luxury of having others care for him
certainly far more than he did for himself.

The world turns, humankind begets
a fleshy herd of celebrity provocateurs,
rapaciously sexual, outwardly religious,
inwardly as blank as empty clay jars.

They are not brilliant, nor poets, most likely
their legacy will not survive, built on smoke
and what the mirror reflects. Weak flesh
earns its sad reward, it has no substance.

Even the learned die in bar fights or the plague.
And where is God in Marlowes work? In the dust
of groundlings feet, or the muddy Thames, a whisper
on a darkened stage bidding "Remember me".

The art of hating isn't hard to master...

I read some poems by a well-known poet with who I am personally acquainted.

They are probably well crafted, the kind of poems where the audience goes mmMMMMmmmm and nods after each is read aloud. BUT they are boring as plain oatmeal, poem after poem. I didn't even bother to scroll the page after a few, just read what I could see and clicked "next". I'm astounded at how weak they are- and if I said who it was some of you would revile me (and some would write me off their lists).

I recall getting angry a few years ago when a slam friend got on me for writing white-lady/mayonnaise poems, that I needed to get dirty and talk about it- he was wrong and he was right- (he also hadn't heard but a handful of my poems). I was angry. He had issues so it didn't change my writing much, but I did notice things I tried to do better, like NOT be boring.

But these poems are clearly written in a room with a closed door, Google at the ready to get those wordsobscura next to the ancientwhocareswhere places.

It's the kind of poetry that makes non-poets hate poetry.

a raw poem, briefly aired

In the dead of february

It comes to words on paper
deep in the night again
TV murmuring gentle pleas
to better myself as if
what I am doesn’t matter
retraining is necessity.

they don’t know I’m weary
with negotiating the maze
(entitled some might say)
I say "deserve" with a wink
prepared to cut back
because I always have.

Nothing feels quite right
though hindsight serves
(or is that experience?)
a friend disavows birthdays
I count each one a triumph
since the odds belittle time

everyone here will likely live
too long (Margaret) or perish
too soon (Thomas) if you think
suicide is a choice God laughs
"best if used by" is not
always an expiration date

The last time death troubled
I was thirty with two babies
fretting they’d never know me
be scarred by the sudden loss
I held them close and wept
swallowing the scent of life.

as a grain of sand on a window sill
is not a beach, no one will recall
this night, this poem, this well
full of cool water, and I am drunk
with the thoughts I gather here.

Happy New Year 2013!

This is going to be a wonderful year!

Some friends have left the room, relatives, too, but I'm still here and getting better.

Thomas, Aunt Margaret- you will always be with me.

No resolutions.

I have recently stopped watching programs called Infotainment or Reality. I can make my own drama. No more following news stories all night that are not local or don't affect me.

(Anderson Cooper Ridiculist and Joel McHale on the Soup don't count).

This is the year my children will blossom into their own. I can feel it. They are poised to experience all life has to offer: success, achievement, and love!

I am so fortunate to have faithful friends and fun things to do, to write, to walk, to enjoy these years as I approach "mature".

Actually, I am finally comfortable with being a grown-up, though a misplaced harsh word can send me into a little girl terror in an instant, so please be thoughtful with your words.

Live long and prosper! My wish for most of us!

To post and not to post

I have been writing my poems in a notebook, an actual paper notebook. With lines.

I am going to post a selection briefly this weekend- then remove by the following Friday (Dec 7).

It's complicated, but some of them made me quite happy and I will be submitting them soon and don't want them overexposed on the internet.

shann

poem-a-day November 2, 2012

A Modern Love Poem

does not depend on proper nouns,
a full moon-boon companion blend,
nor big band sound authority
make-it-real inculcation begs.

No, current trends insist we take
our curiosities outside
for air, bare our skins in public
until we stand invisible.

The shadow cast by nothing is
a moth’s breath, the footstep of fish.
Words can be infinitely moved
meaning nothing, garbled nonsense.

Tell everyone this poem is yours,
how I handpicked each turn of phrase.

Poem a Day November 1at

matchbook sonnet

Your bodyheat caught me unprepared,
the acrid burn of hell and heaven
as our elbows touched, I was consumed.

Defined by intensity, we played
pretend, lips sealed in understanding:
to match is not to go together.

Alone, I am incomplete, jagged
edge catching on the delicate gauze
our story wears in such circumstance.

You are my everyday devotion,
the scripture I carry in my hand,
fingerprints left on piano keys.

On the horizon a meteor
flares and disappears. We are done.

a month since I posted?

where did the time go?

I must be stuck in a crack, my dress wedged firmly in the fissure and I can't pull it loose. I do what I have to but move neither forward nor back.

Maybe it's Pandora at fault. The songs they pick are just right for melancholy, remembering scraps of happy and shreds of miserable.

Joni Mitchell holds me, Lyle makes me homesick, the Wailing Jennys nurture an ache I forgot about.

Fall. Death. Birthdays of people I care about but don't see anymore. Some mornings I can't get out of bed. Some nights I can't get to sleep. I'd forgotten what hungry feels like.

Whatever. You don't have a clue who I am anyway.

Writers reading, stuff like that-

Listed in Style are the latest from the famous and hopeful, legitimate writers with real books--

Calendar HERE

Listed not are the locals, the truly hopefuls who aren't vetted yet, the "rest-of-us", the citizen poets who buy the books the others write. Occasionally, the books are worth the money- sometimes it's just a puzzlement.

Sun the 30th VMFA 3pm readings in the Muse cafe

2nd Friday at art6 7pm, features and open mike (one-two poems)

3rd Thursday at C'est La Vin 6pm, same as above but with music.

every Saturday at 9 at Artspace, Richmond Slam

and Monday night critique group at the Farmhouse Facebook page FMI

all advice/no advice is good advice

all advice/no advice is good advice-

more folks than not try to get away with writing lazy and not doing sufficient rewriting, reading out loud, rethinking-

This is a good start (click here)

in the end, if the poem is good enough there are no rules, or at least no violations. But try, people, try!

Monkey wallpaper as metaphor

They're changing the wall paper in the bathrooms at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.

Changing.
Wallpaper.
WALLpaper.
Changing.

People have been taking little bits, apparently for years.

Wallpaper.

Granted, it is cute as all get out- monkeys in trees, strong colors: green greens, brown browns, all that.

We also have monuments. Battlefields. Churches where liberty and death were discussed.

And wallpaper.  How many Virginians does it take to change a lightbulb? Five - one to replace the bulb and four to talk about how glorious the old bulb was.

Wallpaper

The story

Too many $%^&* Writers!!!

Here's the original: Is Free Verse Killing Poetry?

Here's the follow-up "too many writers"

yes, I referenced the original in the previous blog post, reposting to save people time.

I guess we've decided poetry matters and is not dead. It's also funny the follow-up mentions this is strictly "first world problem".

Free or Formal? Leave me alone!

Such a silly thing to worry about, but some people who make their living in the academy must keep the argument going so they can keep their jobs, I suppose!


Check the article out HERE

I write what I write. What do you write?

Writing? Reading. What August is good for.

I just realized I hadn't blogged much this month. It's not I'm abandoning the place, rather I have been reading far more than I've been writing.

Sometimes it's good to rest the page, absorb other worlds. I have been jotting down ideas and phrases, my dreams are filled with little plots, glimpses into rooms full of words, but my time has been scattered and muddled.

I do need to keep a reading journal- here's this month in a list:

Inferno, Dante. new translation by Mary Jo Bang
The Magicians, Lev Grossman
(ongoing) The Exegesisof Philip K. Dick
Iron Horse Review recent issue
Edisto, Padgett Powell

There are others- I'll post more soon- those books are what I can see from the computer.

If you don't read, you shouldn't be writing- I absolutely believe that.

More links to Sofia Starnes poet laureate of Virginia

1. poem in Blackbird

2. video reading

3. buy her book from the publisher

4. review

5. another poem

6. The Anglican Theological Review (editor)

7. from Here Comes Everybody

SCOOP! SCOOP! The new poet laureate of Virginia (appointed by the governor with the suggestion of the Poetry Society of Virginia- but don't hold either of those things against her) is: Sofia Starnes, a wonderful poet- bio and links to follow!!

So many words! So much writing!

I spent July writing. Seriously writing. Taking a memoir writing class from Doug Jones at the Visual Arts center on Tuesday nights, attending the West Virginia Writers Woekshop at West Virginia University in Morgantown, and moving words all over the page, then the screen for the entire month. I highly recommend the activity. In the meantime, I won some books from Coffee House Books. I'm really looking forward to their arrival. Not to mention the stack of books from WVA - more about those later. Also taking a slow read thru the Mary Jo Bang translation of Dante's Inferno AND the Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. I can never read just one measly book at a time!

KIN: Songs by Mary Karr and Rodney Crowell

Who doesn't love Mary Karr, her novels and poetry? If you're from Texas it's a done deal. If you and you're people are from East Texas, I don't even know what to say. I'm writing my story- this is some of my soundtrack. Rodney Crowell grew up not too far from where I did. If I close my eyes it's like hearing family talking. I'm hungry for home. Sadly, all I have is what's in my mind.

I hate it when I fall for these things...

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Poetry Magazine and Tony

no, I didn't get a poem accepted because I didn't submit one.

But those of you who know me know how much I adore the way Tony Hoagland
puts words down that seem as though he can read my mind and codify what I need to say.  I don't know why I feel this link to him- it came to me the second I met him, though I had criticised viciously a poem posted at Slate magazine many years ago. Another friend was severly wounded by him and did not write for three years after we encounteered him (in a workshop). I love both of them and this is inexplicable to me.

Hoagland has three poems in the latest issue of Poetry Magazine, the most uneven publication I know.

The first one makes me ache with recognition- There is no word. I have been writing this for years.

The second is Note to Reality and holds the final twist that I find so fascinating about his poetry.

The last is called Don't Tell Anyone and so squarely captures the secrets I carry I wept when I read it.

I know some people like Mary Oliver and her deep nature, or the Dickman's and their cruel humor, but Tony Hoagland and I seem to share a loving cynicism that is only tamped by how we cling to life and all it's disturbing wonders.

My absolute favorite poet, besides myself.

The 2012 Levis Prize from VCU announced

The Department of English andthe MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth Universityare pleased to announce that
 Radial Symmetry by Katherine Larson
has been selected as the winner of the 2012 Levis ReadingPrize for the best first or second book of poetry published in thecalendar year 2011. The award is named in memory of the late Larry Levis,the poet who taught at VCU. Larson will receive an honorarium of $2000 and will be brought to Richmond, expenses paid, for a reception and publicreading on September 20th, 2012.

Katherine Larson’s Radial Symmetry (Yale University Press, 2011)was also selected by Louise Glück as the winner of the Yale Series of YoungerPoets. Larsen’s work has appeared in AGNI, Boulevard, TheKenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, andPoetry Northwest, among other publications. She is the recipientof a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the Union League Civic and Arts FoundationPoetry Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. In addition to her literarycareer, Larson has worked as a molecular biologist and field ecologist.She lives in Arizona with her husband and daughter.
This year the Prize Committee would also like to recognize the outstandingbooks of two additional finalists, Anthony Carelli for his collection Carnations(Princeton University Press, 2011) and Brian Barker for TheBlack Ocean (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011).

The Levis Reading Prize is presented on behalf of VCU's MFA in CreativeWriting Program. Sponsors include the VCU Department of English, JamesBranch Cabell Library Associates, VCU Friends of the Library, the VCU Libraries,the VCU Honors College, Barnes & Noble @ VCU, and the VCU College ofHumanities and Sciences, with primary funding provided by the family ofLarry Levis.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to all who entered and thushelped to make this annual contest such a success.

For further information aboutthe Levis Reading Prize, see http://www.has.vcu.edu/eng/resources/levis_prize/levis_prize.htm,call 804.828.1329,or contact Katelyn Kiley, Levis Fellow, at kileyk@vcu.edu

*********************************************************
my first reaction is - oh joy, another inexplicable book about nature all metaphored to shit. Ifit has big words (SCIENCE words) it must be good.

Nominations for Virginia Poet Laureate 2012

Congratulations to Henry Hart, Sofia Starnes, and Patsy Anne Bickerstaff,

who were selected by PSV members as finalists for Poet Laureate

of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 2012-2014.  

Samples of their poetry and biographical notes have been sent

to Governor McDonnell, who will make the final selection

for the position this summer.

Stuff Going On for Poets

Local poets! Take note!!


River City Secrets
art6, 6 E. Broad St.
June 8, 7pm
The second Friday of every month we bring you a dose of poetry & rock n roll. Talented local wordsmiths kick off the night with featured readings, and the evening progresses with an open mic where all of the poetic persuasion are welcome to share a piece or two of their own. The night wouldn't be complete without the lyrical riffs of our rockstar-in-residence. Light refreshments are served for the whole, and your $5 at the door goes to support the gallery & our ongoing events there. Come out and get heard!

Poetry & Jazz Tasting
C'est Le Vin, 15 N. 17th St.
June 14, 6pm
On Thursday, June 14, we'll be back at local gallery and wine shop C'est Le Vin to sample the best of both new and established regional poets amidst the backdrop of live jazz and enticing wines. Randy Burton & co. of Super64 will be on hand to play some sets & lend their musical talents to the verses of any wordsmith so desiring. The whole is set off by C'est le Vin's enticing wine selection, gourmet delectables & gorgeous art exhibits. We "mini-feature" a wide array of wordsmiths from all experience & publication levels, giving them each 5 minutes to present a "taste" of what they do as poets, so shoot me an email (dottoressa.joanna@hotmail.com) if you'd like to be added to the list!
Workshop & Critique
Urban Farmhouse Market & Cafe, 1217 E. Cary St.
6:30-8pm
Small group critique and workshops continue! Thanks to all who came out get their inspiration on at the UF last month. As always, all of these sessions are open to everyone, completely free and held at the Urban Farmhouse Market and Cafe in Shockoe. June dates are listed below and specific details/assignments forthcoming on Facebook.
June 11-- small group critique
June 18-- small group critique
June 25-- performance workshop (Lance Kelley)

PROSE, POETRY, PIZZA!!

Poetry stuff and I'm writing my memoir

Ed Lull, Virginia poet, is receiving a major recognition - The Emyl Jenkins prize from James River Writers!

Good thing, he really deserves it!!

I have officially started writing my memoir. I took a workshop with Doug Jones at the Visual Arts Center and am planning on more classes with him and others. At the West Virginia Writers Workshop at WVU in July I will be working with non-fiction.

Since my Aunt Margaret died at 98 this month, I am now the oldest member living in my family. Therefore, i carry the memories and can now write them down. Sure, my brothers and sisters may disagree with some of what I say but they can't prove any more than I can it is or isn't the truth.

behind and busy

poems poems poems- stories, too

gathering poems into workable manuscripts, working on music for church, dealing with a family that needs to get on with things...

I want to strangle a few people who cannot seem to quit meddling in my life and the lives of those I love-

I need a car

I need money and time to work on projects

I need emotional support

I need to help my children see how precious life is and how we can't let negative and hurtful people take that away

the usual.

my meditation is for balance and peace
my hands are open.

Guess who will be in two places at once?? The amazing Shann Palmer!!!

I'll be at the James River Writers Writing Show at 6pm moderating the panel for National Poetry Month, the winners of the JRW/Richmond Magazine annual contest

AND AT (actually my daughter will be in my place)

Springtime’s Rhymes

Thursday April 26
7:00 p.m.
Cochrane Rockville Branch Library
16600 Pouncey Tract Road
(804) 749-3146
All ages. Local poet Shann Palmer will
read her original poetry, followed by an
open mic where you can share your
own poetry or that of a favorite poet.

Refreshments provided by the Friends of the Rockville Library.

2012 Poem-a-day 13

Joyce

She was the kind of Texas woman
who didn’t have two cents to rub,
but if she could manage to find
a handful of shiny nickels, she’d win
enough at a slot machine in Vegas
to buy groceries for her family for a week.

I was walking with her when she conjured
a twenty from under a fist-sized rock
on Rincon Road in nineteen sixty-nine,
I rode shotgun when we had to pray
our way home on a shallow sniff of gas
in the worst rainstorm that summer.

She could puff a breath on her fingers,
then take out ten pins- ball scooting
down the alley like it was hypnotized,
ready to slam itself against the back wall,
she’d take sucker bets without a miss
for hours, even trick shots with a blindfold.

She lost only two things: me, to a yankee,
and her life in single hand. She tried hard
to let ride for another round of hold 'em
but cancer is the house that always wins.
When her will was read, luck wasn’t in it,
she must’ve used it all up in the end.

2012 Poem-a-day 12

something in the way

she moves into my line of sight
& takes the air out of the room,
the piccolo part out of my Souza.

It’s hardly enough razzamatazz
to make it worth anyone’s while,
least of all 1st trumpet, 2nd chair.

What’s a flourish without a high
scattershot melody hung out
over the brass-by-golly bravado?

An unfinished chord progression,
that’s what, Sherlock, parse the parts
get the blow going, toot sweet!

Stars and Stripes have been known
to choke even the most cynical heart
we like to tear up at the rallentando.

So keep your hands to yourself, sister!
Music may not be as tough as poetry,
but it’s what I’ve been doing, a long time.

2012 Poem-a-day 11

I'm removing 1-10 tomorrow night. Enjoy them now before they go back in the shop for detailing.

To everything

Tireseus walks the summer wall
naked before the fish and waterfowl.
He is whatever the wind decides.

Before morning comes, the sun
predicts the day, I set the table,
prepare breakfast in tender light.

My journey has been full of magic
& visions, I only stopped to shower,
wash clothes, and break bread.

2012 Poem-a-day 10

Family Tree

I looked my brother up on google,
found his son is in jail for battery/
domestic abuse, he might be married;
far across the country in another world
where time stalls, my sister’s daughter
bounces checks and doesn’t pay bills.

We don’t talk at all, we five siblings
damaged by circumstance, memories
of welfare food and our passive mother,
a father who couldn’t keep his hands
off us, used the belt, fists, boots, fear,
to crush us under his influence.

Over the years we’ve passed paths
so infrequently I wouldn’t cross the street
to avoid them, I’d never know their faces
by sight, or be able to identify bodies,
barely know the names of their children,
where they shop, if they like arugula.

I’ve heard they are in touch, the four
who stayed to bury our parents. I ran
so hard I made a few bad choices
dwarfed by the one good decision.
I have no regrets, except my children
will never know who my family was.

I am an immigrant to a new land,
full of stories and artifacts, telling
what I think should be remembered,
little injuries concealed in anecdotes,
hoping genetics can be circumvented
by education and unconditional love.

2012 Poem-a-Day 9

Silhouettes on the Shade

fills the room over and over,
45 rpm stuck in replay set,
mom and dad argue about
cigarettes (nobody bought any)
dig through the kitchen trash
for butts long enough for a puff.

They don’t notice the music
or me, under the piano reading
a science fiction paperback
to the steady pace of shouting,
afraid of being noticed, or worse,
becoming the next target.

Stay in the shadows, little girl,
time will pass and so will they.
Blame may follow all your life,
but try to stay a step ahead,
and it’ll fade way before you do,
like a song from an old movie.

2012 Poem-a-day 8

The Nature of No

Understand the true fact of rejection;
of course, strength is the desired virtue
though often even the best scenario
results in little or no effect at all.

Do you need more information?
A loved B, B cheats on A, A forgives
again and again with diminishing returns.
B doesn’t get it, A doesn’t get it.

Even you and I get stale after too little
meaningful conversation, contact.
Misery can have a cumulative effect,
indifference becomes status quo.

Better to bar the door once it’s shut,
close the blinds, pretend no one’s home.
Wallow in whatever you must until
you can remember how to live again.

2012 Poem-a-day 7

no love lost

nor found in the fields of war,
these are the body baggers,
the silent ones who gather
broken soldiers when smoke clears.

oldest children do the job best,
they carry weight from birth,
guilt a familiar companion,
all their prayers tired out.

they don’t talk while they work.
try to forget when they’re done,
a good day is when the wind blows,
the sky overcast, clouds busy.

A bad day is when a new worker
can’t hold in the horror, gagging,
invoking a deity with every breath,
there are no gods here, no gods.

They work side by side till done,
lost in whatever thoughts they bring.
At night they toss in ugly dreams
clutching old letters tight in their fists

2012 Poem-a-day 6

Sweet Slumber

must be hiding under the bed tonight,
maybe it’s gone over the transom
in the next room, I don’t hear the kids
stirring anymore, only the rustle of wind
knocking branches against the windows.

Too cold for Easter Sunday 6 am service,
sunrise won’t come soon enough to warm
the brave few who’ll wake up early to watch
a fire built on the sidewalk near the garden,
we’ll light the paschal candle and run inside.

That’s where slumber will tempt, in the pew
with the lilies casting sweet spells of scent,
the candles flickering in morning shadows
as the sun’s fire rises over tall pines,
joyful alleluias sung, by God, with grace.

2012 Poem-a-day 5

Fanciful attraction

What a time it must have been, mamma,
when big cars full of cheap gas
took to the pavement, in the summer
you could drive about anywhere

in a halter top and linen shorts
with cuffs and ironed creases,
you were a pretty girl looking for fun,
face freckled, brown hair in a knot.

When you met daddy, did you
go to Corpus Christi right away,
heart full of hope, have corn dogs,
and cold beer on the beach?

The war was over and plenty
was the word on everyone’s lips-
he was handsome, on the G.I bill,
full of adventure and laughter.

it’s not easy to think about
you as a young secretary,
smoothed-faced and careless
taking up with a sweet talker

like him, you didn’t worry at all
about someday and what if,
no one ever does in the beginning,
when the light dances on the water

making the moment look pretty good
even heading home with me in your belly
cruising north till the salty water
disappears behind a stand of lanky pine.

2012 Poem-a-day April 4

100% Dacron dream

an American fantasy, like that red Corvette
when you got back from ‘Nam summer of ‘69
stationed in Killeen, Texas a few hours
from Pasadena and the girl you stole
out from under your own brother’s nose.

Okay, it was metallic blue but sounds better red,
and he didn’t want to be stuck in a rut (his words)
so you showed up with comfort and kisses,
opportunistic fellow that you were, the lucky sort
who did three tours and never got a graze.

Dacron might not stretch but stories do, the way
memory gives in to best and worst scenarios,
prettier people, better times, but all I can recall
is the running toilet and your snores in the hotel
off Spencer Highway not that far from home.

If I’d known how to get to the sky, I would have
but the song hadn’t been written yet, and you?
You went blind in Napa Valley, while I learned
to sail on the Chesapeake Bay, sunning myself
under a multicolored spinnaker, unfurled.

2012 Poem-a-Day April 3rd

A Plate on a Stick

In constant rotation, it has one job-
don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall
dependent on someone else’s skill,
always ready to take the blame
when it crashes, the plate endures
blessed by the certain assurance
it will be caught whole in the end.
don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall
The rhythmic chant defines:
the spinners’s hands, sticks, plates
in symbiotic motion, unconcerned
with the inevitable pull of gravity,
the shudder growing to a wobble,
don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall
but everything does eventually.

Should I have locked the door,
begged you stay? Caught up
in the spectacle, I kept spinning,
thinking you would always be
there to catch me when I fell.

2012 Poem-a-Day April 2

Visitors

I’d ask you in but the place is a mess,
really needs to be painted, vacuumed,
the giant bolt of fabric for new curtains
lolls in the corner of the hallway,
uncut, a good intention mismanaged.

Say the expected lie “It doesn’t matter”.
We both understand you’ll tell someone
the scene: unfolded laundry on the chair,
the scattered Sunday paper, used dishes-
details you will align as if they were ducks.

Reconciled to this dynamical system,
it is a balagan with nuvobohemian flair,
exchanging traditional for quirky kitsch:
the two-foot decorated Christmas tree is iconic.
still up in April, unlit in deference to Easter,

Company never sticks, or is it the spectre
shuffling backwards toward the kitchen
who keeps the conversation indifferent?
Our grandmothers would be horrified,
kneeling women who scrubbed sidewalks.

I won’t bend my knees, not even to pray.
There are photos of when I was single:
candles in the bathroom, arrangements,
leaning out for love, they will lean that way
forever, you should have seen me then

2012 Poem-a-day April 1st

Here we go again!! crazy me, crazy, crazy me.  April 1st Day one:


hey dave

It’s been too many dead ringers since
serious words puddled in my throat
seeking your ear way north of Richmond
while I fretted about whether spilling
selected personal details down your shirt
makes sense.

Everything important starts
in common circumstance, then slips slopes
to land seat-first in a steady boat-
the point being thinking about
just talking with you
grounds me most days.

Twitter poems 7

I keep almost finished books
by my bed. Procrastination
may kill me, but in the end
I could have extra time to read.


In the night air,
planes chrrr overhead,
trains couple,
trucks shift
on the interstate.
Dreams take me places
without a sound.


Late night guests
chatter softly in my ear
hoping I’m listening.
This poem is written
in spite of them.
not minding either of us

Twitter poems 6

I got a mention at Muses and Metaphor 2012 !!



You could paint the stars
to find God, but it’s already been done.
Close your eyes and tell me what you see, Vincent.
(b. March 30, 1853)


Even if your dishes match,
dinner may not satisfy.
Prepare a meal with love,
eat from your lover’s hand.
You will have enough.


My mother waited for the end time
until she found hers, always believing
she was ready.
When death came,
she fought to stay.

Twitter poems 5

You are iced coffee & tiramisu.
I am the glass & the plate.
Leave your lip print
on my soft curves, finger
scattered crumbs.


Savory herbs from an old garden
poke through grass & weeds.
If no rescue comes before the weekend,
dinner will be trampled.


The choir sings Monteverdi,
no accompaniment.
The weakest soprano
clings to a bass for support,
wrapped around his vibrato.

Twitter poems day 4

Beach Interlude

Sand fleas love pink skin
under cover of darkness,
thin blanket no protection.
Better to sleep in the car.


My daughter sits
on the chilly front porch
at midnight
painting abstract landscapes.
I am nowhere to be seen.


Endtimes

Build a bunker underground
for your family.
As the world outside collapses,
you can kill each other with close contact.

Twitter poems Day 3

No heaven, says the atheist.
No atheists, states the priest.
Your life is in my capable hands,
says the surgeon.


The smell of (too-early) summer in the air,
I want new tennis shoes,
to run faster, jump higher,
to soar, to be twelve again.


Lack of motivation keeps me
tied to this chair, this screen.
I should write a memoir
in 140 characters. Or less.
I just did.

Twitter poems Day 2

getting ready for National Poetry Month with little bits of poems:

Day 2

Sing the body, celebrate woman,
wear your beads
but leave the drum in your car,
it’s really lame & you have no sense of rhythm.


You won’t help me move because it’s raining.
I have to be out by tomorrow.
Landlords disrespect global warming.
I’m melting.


No face painting at the park today,
Mrs. Bunny went back to bed.
If it’s raining later, we could dye some eggs,
hem your dress.

How about some twitter poems??

Yeah- why not? If NPR cares, why shouldn't I?


Violets devour the lawn, tiny ants climb walls
to an open kitchen window for careless crumbs.
If this isn’t spring it should be.
Let them be for a while.


Butter Pecan ice cream from a local farm.
A picnic in Sabino Canyon
remembered. Letters
tied with red ribbon in a cedar chest.
Each word on my tongue.


Rather than gather characters for a story,
I’m taking long-on-the-page poems,
rendering them to a sudden spontaneous photograph.

A poem

Where it happened

The sand is not precisely white-
more an expanse of empty, as death
to an atheist, there is no after-

life here has been radiated into null
space: no thriving planets, black holes,
Alamogordo gone nova, if you believe

hype tells the story (it doesn’t)
but you can land the shuttle nearby,
tap dance on the Atari tomb.

When the sun burst through the gap
in the curtains it was so bright
I had to squint to see the red slash

across the bed; no baby, never had been.
It was finished. We could go home.
our fearful trinity undone by nature.

Nothing was as we had expected:
barren land surrounded the motel,
science triumphed, deferred to the sun,

you started your period after all.
We had become wound together
until the world imploded, cast us out,

falling from the epicenter of "us"
rendered into relief, sadness.
Nothing made sense in the moment.

I drove back to Tucson, you slept,
face gaunt from crying, a stranger
who resembled someone I knew.

The view changed: white to brown,
to black as the sun slipped away
changing everything in a blink.

The art of rewrite

Usually rewriting involves culling words- refining. Someone who has a good ear said more was needed in this case, so I rearranged and refitted some thoughts, details. See what you think.

Version one

Aunt Pearl and the one-way street

It was a nice day to go the doctor-
the only place she drove anymore,
there and church, and Weingarten’s.

Behind the wheel sixty years or more,
she called her cranky old Buick Mildred
after her hated, long dead mother-in-law.

"Nobody decent would drive a Ford"
she’d say but I never knew why.
To me, one ride was good as another.

but no car can help the driver too blind
to notice two-way streets changed
after a lifetime, new signs unreadable

without her glasses, left home deliberately,
her doc being a tall drink of cool water
she was sure had a secret crush on her.

It was closed coffin, had to be, of course,
dump trucks don’t leave pretty victims,
Momma said she wore blue eye shadow

under the lid, too-rouged cheeks, wig,
in a white linen suit she’d loved though
hardly ever wore because it wrinkled.

I remember her singing "This old house"
with Rosemary Clooney, pulling from
a long neck bottle of Lone Star beer,

Tyler was called the Rose Capitol-
there were dozens at her funeral,
mostly yellow, and orange tiger lilies.


Rewrite

Aunt Pearl and the one-way street

Behind the wheel sixty years or more,
she called her cranky old Buick Mildred
after her hated, long dead mother-in-law.

"Nobody decent would ever drive a Ford"
she’d say, leaving the reason dangling.
To a kid, one ride was good as another.

It was a delightful day to be on the road,
she only used the car for appointments,
that and to church, and Weingarten’s.

She was half-blind but eager to see
her new doc, him being an Elvis look-alike
she was sure had a secret crush on her.

What she didn’t know was the month prior
some city-hall hotshot brought in a consultant
who redirected many of the downtown streets.

Where she’d driven a lifetime was now one-way,
right turns she’d made half a century or more
turned directly into oncoming traffic, busses.

Without her glasses, left home deliberately
in a fit of vanity, she failed to see new signs-
the dump truck driver said she never saw him.

It was closed coffin, had to be, of course,
those kind of wrecks don’t leave pretty victims,
though Momma said she wore blue eye shadow

under the mahogany lid, rouged cheeks, wig,
dressed in a white linen suit she’d loved
though hardly ever wore because it wrinkled.

I remember her singing "This Old House"
with Rosemary Clooney, pulling from
a long neck bottle of Lone Star beer.

Tyler, Texas was called the Rose Capitol-
there were dozens of bouquets at her funeral,
mostly yellow, and a lot of orange tiger lilies.

Poems-a-day deleted!

Poems-a-day deleted because they were really just drafts and need to be scrubbed up before I can send them off to various publications.

I'll let you know when and where that happens.

In the meantime, did I tell you PIF is doing a print :"Best of" and they want to include Mrs. Klute> It appeared in the November 2011 issue. Yeah!!

I remember workshopping it with Denise Duhamel and my workshop group a few years ago-

keep the words coming

Giving up on a Poem-a-Day temporarily

Yes, Virginia, I am abandoning writing a poem-a-day for a brief (I hope) time.

I have done so because I am being forced to be political. My home state has decided to attack the rights of women and their autonomy over their bodies. I have to write letters and make phone calls so the people I helped elect get back to the business of business.

There are hoards of old, white men who are willing to do just about anything to keep women in this state from making reasonable, personal choices about having an abortion if they so desire. Sure, they wrap it in the hot button issue of state (and national) funding, but the truth is it affects all of us on more than constitutional levels.

I want women to be able to make the choice of their hearts, their religious beliefs, their conscience. I would no more refuse a woman an abortion than I would force her to have one. I would drive a young woman to another state and help her pay for one if she felt she needed to do so. I would also support her getting aid if needed to raise that child I wished she had not given birth to. I'm old enough to remember when secret phone numbers were passed among us, when the university I attended would give you antibiotics and buy a bus ticket to Mexico and take care of you when you got back so you didn't die from the horrible conditions.

Keep in mind- we will choose, legally or illegally. My own grandmother was so damaged by a backalley abortion in Texas in the 30's she never was able to have another child (plus other issues with her body). Other women will abuse and sometimes murder those unwanted babies you insist must be born.

We may consider ourselves a "Christian" nation, but we are not all one religion, certainly not all Christians. Consider your own conscience and I hope you can see my position. First give us choice, then get back to fixing the economy, making the job market larger, eliminating lobbyists and bringing on term limits.

I AM a World Book Giver- Join me!!

I got my letter today- the deadline has been extended to Monday the 6th.

They want us to give away books, something I've been really good at in the past few years.

Go HERE to find out how you can give away books, too.

This is a real loss to poetry-

Szymborska has left us.

A wonderful poem:
View with a grain of sand