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“Nice” Blurb – Plea for Help

August 16, 2014

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As some of you may know, I have been working in an increasingly desultory fashion on the publication of a new novel, called Nice. (I say, “increasingly desultory” as it has become harder to work on this project the closer it is to completion.)

Unlike my first published novel, Nose Dive, which is a comical young adult mystery (and a lot of fun!), this is a serious novel, with an intense and, I hope, emotionally affecting, story.  It is about child sexual abuse; it represents years of work.

I think it really is a good novel, though I’ve worked on it so long it is hard for me to still look at it.  I am super happy with the cover picture, which I did myself.

Here’s my quandary–the sales information!  The little blurb that goes on Amazon and elsewhere!  This kind of thing is so darn hard for me that I  can hardly squeeze something out.

So what I am asking for–I don’t know–ideas==approval==is the below horribly embarrassing?

 

It is summer, 1968–Martin Luther King Jr. shot in April, Bobby Kennedy in June–“what in the world is happening to this country?” Americans wonder. 

It is summer, 1968, the civil rights movement in turmoil, the Vietnam War escalating, but Les, a ten year old suburban girl, has been trained to be nice.

Her teenage brother, Arne, on the other hand, aims for rebellion.

But they are kids, it is summer, it is 1968, and what they both truly want–aside from world peace–is to be a little more cool.

Then a distant relative visits, a cool cat, rebel of sorts, childhood favorite. 

“What in the world is happening?” Les wonders, as the unthinkable does.  

“What in the world is happening?” Arne wonders, as his sister changes, as he too is faced with a darker picture of growing up–

Their story traverses the landscape of country, family, heart.

Since posting – B. Young made some very useful suggestions and here’s a whole other approach:

Nice is a story of child sexual abuse and its aftermath.  It takes place in the summer of 1968, the U.S. reeling from the April assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the June assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the escalating Vietnam War.  It is told from the points of view of a ten year old girl and her teenage brother, each separately finding a voice in the face of personal and political disillusionment.  

 

Better?  Too terse?  (I was going to add in here a very horrible joke, but cannot in the face of the terrible loss of Robin Williams this week.)

Any ideas?  Should it be more direct?  Less direct?  Should I just press approve/publish!?

The book will be issued by my own imprint, by the way, which is BackStroke Books, and when I do press publish, it will be available on Kindle and in paper.  I will let you know when.  I am aiming for cheap pricing so I do hope you’ll be able to read.

Categories: Nice, Uncategorized
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Comments: 23 Comments

Blue

August 15, 2014

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Blue

One’s heart is broken.
One’s heart is a well that neighbors call down,
searching for a lost child,
the mother held back
in the house.

It is a white frame house,
where someone paces kitchen
to living room,
a swell below the door sill
where the floors meet.

The heart looks out to the horizon, worrying
as night falls,
worrying
as the lawn that turns to field that turns to sky
turns to cobalt,
though the heart loves
that deep blue;
though the heart, when it can breathe,
loves blue.

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Here’s very much of a draft poem for Herotomost’s prompt on with real toads in honor of Leo, to write a poem that comes in like a lion, leaves like a lamb.  I’m sorry I’ve been a bit behind returning comments.  This has been a very job-intense summer for me.

P.S. – photo is mine–all rights reserved, as always.

Pps have edited since first posting.

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 17 Comments

Ups/Downs

August 13, 2014

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Ups/Downs

Wings ring my temples.
At times, they flap,
their great éclat emulating
the birdheart’s elation with just beating.
Other times, they balk,
become a hulk of blind raptor,
shafts splintering eyes’ dim.
Worms, as if they were thoughts in seeded earth,
interlace the frayed feathers,
try to seize space,
make a way for creased daylight,
but all those mites that birds are prey to
suck at these ribs
of clay–

Noble flight winds down
to dead buzz,
éclat clatters,
but the heart hears only
that it’s beaten.

******************
Here’s a sort of poem for Grapeling’s Get Listed prompt on With Real Toads, Grapeling (Michael) posts a word list related to the film Dead Poet’s Society, and writes a lovely piece about the sadness around the death of the wonderful Robin Williams. (Check it out!)

I’m not sure the picture above is quite finished, but it is one of mine. All rights reserved.

Ps this poem has been edited since first posting.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 14 Comments

The Way To Davy Jones Locker (On Dry Land)

August 9, 2014

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The Way To Davy Jones Locker (Even On Dry Land)

Scull it all–
row row your boat,
never trusting
fate-willed float.

Bind your spine.
Cast off bend.
Steer your steeled keel
here to when.

Thresh the currents–
chop chop chop;
bail seeped null
without stop.

Flesh may melt;
bone holds on,
knotted digits
gripping yon.

Though waves are big
and we are small,
though even stars
hear orbits’ call,

locked in salt,
these oars we pull–
scuttled, scuttling,
sculling all.

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Here’s a rather weird take on Margaret Bednar’s prompt on With Real Toads to write a skeletal poem or a poem inspired by skeletons/fossils.  Margaret has some great pictures on With Real Toads but the above is my own drawing.  All rights reserved. 

PS I have changed the title since first posting. 

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 22 Comments

How It Can Be (Not Such a Nice Microcosm)

August 8, 2014

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How It Can Be

She cried so hard face hurt,
loss pulling skin
as if cheeks were limbs,
brow tied to ropes
that warred with bound chin,
as if pain rode horses,
each chained to its own course,
all whipped.

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Here’s a belated and rather gloomy draft poem for Brian Miller’s micro poetry challenge on dVerse Poetry Pub–40 words or less–this just makes it with title.  (Granted, it’s not such a good title, but it does fit into the prompt!)  

p.s. drawing is mine, though an old one that doesn’t quite fit.  All rights reserved, thanks. 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 14 Comments

Thinking (Months Later or Even Before) of James Brady On His Death

August 7, 2014

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Thinking (Months Later or Even Before) of James Brady On His  Death  (Unfinished Poem)

We ski when there’s no snow
in most of the valley, back at the far edges, and hear
after we start–having walked our skis in through mud
and rock–shouts
echoed,
and I yell ‘hello,’ and you say
not to call them over to us and my spine fills
with cold iron as if it were itself a wielded barrel
and I wonder what we might do if someone
were to find us, and wish I hadn’t
called,
and what cover is there, leafless,
and ski faster though the pine-needled snow sticks
and catches, and later, after climbing to the shaded tips
of freeze where we’re able to slip and glide and forget everything but the sun
just coming out, silvering brown, we hear,
near the road, gun shots and
again gain’gain’gain, and
we stop and I tell you I’d throw you down
and lay on top of you, and you chuckle slightly,
as if
in echo,
and I wonder why
we have to even think about such things
in this country–

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The wonderful and ever creative Izy Gruye has a prompt on With Real Toads requesting  unfinished poems.  I consider almost all the poems I post drafts, but here’s one I did not post for some reason–did not feel quite right–maybe the end, maybe too long in the middle–my husband did not like it much perhaps because he’d never let me throw him down to shield him from gunshot–

Thinking especially of James Brady’s death in posting now for this prompt. 

I am sorry to be so absent–am hoping to get a little more time soon.

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 13 Comments

A Time (Not-Paradelled)

August 3, 2014

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A Time (Not-Paradelled)

Mourning doves marked time in those hours of rose.
Mourning, dove-marked, timed those hours in rows.
We listened as land listens to echoes, carefully.
(we listened as land listens to echoes carefully.)
Mourning time, we listened as echoes;
land listed, doves rose.

What else were we to do
with those carefully marked hours–

 

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Here’s a sort of poem that’s not quite right for two challenges–With Real Toad’s 55 prompt by Fireblossom/Shay. (The piece IS 55 words–) And part of a sort-of Paradelle for Brian Miller’s prompt on dVerse Poets Pub.  This is a form made up as a kind of joke by Billy Collins–so a modification seems fine to me.  (I think the full form would work better in a humorous poem.) 

For some reason my picture got cut. Agh! All rights reserved as always.

Also I’ve edited the poem since posting a couple of times–Thanks!  k.  

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 20 Comments

How Things Sort Out

August 2, 2014

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How Things Sort Out

My mother looks up at me
from the crook of arm and comforter
and I say, “rest,” and she says, “sometimes,
when I’m lying down, I just can’t help thinking of–”
and I expect her to unspool
some much-wound thread of how
it all turned out okay
in the end, but instead, she says,
“my second grade teacher–”

The comforter is speckled with pink flowers; a stain, I notice, floats just
at the level of chest, a small maroon half-moon,
from who knows when, years–

“the Slapping Machine… and that
poor boy–”

I’ve heard of this teacher before, Mrs. White,
who made the kids memorize bible verses and
slapped them when they did not,
slapped them, it seems, for just about anything–

I’ve heard of the poor boy too, the one who was always
late, and for some reason
was particularly slapped,
especially when he cried,
my mother wanting to shout at
the teacher,
don’t you know he’s crying because his dad’s died,
killed himself when he lost
the family’s farm–

My mother wanting to shout
until the teacher slapped her too,
then made her hold a mirror as she cried,
all afternoon,
so she could see
how ugly she was, tear-marked–

My mother is 91 now
and much of what she once remembered
is clouded, and all the different things she always believed anyhow,
she now proclaims that she read in The New York Times,
though the stories she likes most are her own,
angled with self-promotion, self-
defense–

Which can sometimes be kind of irritating; not that we always
butt heads,
but it is hard
to support someone who is busy
propping up themselves, the space filled
with elbows–

Me too liking to self-justify, and how is it that
we carry these mirrors
always–

“Try not to think about it,” I tell her, again patting
the lid of comforter, its sprawl
of small pink flowers over
her folded arms, her own hand now over
one cheek–

 

*************************

This is very much of a draft sort of poem, but I’m busy enough to know that if I keep working on it, I’ll just despair and never put anything up!  So, I’m posting just for me essentially and thanks for your indulgence.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 8 Comments

Mange

August 1, 2014

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Mange

The mangy fox ranges
field to lawn,as
estranged from his sly skin, worn
thin–

I shout out “get away”
as I’ve been told,
the fox-stare back not bold,
but marble-shot direct
as yellow eyes reflect
a desert in the green,
this fox who shouldn’t be seen
except as stalk
in taller grass,
who pauses where I pass
to gnaw a paw–

All night the same–
the mangy fox who ranges through
my brain, kneading,
needing.

****************************

Here’s a sort of poem very belatedly offered for Kerry O’Connor’s prompt on With Real Toads about alienation.  I think Kerry was thinking in more space age-y terms, but this came up.  Photo is mine of poor little fox wandering around. 

Sorry to have been so out of touch.  I have been working a great deal at my job and also busy with certain family obligations (and family pleasures.)  Miss miss miss posting poems, but just not possible right now. 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 12 Comments

Ammonoidea (Fossilized Shells)

July 26, 2014

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Ammonoidea  (Fossilized Shells)

I like to think
that their dendritic prints,
algal caresses beached
in bleached stone, mean
that I will know the nuzzle
of your whisked-white chin long
into the next paradigm;
though even now I’m shaped
by the whorl of your chest
where time’s sand stills
its hands
and I hear in your warmth
the sea.

 

 

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A very belated offering for Mama Zen’s “Words Count” prompt on With Real Toads to write a poem on fossil in less than sixty words.  I’m sorry to have been quite absent lately, and probably will not be able to post much in the next couple of weeks, due to work and family busy-ness.    Miss you all!

PS – photo from Mama Zen–all rights reserved to her. 

PPS–I am hoping also to link to dVerse Poets OLN, hosted by the wonderful Victoria. 

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 36 Comments

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