Posted tagged ‘Magpie Tales’

« ManicDDaily home page
Newer Entries »

Magpie Tale (Pantoum)

November 6, 2011

20111106-010947.jpg

The drawing above is based on the prompt of Tess Kincaid at Magpie Tales, which was a photograph from a cemetery.  The photograph offered a lot of possibilities; my poem is a pantoum about a funeral, the differing feelings (from numbness to grief) that go through one’s brain at such an event.

What Funerals Are For

I worried that I might not be able to stop
the posturing that shaped my busy mind—
all I’d see, all whom I might know,
imagined encounters over funeral supper wine.

The posturing, the shape of busy mind,
dwarfed the Jesus-coated windows, babes in stone,
(imagined encounters over Last Supper wine)
when fingers touching lid, they led it down.

Dwarfing the Jesus-coated windows, babes in stone,
a block of wood, of over-polished grain,
as fingers touching lid, they led it down,
pulling with it, a winding sheet of weighty pain.

A block of wood, of over-polished grain—
I knew she couldn’t breathe there, that she’d no more breath
pulling within a winding sheet of weighty pain,
weeping without will, without relief.

I knew she couldn’t breathe there, that she’d no more breath,
and all I saw, all whom I might know,
weeping without will, without relief.
I worried that I might not be able to stop.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 13 Comments

Magpie Tales – “Oncoming” (Sonnet)

October 23, 2011

This is a sonnet I revised in connection with the weekly prompt of the “Magpie Tales” blog, hosted by Tess Kincaid.  Tess posted a great photo of a city street, seen both from a car and in a car’s rear view mirror, but I have re-drawn the picture (above) to fit a little closer to my poem.  (Still, not a true fit, sorry!)

Oncoming

There were one, two, three, four, trucks and we’d hit
sparks, some devilish configuration
of torque and stone, radii and slip,
that spit the car from its lane as from
the sea, only to buck and plunge it through
the waves of semis; to the right, the poles
of overpass pulled us to some untrue
North, as if to catch whatever souls
the trucks might miss.  We were on a visit
to a grandmother, but I can’t recall
a later meal or kiss, only that minute
on the road there, the unreeling miss and haul
of grill, glass flashing glass, my father’s swerves–
the way space looks, time feels, when fate uncurls.

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 23 Comments

“Magpie Tales” – Ping and Less Ping.

October 16, 2011

20111016-020421.jpg

In my ongoing exploration of online writing and poetry sites, I am participating today in Magpie Tales, a site, hosted by Tess Kincaid, that sets up an interesting picture prompt. The picture was a photograph of skewered ducks hanging in a Chinese restaurant, before a slightly smiling cook. (I like to use my own art work where possible so have done my own copy of it above.)

Here’s the poem:

At a Restaurant On Mott

There is something about the Chinese,
at least when it comes to
restaurants, that does not consider
Ping (the little white duck
of my childhood who wafted
paper-lantern-like down an
unscrolled Yangtze river, among
junks of pen, ink, watercolor.)

There is something that smiles
as wide as a ladle, that
gleams with anticipatory,
and unmitigated,
satisfaction
at the sight, for example, of a chicken’s foot
streaming with small galaxies
of golden globules.

There is something that doggedly
digests the dog-eat-dogness of this
world in a way that the limp cartilage of
my vegetarian fingers simply cannot grasp;
a realism as rooted as
galic/ginger/turnips/webbed feet/hooves,
which my Ping-popping
anemia could probably profit from.

Nonetheless, I’ll stick to the tofu.

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 21 Comments

Newer Entries »