Banana
Here is my 27th draft poem in honor of National Poetry Month.
Chalk Milkshake
I knew that we would be married some day
when he drank down
the chalk milkshake I had made.
It was not really a chalk milkshake.
It was soy. Powder.
But tasted like sidewalk
sweetened with banana;
a sidewalk freshly poured, or
covered with hopscotch on a sun-dried day,
your pick.
He smiled, after a sip,
a sweet smile shaped like a banana,
and, as I apologized, said,
“no, it’s interesting.”
Closed Heart (Actually, Locked Heart In this Case.)
26th day of National Poetry Month; a busy, social day, in which it was very very hard to come up with a poem draft. (As followers of this blog know, I’m “celebrating” National Poetry Month, by writing a draft poem a day. I hope you too are trying some.)
Horizon of the Closed Heart
The horizon of the closed heart is very short.
It is not like sun on water, that orb of glisten
that swallows the sea, and then is swallowed by it.
It is not like snow on mountains,
amazingly there in May, a dust of lost white.
Not even like a tall building edging the sky,
a compass hand to point this way as downtown,
this way up.
It lurks in the belly, pelvis, thighs; darts
into the forehead; but what it mainly does
is bind the chest, a second set of ribs bruised
by all the bumping into, bouncing back,
those reflections of the self turned in on itself,
the self, the self, the self, and all that it wants,
all that it lacks, spread thinly upon a small, mean space.
Birthday Grapefruit
25th Day of National Poetry Month, and my 25th draft poem of the month. As those following this blog know, I am writing a draft poem every day this month, and I sincerely hope that some of you are inspired to also try some drafts.
The following poem has a rhyme scheme I just made up; I suppose it could be considered a modified (and much less musical) terza rima. The stanzas are three lines, with the first two lines of each stanza rhyming as a couplet, and the third line rhyming with the third line of the next stanza: AAB, CCB, DDE, FFE, GGH, IIH. (It makes more sense if you look at the poem, although, because many of the rhymes are slant rhymes, it may not make that much more sense!)
Thin Birthday
On one birthday when she was very thin,
he brought out, after much whispering,
a half-grapefruit set upon a platter.
It was their birthday cake platter–wooden,
painted with blue ribbon swirl, holes put in
careful spaces along its perimeter.
The lone half grapefruit balanced in the place
for cake; a pink candle centering its face
like a faded, twisted cherry, stretched out tall.
He looked at her with such worry, not
(she thought) for her condition, but to please. What
to give a child stuck in rigid refusal?
She’d disdain cake, she’d groan (he knew), oh Dad.
So, for her to weep, to get so very sad,
was quite unfair. I wanted to give you
something you would take, he said, as they sat
out in the car and he awkwardly pat
her arm, reaching for something flesh and true.
(This poem was posted some time ago, but I’m linking it today, May 31, 2012 (the day before my birthday in fact) to Imperfect Prose, hosted by Emily Wierenga, who’s publishing a book on anorexia.
Since this original post, the poem has also been published in my book of poetry, “Going on Somewhere,” by Karin Gustafson, available on Amazon. Check it out!!!!
(As always, all rights reserved.)
Dogtired
[YIKES! I wrote this last night on April 24th very late at night at a hotel with WIFI and thought I’d published it but apparently it was not published. Either the hotel wifi cut out, or the dog ate it! So, it’s a day late, sorry.]
Working Like A Dog
It’s not so apt
to talk of working
like a dog.
Mine sleeps like a log all day.
Working like a malamute,
maybe, that beautiful, dutiful, drudge
who pulls a sledge,
trots, trudges,
understanding both teamwork
and leadership.
My dog understands
CHEESE.
She likes the CHEESE job.
She can tell,
by smell, sure,
whenever CHEESE appears,
but also, it seems, by some
combination of fridge door and drawer,
the shifting of legs and knife, and,
of course, the time—it’s late
when I take out the Monterey Jack–
sleep is shaken away,
logginess rolled to the side,
alertness electrifying every matted hair–
they also serve who only stand and wait.
Helicopter
23rd Day of National Poetry Month! Here is a sonnet written (oddly enough) about the 22nd day of National Poetry Month, that is, April 22, 2010, the day that Obama came to speak to Wall Street (though the poem is not really about Obama so much, or Wall Street, but just that particular day.)
Although the poem is, I suppose, technically a sonnet (it has fourteen lines), it uses slant rhyme and run-on lines rather than ending the lines with a rhyme or slant rhyme. (A slant rhyme is a “not-quite rhyme.”) This gives the poem an assymetry which tonight (I started late!), may be a function of lack of time, and fatigue; however, this assymetry can also be a useful tool as it avoids the cutesiness that can sometimes plague a rhyming poem.
April 22, 2010, NYC (Day of Obama Visit)
The meteor shower that I didn’t see
was seen yesterday, as was the fox outside
our country shed, painted white and faded green.
It ducked down in the spring grass, only orange spied–
orange-red. (Why they call it a red fox.)
But I drove down the FDR so early
I only saw the police and the blank box
of heliopad, waiting for the whirling
blur of polished light that seems to form
around anyone whose picture is taken
often enough. I saw too my cabbie’s worn
shirt collar (grey with black and white flakes of
contrast.) Wife was from Belize, he’d never
been. We talked of that by the dawn East River.
22nd day of National Poetry Month. My draft poem of the day honors “Earth Day”. A little obliquely, I admit.
One Kind of Earth Day
We dug well beyond blisters.
The earth was not like the dirt at home–
yellow, dry, always hard-packed below
its aura of dust.
This was soil; it held ground, sweat
of its own accord, curled wormlike,
clung rootlike, and was dark enough
that we were sure it hid black crude
just beyond the point of our spade.
When it oozed, then pooled,
our certainty turned to disbelief even as,
Eureka, we ran to tell
our grandmother she’d be rich.
As it was, she had to pay
to get the pipe fixed.
This poem was kindly distinguished by a Perfect Poet’s Award from Promising Poet’s Parking Lot, a very active website supporting the writing of poetry. Thank you so much, Ava, and all those being PromingPoetsParkingLot Blog.
I am supposed to nominate another poet from the participants. Frankly, they are all interesting and promising poets, and it’s a very hard choice, which I’d rather not make, but since I’m supposed to do it, I’ll name NefariousX, a very subtle funny poet I discovered this evening.
Good Dog! (Not Your Body)
The 21st day of National Poetry Month, and I have a terrible, terrible cold. So far, I’ve managed to spare you the poem devoted to “rhinovirus,” but I found, in trying to write tonight’s draft poem, that I could not stay completely away from the subject of the fickleness of the body.
Note, in reading the draft poem, that pauses are only intended to be taken based on punctuation–commas, semi-colons, periods–and not at the ends of lines (unless punctuated.)
Here, Body
The body is not your good dog.
It may sit, lie down, roll over,
do tricks for food, and seem to love;
but there’s a limit to its Rover
aspect. It will get sick just when
you tell it not to. There’s no yanking
on that leash. It will decay
when you say stay; there’s no spanking
with a rolled-up newspaper,
not even the Times, which can train
it to heel, to keep
to the right side of that called sane.
It won’t obey you even when
it knows what you desperately want,
when its lesson has been learned
before, again; still, it will vaunt
its own fleshly, furry ways,
taking up all room upon your bed,
refusing to hush when hushed,
and, except when dancing, to be led.
Glue
Twentieth day of National Poetry Month. I keep expecting this experiment (writing a draft poem a day in honor of National Poetry Month) to get easier–for topics to appear at my beck and call. But it was a bit hard to come up with a draft poem today. All I could think of on the subway this morning was “rhinovirus”. (I have a cold.) That topic was not all that appealing. So, this evening, I fell back on my old standby form–the sonnet, and an old standby subject—relationships.
Couple
Sometimes it’s best to just do nothing,
to stare blankly at a wall and not to
wonder how the crack was made, to toughen
your perimeter nerves till you’ve got to
feel more than a jab of despair to fête
despairing. Sometimes it’s best not to run
your finger down the plaster, but to let
crumbling crumble; not to reach out one
overheated foot from the blanket, bed,
to climb the chill of that almost smooth plane.
Sometimes it’s even best to leave unsaid
words that will fix everything, that saying
that’s aphoristic but so true, the glue
you’d like to think would make all whole, all new.
For more on sonnets, and more on National Poetry Month, check out the poetry category from the ManicDDaily home page. And, as always, check out the link to 1 Mississippi on Amazon, a counting book for kids, parents and their pachyderms.
Shoe
I got my shoes shined today for a special evening event (which delayed my posting till now). I don’t get my shoes shined very often, so it provided useful material for today’s poem draft (as well as a beautiful dark sheen.)
Shoeshine
He stiffens his finger with
a wrapped flap of plastic then, with the precision of
a surgeon, binds it with a worn swathe of
fabric. In a world in which all is disposable, his cloth
is ragged, frayed, stained, authentically used.
Like so, like so—he sprinkles a dose of something clear, then,
after rubbing my dark
rounded toes, delves his finger into the thin can which holds
the black, more tar than jet,
the color of spider bellies, widows’ skirts,
that shadow in the cheek of certain saints outlined by
El Greco, the eyebrow of Frieda Kahlo.
He is short, as they tend to be, born in mountains,
where height adds insult to
uphill climbs, a slight tilt a part of the landscape.
He strokes the sides of my shoes
as he paints them; I feel the strokes
in the sides of my feet,
the ribs of the arches, like a very
polite massage, the caress of the humble, and think of the feet
of certain statues, whose insteps have been worn
into silent tongues by those
seeking blessings, though I
feel blessed by him, his attentions, the worn, made new.
It is something of which we don’t speak.
Iron Pan
18 days of draft poems!
I have to confess that it was hard today to come up with something to write about. My mind felt blank; anything I did come up with seemed too personal for a blog post. (It’s one thing to be personal in a finished poem; another to be overly personal in a draft.) Finally, I bugged my husband for a topic; in the middle of cooking, he came up with “iron frying pan.” Although this seemed a promising starting point, my blank mind had a hard time fitting words around it until I decided to try my own advice from prior posts, and turn to a traditional poetic form, a sonnet.
The sonnet is one of my favorite forms: the interlocking lines lead you through the poem, which, because it is only fourteen lines, thankfully, can’t, go on too long. I heartily recommend trying one!
A couple of hints: it is useful to number your lines (in the margins) after you get to the 8th or 9th, as it is amazingly easy to lose track of where you are. Also, I find it easier to write sonnets in a notebook by hand, than on the computer. Nearly every time I begin to run out of steam, I re-copy what I’ve done up to that point; sometimes tearing out my prior page so I can see it better. The re-copying allows me to refresh my momentum, and also to clarify where the poem is going, or stuck. Weirdly enough, it seems easier to cut out whole lines and phrases when you are writing by hand and re-copying than when you are on the computer. It is much easier to give undeserved authority to words in typeface than to barely legible scribbles.
Anyway, here’s the draft of the day:
Second Marriage
He’s the kind of guy who carefully seasons
an iron skillet, oiling the surface,
eschewing soap. I know all the reasons,
understand rust, stickiness, nonetheless,
I squeeze Dawn right onto the blackness,
and when I smell that low-heated oil, I
rebel. “Are you,” I charge (nearly senseless),
“seasoning my frying pan?” As if to try
traditional method, some slow process
of caretaking, is intended to defy,
deny, descry, the rushed independence
I’ve professed, those hurry-up lone years I
scraped so many sharp implements across,
getting rid of the hard bits, loss and loss.
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