It's almost wedding season

Well, when I first read PoeTry ThuRsday's prompt for the week, I thought, hmm...not for me. I don't think I've ever read a conversation poem. I've written poems in voices, one voice, and even poems for two voices (Ralph Fleischer). Then I thought maybe I'd better do it. I've been gone from PT for far too long. Then, I thought, ah well, maybe just some other poem.

But then! Then I went to my first therapy session in years. That's as "bloggy" as I'll get about that subject! So, as I was saying, But then! I had a poem idea. A conversation popped right up onto my computer screen. At least it wasn't in my head!

Let's see if blogger will let me post it from Word with tabs. Oh. Not well. Not well at all. I just don't have the patience for HTML--or the skill. The thing is, I really like these two poems next to each other, one left justified, one tabbed over. So, I will post the complete poems following. No crazy spaces or funky spacing, just so you can read them separately. Bear with me. I worked on this HTML for an hour!

On the Occasion of The Wife’s Eighth Wedding Anniversary: A Conversation

Drag them to the altar,                     Isn’t there anyone to stop

your feet, cemented in suede           me? Friend, mother, lover?

pumps, poised to jump                                   Read the script. You are cordially invited
through the hoops of marriage,                 to maul the mailman. Just jump the guy
scurry through the whale bone                  take back the invitations
.
of ivory crinolin.                                              Hunt down the bluejays
If you can’t wait to wrap                      making love in the bushes,
your young frame in gingham,               humping through the air.
draw the apron strings tight                   Give them a room far from my
you have been worshipping                   watery eyes. We are all doomed
at the wrong altar,                                     to drown in our sorrows one way
you missed your stop,                            or another. While you are out there
missed your cue, missed the point.       rustle up the dressmaker
Mark my words bride,                         rip your bodice from his hands
you will miss the Miss.                   stain his fingers with the sweet cherry
                                                      of a fine cigar. Bring me the butt. 
 
 
On the Occassion of the Wife's Eighth Wedding Anniversary
 
Drag them to the altar,                       
your feet, cemented in suede                          
pumps, poised to jump                       
through the hoops of marriage,           
scurry through the whale bone            
of ivory crinolin.                                             
If you can’t wait to wrap                                
your young frame in gingham,             
draw the apron strings tight,                          
you have been worshipping                            
at the wrong altar.  You missed your stop         
missed your cue, missed the point.                  
Mark my words bride,                          
you will miss the Miss.
 
 
Miss: In Reply
 
Isn’t there anyone to stop
me? Friend, mother, lover?
Read the script. 
You are cordially invited
to maul the mailman. Just jump the guy
take back the invitations.
Hunt down the bluejays
making love in the bushes,
humping through the air.
Give them a room far from my
watery eyes. We are all doomed
to drown in our sorrows one way
or another. While you are out there
rustle up the dressmaker.
Rip your bodice from his hands,
stain his fingers with the sweet cherry
of a fine cigar. Bring me the butt.
 

Just came in from the bus, should be playing outside, instead am writing a poem

Last post of NaPoWriMo. I'll have to do a proper tally, but I think I wrote almost 20 poems during the month of April. Now to type them, give them all life. What I learned on NaPo vacation...It is very fulfilling to buy big stacks of poetry books at used bookstores. No, no, Muse, not that. It is very fulfilling to sit down at the moment a good line strikes me and write. Just type it as it comes. Orange juice in a toddler flood on the kitchen floor, be damned!

Here is my poem for the day. I will be spending the better part of this Monday trying to find the write words to describe how the sun looks at this very moment, after the rain stopped and the clouds just disappeared. Like a giant floodlight. The light at the skating rink during midnight skate. Unreal. Sunnier than sun...

After the Rain

Wet cats melt your heart.
Strong men standing on roofs
turn to Atlas before your eyes.
Lawns left untended are greener,
you might eat their blades
by mistake, plant bulbs with a spoon.
The sun is a lamp with new filament.
Have you always been so beautiful?
The mailman floats in on Pan’s wings.
As you shower in stray raindrops
remember Eden. Cover what you must
with cool, wet oak leaves,
leave no fern unfurled.

When Barbie Was My Muse

Oh man. Here I commit to NaPoWriMo, and I haven't posted in two days. I've still got poems in my head, but, man, teaching and mommy-ing take it out of me. So...in other news, I met Denise Duhamel! Woohoo! I went to a reading at my alma mater and I was, gasp, early. Only because I had the time wrong. My husband taught the last 15 minutes of my middle school art class (8 girls, hee hee hee, that's revenge for any little wrong he's ever done me!), just so I could be on time.

Well, I was sitting on the outside edge of an aisle and I was one of only three people there and she said Hi! To me! I was cool, man. I said hi back. The reading, of course, was great. And, of course, I brought 1 book and bought two, so she signed my books. And we got to chat a little. She was very kind, very funny, very gracious. I hope to be so cool when I am a famous poet. And, best of all, she liked my hair!

It was a night out, a night listening to great poetry. In honor of all this, and in honor of Kinky, Duhamel's book of poems about Barbie, I am posting two Barbie old poems, written when I was a post-grad, non-wife, non-mother. No villanelle for me this week.


Still Life: Woman In Barbie Mask

When I wear this mask
I feel like a princess,
an American dream
girl, an apple pie, a white
picket fence, a brilliant
ivory, piano-key smile.

And then I take the mask off.
Me.
Mousy.

For my legs have grown crooked,
my hair is in tangles, and someone
has bitten off the toe of my left foot.


On Becoming the Woman I’ve Always Wanted To Be:
An Ode to Barbie

I tripped on one of your plastic shoes today.
I was wearing it.
It was a narrow fit,
too small, too red, too pointy,
too made for someone with a blond plastic head.

But I wore a pair of them out anyway
hoping some Joe, or better yet some Ken
would ask me out.
No luck.
Yet.

Later, I stopped at the salon,
still wearing your shoes.
I have your hair now.

The beautician said three Barbies
and one Skipper gave their lives for
my transformation.

Still no Ken.
Not even a Joe.

Because I needed a car to go with
the hair and the shoes, I stole a Corvette.
Another narrow fit, and those damn little
shoes tripped me up again.
My little plastic pump slipped off the brake.
I wrecked the Corvette on the interstate.

Good news, though.
Officer Ken said I looked like someone he used to know
and let me off with just a warning.
We’re going out tonight.
Now all I need is a little dress.

Teaching My Son Honor

I am continually surprised at how much this VT tragedy is affecting me (is it effecting? I, a poet, with a master's degree, am never clear on this one!) Here is my 11th poem of National Poetry Month. I have been trying my best to write a poem a day. Do poems in my head count?


Teaching Jude to Honor

Sent my son to school
in maroon shirt
orange vest.
He does not know
he is honoring the dead
he has never known.
Send myself to school
in maroon and orange,
my honor disguised in flowers
and crystal beads.
What if a crazy man opts
to shoot everyone in maroon today?
This is what we are left with.
Fear of dressing.
I seal the popcorn snack
with extra ziplocs.
My son will have a moment
of silence at noon
and no crazy man will know.

Bad (luck) comes in threes

Timeline: How the Tragedy Unfolded

It was a love triangle of sorts,
a man, a wife, a fish.
While news of America’s deadliest shooting spree
droned on in the eleven o’clock hour,
my husband massacred the goldfish,
my orange bubble-eyed lover.
The black goldfish floated to the top
after the dinner dishes were rinsed,
an unexplained loss, his reputation
for gathering and holding a home’s death
in the color of his fins
proven true.
To console, my husband, fish master,
brought in the buckets and hoses.
Outside, sirens wailed, firemen rushed
past, en route to drain another basement flooded
by a surprise Spring nor’easter.
“None of us thought it was gunshots,”
the college sophomore said.
But within seconds the source of the sound
became clear, when a gunman entered the lecture hall,
shot the professor before turning his guns on students.

Inside, grief counseling began with a sharp intake
of breath, water rushing up and out
of the tank, out with the bad, in with the good.
Scrubbing algae, stink of fish death
off the glass walls drowns
out the tinkling notes of the television’s death toll.
Too late, a wayward fish swims upstream,
headlong into the syphon.
“I’m not sure how long it lasted.
It felt like a really long time,
but was probably only a minute or so.”
Dumb luck sucks his beady eye
out of it’s socket.
Red lights flash, another house flooded,
another party of rescuers dispatched.
Before he can be netted and iced,
friends of the goldfish eat his hanging eye.
Nature takes care of its own.
The people of Blacksburg struggled to find order
in the wake of the shooting.

The Art of Invisibility

I had a whole other poem planned, scribbled out in elaborate progression in my journal, but I couldn't get to the heart of it. As an artist AND a poet, this inability to SAY something about ART drove me crazy, to the point of stalling my writing. So, tonight, after a long day of teaching about Georgia O'Keefe and Henri Rousseau, I settled in bed with an art teaching book about stories in art. I stumbled on a painting by Marc Chagall called "Midsummer Night's Dream." All of a sudden, the woman in the painting started speaking to me. Thank goodness. I really needed a poem! Thank you Queen Titania!


The Art of Invisibility

If I hold my breath
I will fade into the distance.
Let the ass take center stage.

In my simple white gown
and veil, suckled up against
my lover’s brown fur face

and morning coat, what choice
do I have but to melt
like so much snow in Hell.

Melt like creamery butter
left out in mid-summer sun.
Already, my eyes are dissolving

in the artist’s titanium haze.
My face is a blur, my body flat
and boneless beneath this virgin robe.

Bottom, lover, man-donkey, is dark.
His strokes much deeper
than my own hesitant etchings.

We are complimentary, at best.
The heat of the ass’s red-orange gaze
melts my sallow oils, smears my cool

blue undertones. Make no mistake.
No red devil floating at my head,
no hair-faced donkey, no King of the Fairies

will smother my ghostly form.
I will take this blue fan, rub myself out,
off this fading canvas. I will become Queen

of enchanted nothing, bright as light
high in the green branches
of a pink stained tree.

Here's to the underdog

Some things make my heart hurt. A lame deer, nudged along by his pack, until they just can't bring him along, so they leave him, camoflaged in the woods, while they carry on. A five-year-old, made fun of for having a fruit roll-up that is different. There is no accounting for what can pull at my heartstrings, just a guarantee that I always root for the underdog.

Tonight I decided I needed to write a poem. I pulled out a Sharon Olds' book, determined to try and write a poem like one of hers. The first two lines of "The Untangling" read, "Detritus, in uncorrected/nature, in streambeds or on wood floors..." I didn't read any further. I was just reminded of the mess that is my backyard as the Spring thaw begins, which reminded me of the deer, which, for whatever reason, reminded me of the story my son told me while we were grocery shopping for this week's snacks.

This is a first draft, a rough draft. Comments & critiques welcome!


Tracking a Lame Deer, My Son Speaks of Snack Time

Limb by limb, limp by limp, the broken deer hobbles
into our backyard and through an invisible mirror
into maimed animal heaven. The only sign, a mat of white
hair floating in a snow puddle. On three good legs
he has vanished into the February trees. Tracing his hoof prints

we see eternity. “The kids made fun of my snack,” my son tells me.
“They said my fruit roll-up was old.” It was, in fact, organic.
The best flattened fruit to be had, healthy, full of vitamins
and squashed love. Ostracized for healthy living. A small slight,
but still, the sugar-eaters and the red dye # 40-mongers have pushed

my son from the kindergarten fold. Mud sucks our boots,
pries our knees loose from our legs. There is no sign
of the deer we have called Luke, after the Star Wars hero
who turns to the dark side and back again. We’ve no choice
but to pass through the invisible mirror. Green fields swallow us.

Here our deer is gold, his leg has agreed to bend and steady,
his family of six has taken him back. He is once again lucky seven,
part of the crowd, welcomed on all the fence leaping, tree nuzzling romps.
It is what I wish for my son, to go back in time, to fill out his skeletal belly
with leaves not fallen, berries not rotten. At his last supper there will be no betrayal.

That ridiculous hood

Premonitions About the Forest – A Father’s Advice to a Girl Off To College

Forget everything you know about the golden rule,
good karma, the kindness of strangers.
Our world is one giant forest,
trees, wolves, mud underfoot, men around
every towering pine, shotguns quivering in their hands.

When you get set to go
off into the trees, Red Riding Hood,
take care. Take more than a basket
and that ridiculous hood.

There’s the usual precautions,
the smart girl’s staples:
condoms
pepper spray
an extra key
a full tank of gas
jumper cables
that hundred I gave you,
tucked not in your bra,
but in your secret compartment.

Don’t give too much away.

When you go off into the forest, Red, beware.
The trees have teeth.
There is fire.
There is blood.
There are winds that blow
hotter, deeper, stronger
than your typical tornado.
I mentioned this to Dorothy.
See what became of her.

Mind the purple trees.
They’re bad shit.
When the sky turns orange and green, run.
Glass may fly out at any given moment.
Catch a shard to light your way.

In the clearing you will see a band of gnarly trees
dancing like old ladies, bending, bowing, scraping.
Join in.

Whatever your premonitions about the forest, dear girl,
know you are always, always alone.

Plan for the future. Check your gauges.
If you ever need help, try standing
at the edge of the forest,
show a little leg.

In the season of Lent

There is a lovely, charming little exercise I do with my young poetry students: My face & I. We draw self-portraits, then write. Lovely. Charming. Likewise, this picture of my SpiderGirl. Adorable. Charming. As for this poem, all I can say is, someone must have ticked off my muse.

Can anyone explain it? Thanks for reading!

In the Season of Lent, I Give Up Unneccesary Spending

My face and I have made a deal.
No more masks. Last night’s battle
royale over budgets, bathtimes, bad sex
will not be forgotten, washed off,
or creamed over. It will appear as is,
a wide red stripe across my left cheek.
Tomorrow when the rent is due
and the money has gone to the butcher,
the baker, the car loan maker,
my face and I will again wear
the band of our defeat, wide white
stripe of strife crossways on the right cheek.

My face and I, of sound mind and body,
will leave nothing but teeth and company
as we head out cross country
in search of the thumb that left its print
on the broad wide expanse between our eyes.
We never agreed to give anything up,
relinquish, renew or renounce.
We refuse to give up.
Tongue, with your wafer
you stay back, guard the abandoned

ears with your body, your life.

Without my face I am nothing
but another pretty fact,
a blonde that heads will turn
for, if only to pluck out the eyes
left behind, tendons wrapped around
each stringy, dyed tendril.
My face and I are ashes.
Our mask is plastic smoke
polluting your air. Bless you.

Superstition

I won't say superstition rules my life. I will say that when I write, I go with the first words, not because they're the best words, but because they came from a higher power, they were a gift, so it's bad karma to get rid of them. On the other hand, if something doesn't sound right, I'm no stranger to delete. I will say I walk around ladders. On the other hand, I owned a black cat and he crossed my path daily.

My kind of superstition is more based on instinct. Fueled by my old childhood intuition that, Yes, the stuffed animals do talk when I leave the room.

More proof. Today I bought koi for my tank, and I was this close to buying the black and white one that looked like he was ready to be iced, just because he was the first one I looked at. It is only because I have lived with my husband, the experienced fish keeper, that I passed my first fish up for the calico koi. Still, as I write, I hope the black and white koi will forgive me for not giving him a home. Am I superstitious? I don't know. At least my new fish are still swimming. Here's a poem on the matter of grocery shopping and superstition.


Superstition

She takes only the Empire apples her long fingers land on first,
bruises, pock marks, indentations be damned.
The broccoli she brushes first is the bunch
that gets bagged and brought home.

The spiders’ web wound round more than half
the last weeping red pint of strawberries?
The first one she laid eyes on,
the plastic container she couldn’t leave hanging
for fear its feelings would be hurt.

She feels like a grade school bully
blushes, even, as she stands, hand hovering
over the bin of Brussels sprouts.

Choosing the freshest, the biggest, the best is not how she shops.
She buys her groceries with her old pal superstition
riding shotgun in the wobbly wheel cart,
the cart she absentmindedly pulled from the silver train
outside the store, the cart she should have put back
were it not for the nagging feeling that something bad
might happen if she took a different one, a better one,
the one not intended for her in the grand scheme of things.

In the grand scheme of things if you follow your instincts
do what comes naturally, do what comes first
it will all come out all right, all will be right with the world.
The apple pie will be mealy.
The broccoli will taste of mold.
A mountain of whipped cream will avalanche
sending the furry strawberries
crawling down your throat,
chasing the rogue band of deflated Brussels sprouts.

As she leaves the grocery store,
the left wheel of her lame cart will freeze up
in front of an oncoming car.
Of course this isn’t how it ends.
She shopped for the grand scheme.
She will arrive home safely,
cart her ripping paper sacks up the steps,
make dinner for her hungry family.
Everyone will go to bed happy,
bellies wrapped snuggly in rabbit’s foot blankets.

One for the birds

There is not a lot I can say about this week's prompt for POetry ThURsdaY. I'm not supposed to! The prompt is to write about something beautiful without naming it. Thing is, from whence I began, so far have I flown. Heehee. I'm getting silly. It's late.

Anyway, I was writing, writing, writing about the beautiful dance the birds were holding in my front yard. So many birds, more than I've ever seen on my lawn. It was amazing. Fast, furious, darting in and out of the trees like drunken sailors, and yes, by my estimation they were all men. So, I wrote the poem. Only to be left a little non-plussed by it. Then, on re-reading, I realized, the longing was reminscent of something from so long ago. The bad boyfriend popped into my head. He didn't deserve even a title on one of my poems, but here it is, nonetheless.

So much for not naming something. Thanks for reading!


How a Flock of Birds Brought Me Back to 21, Cheated On By a State Trooper

The birds are having parties in my trees
when I am not at home.
I caught you robin.
Big, fat harbinger of Spring,
I know for a fact
you and your red-breasted friends do not go South
when the snow flies.
And here you are, wings askew,
orange belly puffed out in pride or testosterone, proving my point.
But what of your cardinal friends?
What about the pretty boys?
Sweet red cowboys.
Don’t see their kind around here too often.
Loud, raucous bold as their bloody feathers.
They dwarf the smooth-crown regulars,
the black-capped chickadees
the house sparrows
and purple finches.
What’s the meaning of this?
What’s the deal with the crowd?
Pulling in my driveway
it looks like a tailgate party
in my front yard.
Wings tipped, breasts bared, feathers ruffled,
tufted titmice scrambling to cover their stiff crowns.
And red-headed wood pecker, is that a lampshade?
Where’s my invitation?
I would like to eat and fly.
After all, I pay the rent.

The Last Time

Here I am again! Don’t they say third time’s a charm? Again, tonight, I start with the writing, end with the babble.

The prompt: The last time.

Take 1: Wherein I recall old boyfriends

The last time I kissed a frog
I leaned in at an awkward angle
swallowed my tongue
sure that he would have enough
for both of us and prayed for rain
so much rain that I would slide
right off my lily pad,
or lightening
so much electricity
that I would forget he was a frog after all
and then, ten thouand volts coursing through us
the real fireworks would begin.
These were my prayers.
What I got were warts.

Take 2: Still the Boyfriends

The last time they met there was a bar and a barmaid. There was a short skirt, a cold beer, and a blueberry muffin. The muffin came much later, but hey, it was the last time after all.

Take 3: Like I Said, Third Time’s a Charm

The last time

This is the last time I am going to tell you.
Door closing. Chapter ending. This is the last time
I am going to tell you.
Why is it when a parent gives a child the last time line,
it is never really the last time.
Never really.
There is the last kiss, the last thrust, the last heavy sigh.
The last scent of a certain shampoo on a certain head of hair.
These last things are really the end,
the final glimpse. No one is there wagging a finger,
growling, This is the last time I am going to tell you.

Face it. The last time you see him,
the last time you smile at her,
will dawn like any other morning, bright or not,
rainy or snowy, ice on your windshield
or flowers in your garden.
You may or may not have time to eat breakfast.
You may be late for an appointment.
You may forget to kiss your husband, your wife,
your first daughter goodbye.
When you see your friend, your mother, your old roommate,
you may or may not tell him or her how you really feel,
how your weekend was,
how much you enjoyed the book, the wine, the movie.
You will wander off, or run off, or saunter off in your car or on your bike.
Maybe you will have merely passed in the grocery store
and smiled. That could be the last time.
This may be the last time you read these words.
If it is, then, I told you so.


Now for the discussion! I have spent the greater part of my evening looking for a yellow legal pad that may or may not exist. You see, I was playing with the kids when I found a book of poetry by a woman I took a workshop with. Myra Shapiro.

She signed it, to Jill Poet Mom. Oh! I said, more to myself than to the doll-dressing dragon-flying children. I must find the journal or yellow legal pad I was using when I took her workshop. I must have some lovely mothering poems in there. After all, she called me poet mom.

And so the search ensued. And then my daughter squirted Bath & Body Works lotion in her eye at the exact moment my son had a bathroom incident. Simultaneous calls of Mommy! halted my search. Dinner halted my search. Heading out to teach a creative writing class halted my search. Reading a sad Rain Forest bedtime story to my son halted my search. At 8:45, the search resumed. To no avail.

Now I am writing. And you know, every time I start out thinking I am so uninspired, I keep plugging and I wind up with something I kind of like. Writing practice is like that. Now if only I could get myself to edit. To revisit the stuff I start. Any tips?

By the Sea

First, the writing. Then the pre-amble. Backwards, I know, but it's how I want to do it!

The prompt: "By the sea, beneath the yellow and sagging moon." (after Walt Whitman)

Take 1:

The night I stepped outside and saw a yellow and sagging moon,
I knew the end was near. If the moon, harbinger of love and sex and howling
is sagging, what good can come of it? A sagging moon is a sad moon,
an unhappy clown moon, a weak, tired, jaded moon, less yellow than beige,
more paste, than gold.


Take 2:

By the sea, beneath the yellow and sagging moon,
I hung my wash, picked up handfuls of towels and t-shirts
wrung clean of your scent and flung them out to dry.
By morning, they had taken on the golden hue of moonshine,
sprouted arms pink as starfish and flown off to rest
in an eagle’s nest on an island just past clear view by binocular.
Over the waves I thought I heard you say, Hand me a t-shirt would you. I’m cold.


Take 3:

By the sea, beneath the yellow and sagging moon,
she flung her heavy body into the sand.
Dove headfirst into a soggy, pebbly dune,
reached arm over head, arm over head, in a crawl
that brought her nowhere. Had she but time and foresight
she would have filled her pockets with rocks,
strode ten steps further to the sea.
Not by the sea, like the old song sings,
by the sea, by the sea, but ten steps further to the sea.
Walk in, not out. Walk in, one step, two steps,
rocks dragging her down down down.
Then she would not be crawling, but stroking
beneath the sea, by the light of the sagging moon,
the wings of a golden angel fish newly drowned.


NOW, the pre-amble, or after-amble, as it were, wherein I blather on about my process...

OK. This is going to be harder than it looks. Uh, harder than it feels? OK. This is going to be hard. You see, I just wanted to sit down and read Secrets of the Zona Rosa: How Writing (and Sisterhood) Can Change Women’s Lives, by Rosemary Daniel. I mean, with an introduction like this, can you blame me? “Our name came from a quarter in Mexico City..But if you think for a minute, you realize that it indicates more, that the rosa has been a part of us from our beginnings. And if you look inside yourself, at your inner lips or even more intimate parts—as many women did during the ‘70s—you see that all women are created pink, with a special relationship to that color.”

So, I would really like to read on, but, I have made a commitment to my lonely blog, to my muse, to my children…No, no, that’s the promise to feed and clothe us.

Anyway, as I have made my commitment, it only goes to follow that tonight my husband would download all of our favorite sitcoms to watch on the DVD player in our bedroom that he so kindly gave me as a Christmas present. (Who needs silver bangles or poetry books?) Yes. All the sitcoms we missed while he was away for work last week, sleeping in a KING SIZE bed in a room with a kitchen and a KING SIZE television, and no children, and I was at my parents’ house in the Adirondacks with my children in the home I grew up in, going to bed at 8pm every night and getting up at 5am every morning, removing tiny feet and elbows from my back and ribs.

Oh, I digress, and, anyway, it wasn’t all bad. I got to hang out with my mom. Too bad we would’ve had to hop the train to Montreal in the dead of night and leave the children with my father watching John Wayne to have a conversation that didn’t get interrupted with, “Nana, I need…” or “Mommy, when can I play X-box again?”

So. With a good book calling to me, and Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother beckoning from the blue screen, it was hard to get into the writerly mode. But I did it. And, actually, now that it’s done, I really like the last bit that I came up with.

The prompt is not one I would choose if I had my druthers (and just what are druthers?), but in the end, after three tries, I kind of like the direction it took. Whitman is a classic, and I tend to prefer contemporary poets. I studied all the classics, the masters, in undergrad and grad school, so I have my “classical training,” but give me Billy Collins or Margaret Atwood any day. Not to mention Mary Oliver, Sandra Cisneros, Naomi Shihab Nye.

Well. That's it. Hubby awaits with chips and sitcoms. Thanks for reading!

I Promise to Write Every Day

Because my blog has been a long time alone, because I feel guilty, not only for choosing dust bunnies over my children today, but for chossing dust bunnies over my writing, I have made a New Month Resolution. Well, it's almost a new month, almost windy, windy March, so what better time to let the winds of change sweep over my blog, over my writing life!

So, to get back into the swing of things, to crawl that much closer to my goal of sending out a manuscript this year (hey, who knew that was my goal for the year? Writing really works!), I am going to try to write daily on my blog. I have every intention of writing from the daily prompts in A Writer's Book of Days by Judy Reeves. We shall see. Please feel free to join me on my quest for writing nirvana.

Today's prompt is: Once, in the midst of all the recklessness...


Domestic Dispute

Once, in the midst of all the recklessness
I took the tiny clothes of all the Barbies
and lined them up along the window sill
for all the neighbors to see.

The man with the pugs wanted to know
when the garage sale started.
The man with the young daughter wondered
how much for the blond on the far left,
his daughter wants a doll.

My husband came home after leaving for milk.
He was really just running away. A woman with a gun,
even a glue gun, even a camera, or a handful
of miniature miniskirts can scare a man.
So here he comes with the milk and a Snickers bar,
but he is not snickering because he knows better
and I say, Which Barbie do I look like?

My husband has not come home in three days.
The milk soaked into the carpet has turned
to crust and odor. The Barbies are fading into
the white sill, the babies are hungry.
We are all losing our hair, blonde tufts
falling out in fistfuls, when we remember
to reach up, to pull.

The sun is pale in the sky,
the peonies have lost their pink.
In the midst of all the recklessness,
I wish I had not told my husband to go to Hell.

I Am No Genie

I don't know about prose poems. I have never been a fan. I like the brevity of poetry, the slim lines, the paring down of weighty, worthless words, the sharp images. Of course, I like Mary Oliver's prose poems. I feel like I am getting more of her wisdom, the more words there are.

But still, I am not a fan. I had a prose poem I wrote last Fall for an on-line poetry course, but even that, looking back on it and considering it for posting, left me cold. Sorry, poem. I love you, but, I'm just not that into you. That said, I did try to write a new one. It meanders. I have the urge to cut, cut, cut. And, not only that, no matter how I try, it doesn't show up properly on my blog. The line ends are all wrong! But, for now, I will let it fly. Fly little poem with seventeen million wings. Don't get bogged down...

I Am No Genie

A genie dressed in green silk robes slid out of my oven on a flaming gingham potholder. Paralyzed by the intoxicating aroma of chicken divan, the girl magician stood immobile on the edge of a wooden spoon. Before my very eyes, she dove into the casserole, offered herself up for an early evening feast.

Because they would not understand inadequacy, mommy-guilt or mommy testing her new bottle of acting tears, I tell my children the story of the flying kitchen genie.

But, alas, I am no genie, and it is just me, the mommy, perched atop my flat-top stove
waving a ladle at the radio, that harbinger of today’s disaster. The radio, squat, blue boom box that just informed me I have been feeding my family poison peanut butter,
a little Salmonella spread to go with their fluff and crustless bread.

You try and try to do right by your family, fill them full of vitamins and minerals,
steam the broccoli, deep six the fryer, broil the free-range chicken. Weekly, daily, minute by sticky minute, you send healthy lunches and sugar free snacks. Cushion the goods, nestle them among paper napkin love notes, written in Permanent marker.

All this, only to have an invisible voice looming behind an invisible finger pointing directly at you, chastising, accusing, sealing your family’s doom more airtight than Goldfish in Ziploc. Their fate, their gastrointestinal distress lies in your sticky hands.

It wasn’t like I bought it from some mustached door-to-door salesman. I went to the market, to market, to market, on a Monday like every other good mother. My steady hand passed over crunchy, full fat, most salt, tossed low-salt, low-fat right into the cart.

Oh, I try and try, and now, children, I think I will pull my hair high into a ponytail, drape a veil over my face, nod my head once, wrinkle my nose, and order some organic peanut spread on-line. Presto magic-o. Abracadabra. A-la peanut butter sandwiches!

The Wife's Chronicles...

I went to a writing workshop on Saturday and I found my friend, The Wife. She is a friend of my muse. Heck, she might even be my muse.

All I know is, every so often I will write a poem and when it comes time for a title, there she is, The Wife, trying to get her two cents in, trying to get her fifteen minutes of fame, trying to be funny. Thing is, sometimes she's not so much funny, as biting.

That's how I know she's not me. I am not biting. I'm mommy. I'm the smiling art teacher. I'm the lady in the kitchen, trying really hard not to make shoe leather out of pot roast.

This Wife person. She is tricky. I'm sure there's an Indian legend about her somewhere out there. Tricky.


The New Wife, A Scientist by Nature, Considers Puppetry

No strings attached, you say?
On the first day of her honeymoon,

the new wife regards a collection of puppets
in a store window. Girl puppets, boy puppets, hanging in tandem.
The wife has a camera. The husband has a camera.

They are recording their happiness.
What is the standard operating procedure
for operating these dummies without strings?
The window is so clean, so clear, it is like looking in a mirror.
Who will raise my arms?
Who will move my legs.
Oh dear. Critical error. On closer inspection,
my lips are unattached.
Look closely now, husband. Bend at the waist.
What is it making my lips move?
There are so many variables.
There’s string weight, string density.
The very real possibility of unraveling, fraying.
The wife knows. She has come to a conclusion.
If her strings are removed, she will just lie there.
The husband will get splinters all over himself trying to move her.
What’s this? Let me get my magnifying glass.
Impossible, husband. Strings growing from your fingertips.
You said no strings attached.

On the Day the Wife Gave Up Cooking

On the Day the Wife Gave Up Cooking

There are four basic principles that should not be overlooked in cooking any dish—proper and accurate measurements; proper cooking temperature, proper length of cooking time and proper time of serving.
-Duncan Hines from Adventures in Good Cooking and the Art of Carving in the Home (c. 1939)


Food is all mathematics, Betty Crocker and her kind
tell me, an artist at heart. Still, I stray from the stove
one minute too long, boil the two-thirds cup milk over,
follow a flash of ruby wings outside the kitchen window
add three cups flour, harden a reputedly moist red velvet cake.

If you can read, you can cook, my mother tells me,
stroking my poet’s soul. Pare, blanch, fold in, try out.
The words take me on a journey far from my milky mess.
Strain, sieve, sift, simmer. I truly believe a watched pot
never boils. I do not watch. I do not watch.

Pears, peaches, plums, potatoes. I bake a poet’s potluck
no-one dares touch. It’s all so simple with a head for numbers.
Twenty-two wafers equals one cup crumbs. Sugar.
Brown, light or dark. Teaspoon, tablespoon. Squash, strawberries,
split green peas. Dessert even the neighbor’s dog will not eat.

The fly in the rice is this: I want to cook like I live.
I want to curry with abandon. Salt and pepper to taste,
to taste. Stand for hours under the scrub pine, palms full
of chokeberries, waiting for the chickadees, all the while
breathing in the forbidden curl of burning roast turkey.

I want to flirt with the young butcher.
While away the hours batting my eyes, asking
How big the roast? How fat the pan? How sharp is that knife?
Pay him to bone two pieces of meat, roll and tie them together.
Stroll home with his meat under my arm, and serve salad from a bag.

Truth is, if I were a bird, a robin or cardinal, I would not have to measure
my food, no cups, no quarts, no gallons, no liters. If I were a poem,
another master would measure my words, weigh my meter, scan
my rhyme. So on this day, in this kitchen, I will peel away my layers,
remove my core, hang my skin from a hook in the ceiling to dry.

The Mother

I stumbled on the coolest writing site tonight. Writing Time. I would paste the permalink, but I haven't figured out how to paste into my text yet. Anyway, there was a prompt which suggested using beginnings of lines from the last stanza of Mark Haddon’s poem, The Trees. It struck a chord, so I went ahead and did some writing on Sunday. Not Monday or Thursday, but Sunday. Hooray for breaking a pattern! No routine for me.

I was stumped by the first line. Your kindness… Who do I know is kind? Very kind. So kind as to inspire poetry? And not sappy poetry. I do not like sappy poetry. Then, I stumbled on the part where the narrator mentions dressing and a boy. And not salad dressing. But, I persevered. And, at the risk of breaking my own anti-sappy rule, I had to Thank God, out loud, that my mom survived a car wreck. Saturday. My mom. OK. So here’s the poem. It seems to have taken the form of a prose poem. And, sorry, anti-sap groupies, but I have to add… I love you, Mom!

The Mother (inspired by The Trees, by Mark Haddon)

Your kindness to a young mother, just washed in from Louisiana, paddled in
on a hurricane wave with a baby on her hip, water following, chasing
up her attic steps. You gave a hundred. One hundred dollars.
Always so much, too much. Where is she now?
That girl with the husband back in low country, building the house.
I wrap gently used baby shoes in pink felt, pass them on to a couple with a fifth baby.

Your skill at sewing, baking, cooking, cleaning, removing set-in stains.
You never wore pearls. I have a silver bracelet I’ve never taken off. Seventeen years
in the same sterling bangle and I have never sewn a dress, taken in a seam,
baked a soufflé, have not made peace with Tide, still have to ask the butcher
what meat to use for a pot roast.

We lost so many hours fighting over how fast I could get dressed.
Never faster than when a boy was involved, just past midnight.
So slow when the big yellow bus was plodding down the street, idling at the corner.
What was lost has now been found. I now know there is nothing slower
than a kindergartner with a metal lemon snake breathing down his neck.

Look at you. You’re the only woman on the little town board. Big board. Little town.
Dale Evans whipping five burly cowboys into shape.

Big, bold bright woman. Little, tiny, shallow men. You and your ideas bigger
than life. You frighten the men. This makes me proud. I put on a hideous mask,
walk up and down my suburban streets. Scaring men has become my life’s passion.

Outside the spring air is far, far away. A hint of green in the brown, brown breeze
of this snowless winter. On the first day the snow finally fell, you hopped in your car.
I scraped the ice and snow from the back window and off you drove, headed north.
Alone on the loneliest stretch of Adirondack Route 9. Car wreck? Didn’t stop you.
I will thank God on every star for your life. Will drive three times over the same patch
of snarling black ice to prove I am your daughter.