day 27 pome 22: write a poem in blank verse for a class

(Sorry I haven't posted. I've been without electricity since Monday around 8PM. Just got it back. First world problems, eh? It was an experience, to be sure, and I give thanks to my awesome friends who supplied me with conversation, entertainment, and FRIDGE/FREEZER SPACE for my fooood!)

A night ago a storm blew through my town.
A twister hit the ground a time or two.
My doors were open wide. The sirens wailed
and I, oblivious, just knocked on wood.
Tornadoes do not firghten me at all.
Touch wood. They never have. Touch wood again.
I'm superstitious, yes, but I'm from here.
Arkansans grow accustomed to a spring
in which we nightly hear the sirens sound.
Or should. But I have friends who tell me they
have spent the night curled up inside their tubs,
the bathroom door locked tight, as if it could
keep out a twister, somehow. I (touch wood)
however, spent my childhood, every spring,
just watching channel eight, the nightly news,
as maps turned green or yellow, orange or red,
and we, my family, would point out streets
that were not ours. I mean to say that I
(touch wood) have never heard that awful sound
that folks describe (touch wood), the sound that comes
when it's too late - a waterfall, a train,
the sound that means a funnel's touching down,
the sound that means that touching wood won't help.
The news is saying one more night of storms
but just this afternoon, while driving home
I saw a tree had laid down on the house
two blocks from mine. How's that for touching wood?
I'll light my candles, as I have no power,
and leave the back door open. If I hear
a siren, I won't blink an eye. But if
I hear a rushing train then I'll be found
(with my dear dog) curled up inside the tub
all tangled up in blankets, grasping tight
my rosary. It's made of sandalwood.

day 24 pome 21: thinkin bout change

Last Poem for a Boy

I didn't mean to write those poems, they just
happened. I needed to write, had a hunger
for words, and I sat down and whatever was

on my mind just then was the poem. It's not
your fault, or mine, that so many came
to be written about you. I wonder how

it made you feel, if you liked it, felt proud,
or ashamed, if you thought I was silly,
pathetic, a dreamer, a loser, who knows.

But of those precious short weeks we shared,
more poems came about you than for anyone,
ever. Then before I even had a chance

to wrap you up in my words for good, to
blanket you in verse, to plaster stanzas
on your skin with my mouth, you had found

someone new. Nothing to be done. I moved
on, eventually, or thought I did, until one day
I actually had. And now, I'm sure you've seen,

I have my own true love. It doesn't matter now
that you kissed me outside the pizza parlor,
that you washed me in the bath, that you

waited until I was ready. All those things
are in the past, and I measure the love I have now
for him in poems, and I cannot stop writing. Don't

be sad. I'm not. I hope you're not. One day
you might even forget I ever wrote at all. The arms
I sleep wrapped in now are warm poems of their own.

day 23 pome 20: don't ask

When you hear your sister is marrying, take
a box, put in the stones you've been carrying
to remind you of her weight, her perfect, absent weight,
the ones you sleep with, curled up around, put them in.
Take off the badge you wear, the pin that declares
your political stance against the whole institution,
put it in. Then, one by one, place all of the kisses
you've been wishing to give her, wrapped up in newsprint,
wouldn't want them to break. When she does not ask you
to be maid of honor, it won't hurt, you knew this
was coming, knew you wouldn't be asked to stand up front
at all, you're glad, this is really her kindness. No, and don't
give a toast, we all know what you'd say, this, then,
is your kindness, the fact that you came, that your face
was seen there in the mass of masks, that you managed, when you left,
not to leave behind the box you packed hidden among
the gifts, that instead, you only took her hand, met her sweet eyes,
and said, "I wish you
every
happiness,"
took the box home, unpacked it, and cried.

Day 22, Pome 19

I had company and drinks last night and missed a pome. Whups.

The night I kissed you on the cheek
just outside my door because I thought
I was starting to like you, there was
an avalanche, two tornadoes, four
plane crashes, and a blizzard. When you put
your arm around me at the movie, there was
a flood, a landslide, a heatwave,
and a plague. The first night
we made love, the whole city burned down
around us, and we didn't bat an eye. I feel
certain that when I move into your home
they'll be calling for meteor showers.

day 20 pome 18: silver

Ode to the Silver Hair on My Crown:

You weren't there at all, and then
you were, fully formed. That is, there never was
a time in which I saw a hair
half-silver and half-brown. No,
just last week you appeared in the mirror,
no warning, no call, no letter. And I

stared. I thought of pulling you out,
and almost did, I'm sorry to say. But you
were silver, not gray, silver in the way
of stories of magic, perhaps like a
Pegasus hair. I used to believe
in Pegasus, back when I was much
too young for you to appear on my crown.

But here you are, and I, nearly thirty,
have already accepted that I am not
immortal, nor magical like Pegasus. At least
you are silver and shining, not dull,
not flat, not a white that might yellow,
and so you shall stay, in order to teach
your sister around you how to shine, for soon

enough I will be forty, then fifty, and then
one day, dead and forgotten but perhaps
if I can leave this life as a Pegasus
none of that will matter. Shine on.

day 19 pome 17 arkansassy

This pome isn't late I swear. I wrote it on Day 19 at 10:30 PM. I ended up at this open mic and I wanted to read one I wrote earlier in the month but I don't has 'em saved to my computer, just here on the interweb. And I couldn't get access to the interwebs. So, I figured, let's go ahead and conjure up something for Day 19. And I did. But I was still 2 hours away from home then, and we weren't yet close to leaving, and I was tired when I got in and busy today so I'm not uploading it til now BUT... I swear I wrote it on day 19. After that mid-month slack-off I'm trying to stay on top of things. I know I still have some catching up to do. We'll see if I pull it off. Anyway, here you are:



I have no idea how to leave this place,
this green green place, this cool verdance,
this lush humidity, this mountainous state,
this flatland state. The only reason
I wasn't born in Arkansas is because my yankee mother,
in labor in West Memphis demanded my father
drive her to Tennessee to pop me out. Like, really?
As if Tennessee is any less country. And yes,
y'all, we're country. Yes, the struggle of the
queers, the women, the people of color in the south
idn't nuthin no Yankee could ever imagine, but folks
will look you in the eye and give you a nod
on the street. And that has to mean something.
People bitch about this humidity but I
swim in it. I mean, I breathe it, I love the days,
the July days in which you find yourself
marinating in your own sweat, I love it, but then,
I've always loved a challenge, aka opportunity,
which is why perhaps as a queer feminist anti-
racist this place may just have been made
for me. How can I leave the land of my father,
my beloved father, the man I have to thank
for teaching me respect, confidence, self-worth, and how not
to get treated like shit by my partner, the land
of his father, the land of Lake Ouachita,
of Mulberry River, Buffalo River, the land of the Ozarks,
this place is in
my blood, my breath, my skin, my eyes, and I
am moving to the desert but I hear
in Arizona some people think
it's alright to pass laws that permit pig harassment
based on how "foreign" you seem, did someone
say challenge?
I'm there. I hear
sometimes
it even rains.

Day 18 poem 16 mad lib

From a prompt by Erica Miriam Fabri:

The Best Day of the Whole World

Dear Adam,

Today was The Best Day of the Whole World.
When I woke up, I looked at the inside of my hand
and the lines in my palm had re-curled themselves
to say: rhubarb pie. Holy Moses, I thought, today really is
The Best Day of the Whole World. When I got into
the bathtub, my bar of soap had re-shaped itself
into a heron. I danced the dervish's whirl while I scrubbed
my naked self, because I was so delighted.
When I got onto the subway, every single person
was wearing cerulean shirts and shoes.
It was so lovely, the entire train looked like lapis lazuli.
And boy oh boy, do I love lapis lazuli. On the street,
I noticed my limbs were longer than ever before.
I felt like a new woman! I felt like diving,
but I’d never learned how. It was then that I looked-up
toward the sky and saw that it was doing amazing things:
the clouds looked like the man I love’s collarbone, glowing.
Lightning bolts began to take over the sky like sorcery;
the funny thing is, there was no rain—just sharp lines
of electricity that I am certain were forming the map
that would point me in the direction I needed to go.
That’s when I thought of writing you this letter, Adam,
to thank you for all that you are and to let you know
that not a day goes by where I am not grateful for you.
You are something greater than an outer-space of albatros.
You are a Rolls Royce. You are a Babylonian garden. You are lapis lazuli.

Day 17 poem 15

Poem for a poet whose voice I love #1:
-------------------------------------

When we marry, which we will of course do
in a way entirely our own, without man,
without building, without book, we will spend
the entire moon that follows in a tent
in a clearing in a woods, watching the moon
's phases change, commenting on the way
she clearly approves of our union. When

we go back to the world, to our new house
with a pink picket fence and a doorbell
that honks like a goose, I will secret
every single word you throw out, will use
the words to construct a complete fresh
manuscript, I will name it after you,
will wrap it in butcher paper, tie it
with shoelaces, share it only with
the moon, not even with you, not even
with you.

Day 16/30, poem 14/30: more from the list of deaths

The Spectacular Voodoo of György Dózsa

If he had one magic, it was
to inspire, to fill, to nourish and he believed
that the self was enough, or should be, should
serve when food or clothing are in short supply,
and the rebellion, the movement, should carry
always on. Shortages
could not destroy him, losing control
of the people under his command
could not destroy him not
in a time when an order to desist
"on pain of death" meant quite simply
that, when Lords were tortured
to dying and governors and bishops impaled, he knew
he could only carry on. Capture, of course,
was eventually inevitable but the way in which
his men were starved for a week before his execution
was original. It was creative, even
honorific, the way in which he was killed
by executioners cooking bits of him, alive,
and feeding him to his hungry men, a sort
of praise, allowing him one last time
to fill, to nourish, to inspire.

((This is partially from the death list, partially from a prompt by Rachel McKibbens and partly who knows what))

Poem 13/30, Day 16/30: Starting back up!

The tenderest things are the ones
I love most; the ache of a bruise,
the new green shoot as it uncurls
from soggy soil, my steak cooked raw,
the moment in which I cannot decide
whether to admit I'm in love, a brand
new mother and her evening star smile.

I love the transient, the fleeting temporal,
the wind before the storm, a glance
through the train window, a glittering spark
that begins an explosion, the feeling
of flying I find when falling in love,
the secret right before it's told.

My favorite is the fragile, the pigeon's
neck, the crocheted coaster, slippery
river rocks, the pigeon's neck, my heart,
my heart, the antique clock, the spider's web,
my heart, ballet shoes, my heart.

And all that I love tonight, your face,
your hands, sweet breath, the pulse
that I love to watch throb
in your neck, my heart,
might disappear tomorrow.