Tuesday, April 30, 2013

4.26.13










White Space

Nothing is more daunting than
nothing—it  stares you down,
rears up to meet you: the black beetle
 scurrying over its flanks, hobbled
with things you need to say
before it notices you’re there,
before all that nothing stomps you flat.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

4.25.13

Today's color prompt was purple.  I wrote a rant today after photographing my daughter's Mardi Gras beads.  The costume shop where I work is located in a party store, where practically everything we sell is created for one use and eventual discard.  The sheer volume of things manufactured for the landfill boggles my mind and depresses me, especially considering that one of the classes I teach deals partially with sustainability and environmental responsibility.  Whole industries ignore those things.  Mind blown. Rant explained.  Who knew Mardi Gras beads could go all sinister?









Landfill Necklace

Fuchsia, copper, gold, purple, every color
imaginable or able to be manufactured
in metallic plastic, they hang in enticing rows.
Beads by the billions, flash-formed and melted
onto cotton string, pressure-painted in toxic brilliance,
four for a dollar, cheaper if you buy a gross.
Created for cheap sparkle and a fast fade,
they are thrown from parade floats,  sunlight
spangling their flight with jewel tones.
They are slung by sixes and sevens
around the rubbery necks of revelers that dance,
and spill vodka, flashing like disco lightning.
After that fast moment, they lie forgotten as cigarette butts,
and bound for the same place.  The ghosts of a thousand
identical parties, bound for a thousand identical
push brooms, trash cans, curbs and landfills.
Or, worn home and abandoned on the dresser,
 moved from place to place for a few weeks,
then boxed away.  Billions of beads, lost,
tangled as ground-ivy, metallic sheen grown flat
with time.  What if all the useless items came out at night,
uncurling like asps, dull beads glinting like scales
in the moonlight as the click, click, click brings them
up the stairs, out of corners, a rustling
 in the trash, crawling out of the landfills
to come and strangle us while we sleep?

4.24.13

I may be behind, but, by God, I AM going to write all 30 poems this month! 

Today's color was gray; I started off following the NaPoWriMo "anagram" prompt, but the poem took off on its own.  The photo is of an old photograph of my great grandmother, Estella.


Where I’m From

There is not much nonsense.
The sun comes up, the gravel roads are graded smooth,
the crops are harvested.  Weeds grow
and are burnt from the ditches each April.
The smoke curls into the cold blue sky.
You don’t get away with much
when you’re sixteen, looping all nine streets
of town in your beat-up Chevy freedom machine,
smacking the dusty radio to make it keep playing,
waiting for the leaves to come out,
waiting for something to sprout.  Where I’m from,
we drop R’s into “Warshington D.C.”
like dropping pebbles into the river.
Our garden trellises are strong, weathered  gray
by five months of snow.  In summer,
the wisteria climbs frantically, squeezing the lathe
in its grip: its foothold to the open air,         
something to grasp onto as it clambers out.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

4.23.13







Nest in an Abandoned Building

Where sparrows live the sky peers through,
and the sun shines on their dust-baths.
Bricks crumble slowly, rendezvous
with sparrows as the sky peers through,
becoming mankind’s residue
on brilliant days that quietly pass
here: sparrows and the sky fly through,
and the sun shines on their dust-baths.

4.22.13






Daffodils

The season is slow
to wake,  wiggles fingers, toes
tingling from waiting, mist a
mantle of winter
still covering her nightgown.

She startles upright,
her nightcap cocked askew.  What
pokes?  Then she sees it—bright and
impudent,  laughing,
her overdue alarm clock.