How To Soften Your Hands

I would wash dishes until my skin peeled off in ragged rinds
if only my plates and bowls would squeak,
you are happily married.

..........The husband shovels tunnels around
..........the shuttered house
..........waiting to be rid of the hungry horde.

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I wrote this in response to Carolee's poem which she wrote after we played with Anne Sexton's poem Her Kind. It's sort of a letter poem.

Process note: I wrote it first without the snow and the husband, and ended with the pretty bowl. The husband wormed his way in. Should he stay?

This is Not a Love Poem, or: So, Jill Says to Jack

When you told me
take this pail
I drank the water
carried myself up the hill.

When you demanded glue
I roiled my insides
pieced your crown
together with bits of sticky flesh.

I am not afraid to fall,
even without you beneath me.
The higher the hill, the more
sky to swallow on the way down.

When we are mostly water
what is there to do but swim?

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This is a letter poem in response to Carolee's Systole. Thank you Carolee, for inspiring me to finally write a poem.

When to Call a House a Home

A Letter Poem, Responding to Nathan's Security

By day it poses as a subtle ranch
shuttered, mellow, a perfect child

tucked in a church pew.


You should read Nathan's poem. It's language is sparse, concise, not a word out of place. You will not want to move in, however.

I don't know what it is with "the house" as extended metpahor, but it has been making its wretched way into my poetry lately. And I love my little house. Good rule of thumb in poetry: always follow where the muse takes you. Don't ask questions.

The End of the Rainbow in the Tip of a Cigarette: Poetry Gong #5

Christine over at Balanced on the Edge just wrote a letter poem in response to Jo's (Florescence) poem on poverty. From these two poems, I was inspired to write the piece below, about my fascination with a neighbor family in my hometown. They were a loud house, a full house, a messy, smelly house. I loved them.

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Dear Christine,

When old Unk lit his hand-rolled
cigarette on the sagging wood porch,
the whole clan pulled up a step.
This was the family with the kids who ate
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bread flopping
in time with shoe-less feet up and down the sidewalk.

Up and down the sidewalk my mother cried,
apron flying behind her one summer afternoon.
I’ve lost my daughter. I’ve got her bologna
with the crust cut off waiting on a plate
in our kitchen. Have you seen her? She never thought
to stop at the neighbor’s where the children took meals to go.

Whiskered stump of a man, Unk rarely spoke.
A smoking Buddha, wrapped in paper-thin plaid
and tattered polyester slacks. Uncle, grandfather,
brother, father all jammed into one man, into one house.
His tobacco stink wrapped its brown arms around
you, pulled you in like moth to flame.

My mother once told me how she and her sister
were the only kids who smelled like a barn.
Now she relishes her daily showers, bastes her body
in Jean Nate, dusts herself in Love’s Babysoft.
She is a garden, the fistful of dandelions on the neighbor’s table
next to my half-eaten bowl of cold Spaghettios.