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Saturday's attempt, day 4
The Barnacle Says
I am a lunar crater on a gray whale’s back,
a lightening bolt on the Bering Sea.
I am hailstorms stinging Pacific swells,
baby fog drifting on hidden lagoons.I am feathers that tickle el Niño,
a calm morning before the storm,
the wing of a dove as it lands on a branch,
a curl of smoke from distant lands.I am the silent breath of a slow ride,
the chill in the air, an alpine moon,
a shiny nickel found on the sand.
I am antique paper rolled in a bottle,faded letters scratched in blood.
I am the tip of a whittled stick,
the thoughts that drift out to sea
and return with the incoming tide.***
Day 4. I wrote this poem using a few words for colors found on paint chip samples, the idea for my prompt currently up at Read Write Poem. I’ve used this idea before with some amusing results. Sometimes the names for colors on those paint samples are beyond the pale… . I also wrote about an animal for Poetic Asides.
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April poetry, day 3
The Problem with 3
3 doesn’t know it’s overexposed.
Just look at it, mugging for the camera,
mouth open, ready to devour 1 and 2.3 insinuates itself into crowds –
Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Father,
the Son, the Holy Ghost, the Fates,the Furies, the Graces, the hearts
of a squid, the pieces of a suit,
the beginning, the middle, the end.3 needs to lie on its back, let another
number take center stage.
With both curves on the floor,3 could be an adorable derriere,
a waxed-tip moustache, a wave
in the ocean. 3 could be 2 –2 smiles, 2 chins, a pair of mango
breasts, 2 arms open for company.***
Thanks, Carolee, for a great prompt at Read Write Poem. I also combined Carolee’s suggestions with Robert’s prompt at Poetic Asides.
Writing this poem helped me make it through an MRI this morning. I wrote it in my head while the machine droned like a jack hammer outside a window. The MRI is done, I’m fine, and poetry lives on!
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April poetry, day 2
Jorge Teaches the Preterit Tense
Saturday night, a pub crawl with a group
of Latin American exchange students.
We stroll along the Savannah River,
cobbled streets, neon flashing
in puddles and dark currents.Inside Luna Loca I dance techno beat salsa
with Jorge. Guapo, fuerte, de Venezuela.
It doesn’t matter that he wears three gold chains
or leaves his shirt unbuttoned a few too many holes.
A warm arm around my waist, he kisses me.
His tongue tastes like ice cubes, rum and Coke.
Hmm, me gustaba, I tell him. I was liking that.
No, you say me gustó, it pleased me,
and he kisses me again.***
My prompt is up at Read Write Poem – to pick some words from one subject area to write about another. I started with geographical terms and grammar terms, but discarded all those words except in the title. The other idea behind this poem came from Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetic Asides, which suggests that we write an Outsider poem.
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April poetry challenge day 1
Birth of the Sun
Across the bathroom floor,
the house shrouded
in a caul of night,
I lie face up.
In spite of cool tiles
against bare skin,
my five-year-old body
arcs from fever.
Mother and Father
crouch over me, swab my torso
with rubbing alcohol.
My heart turns to lava,
leaks out my pores, swirls
into a mass above my parents’ backs.
There is no movement toward the light –
I am the source.
***Day 1 of napowrimo at Read Write Poem and Poetic Asides. I’m trying to do both challenges, because I’m an over achiever like that. Today’s prompt from Poetic Asides is to write an origin poem. Jill’s prompt is to make up a metaphor and include it in the poem.
Jill has asked us to gather 50 words as part of this month of poetry writing. If you have a cool word or two you’d like to donate to my personal cause, please leave it here in the comments section. Thanks!
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Coolness
Vanessa Daou’s new album, Joe Sent Me, is exactly what I want to listen to now. I’ve been keeping the CD in my car while I drive around town, and I even played it for my yoga class the other day. They melted.
Daou’s vocals are pure silk, and the jazz riffs underneath are the wind that rustles the lyrics. It’s heaven. Her work shows the heights that can be reached when the artist takes risks – it’s contemporary, fresh, original. Go listen. And go read too. Collin Kelley’s interview with Vanessa Daou is on page 28 of the current issue of ouroboros review. A huge thank you to both artists for being a part of our fledgling magazine.
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I just finished reading Marie Howe’s book, What the Living Do (WW Norton, 1997) a collection of poems that explores Howe’s relationship with her brother, her father, her lover, and the loss of these men.
Since I have been immersed in all things Spanish for the last twenty-five years, I’ve been playing catch up on a lot of contemporary poetry in English. I have Jillypoet to thank for turning me on to Marie Howe. Each poem in this collection cracked my heart open. A deep bow of thanks to Howe for knowing the best way to share the core of her emotional life, her loves, her losses, her joy, and intimate moments.
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A friend has lent me Red April (Pantheon, 2009, translated into English by Edith Grossman), a murder mystery and political thriller by Santiago Roncagliolo. In case the genre puts you off, you should know that Roncagliolo is a gifted satirist and minute observer of culture.
The novel is set in contemporary Peru, in the provincial city of Ayacucho, where restaurants serve cuy (guinea pig)and farm workers punch each other until they draw blood in certain country festivals. The protagonist is a perfect anti-hero for the post modern era – a district attorney who has created a shrine to his diseased mother in his childhood home.
I’m reading it in Spanish (Abril Rojo, Punto de Lectura, 2007) and loving every minute of it. Since I left my teaching job I haven’t been speaking as much Spanish, so this is a fun foray back into South American literature, a surreal world even at it’s most mundane.
Balanced On the Edge 