Poetry Gong - Poem 29

Without My Glasses

The supermodel fallen to the floor
on the All Things Glamorous
sampler card looks like Jesus.
I wonder whose funeral
I have been to recently.

My mother keeps mass cards
in her bible. Tiny prayers bearing
dead people's names, dates on earth.
Even though she is a Methodist,
the Catholic cards fall to the floor--
death will speak to anyone--
each time she opens the book.

The blond bombshell has no name
scrawled on her four-by-six,
just her label, Mary Kay, wound
through her wind-blown hair.
When she dies, some near-sighted
everywoman will remember her elegance,
say a prayer for her gold sequined gloss,
losing its luster in the papery folds.


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Here's Something You Might Not Know About The King

Elvis loves Santana. That Latin guitar. That soul sacrifice, each time the Spanish man lays hands on his Brazilian rosewood. Like glass. Timbalas. Congas. Words to roll on the floor with, to roll in your mouth and tremble with. Two sides to each of us. In each of us, a king. Steel drum, sex between the bass beats king. Knitting wool underwear with Jesus king. It doesn’t matter what side of the bed. Just that you sleep. Just that you wake.

(a prose poem I am not sure of...)

NaPoWriMo #28 - And the prose poem makes a return...

I Took a Wild Walk in Nature, and This Is What I Found

The remains of the dead deer, the shrunken head, the mottled fur. Animals had picked it clean; its hooves were still attached. Like dying with your socks on and lying there until someone kicks your ankle to see if the socks stay up. The first time my father almost died he was tied by his wrists in the post-op room. They do that to patients who try to take their IVs out, even the strong silent types. Where are my shorts?, he bellowed. Get me my shorts. This big strapping man, vein blown out by a giant air bubble, three feet from meeting Jesus, and his first waking thoughts wander past boxer shorts. I like to recall this moment and say he grabbed my wrist. When I found the deer, I kicked a leg to see if it would crumble. To see what death felt like from the outside, see what it moved like. And when I heard on the news tonight that a man had kept his daughter hidden, a sex-slave for twenty-four years, I knew. This is the dead deer. This is why a greater aneurysm came to take the place of the first. A son came to take the place of a father. There is bad karma wafting into the air all around us. Daily toxins from bad men, bad medicine, bad blood. When I tripped over the white-washed bones of the dead deer, a piece of back bone sprung up, a final hand waving (not drowning). I walked with it, swinging it like a staff. I took a wild walk in nature, and this is what I found.

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I didn't think I had a poem in me tonight. Actually, I started two or three today, and a few more the past few days, but none of the starts have moved me to finish. They are like half started paintings, languishing in my journal, poor things.

Tonight, I was going to enlist my husband's help. I was feeling that desperate. Help me write a poem. We can share lines. It ounded like fun. Then, I pulled a couple lines from a piece I've been working on for 10 years. Holy moly. 10 years. And I went with it. It helped that the first few lines grossed my tough, black-belt husband out. And he the hiker, nature guy. Ha! City kid. I told him I didn't need him and off I went.

Question--should this be divided into two parts? Maybe at "...my wrist./ When I found the dead deer..."