I took the longest writing Jenith Charpentier's poem because I think she's such a swell poet. I re-read her chapbook for inspiration and noticed that the poem August Woman had delicious words ending every line. So I took all of the end-line-words and put them in backward order to start the lines of the poem I would write for her. August and September have always been my favorite months - the last slow punch of summer, the first flirt of fall, and here we find ourselves now, in August turning into September. So here's a first draft of September Woman, for Jenith. Thanks, Jenith.

A Poem for Cory

A Poem for Cory by Ginna Funk Wallace
A poem about cigars!

Made for this fundraiser.

Rough Draft for Paul

Hey, Paul.

Tell me what it’s like to be a house.

To have a ten bedroom heart,

ten beds per room,

room for all, tell me what it’s like

to be a hallway

lined with couches, hung

with art, a kitchen

with food for days, we’re talking

good, local, farmer’s market cheese and bread

beets like garnets and snapping peas,

tell me please, what it’s like

to wear a wraparound porch smile

on your face every day.

While others wear masks you use joy

like the lightest of make-ups, just a little

brush here and there, rubbing off

on all your kisses, like whitewashing

your picket fence, your fence with no gate

so it can never, ever be closed.

Tell me what it’s like to be water.

To be fluid and unabashedly changing,

to be change as a constant, to be constant

as an ocean, to be really

worth your salt, to exist in all places at once

in all your states, to be the color of truth,

not of sadness but still to be there

when we cry, to give birth

to everyone you love.

Tell me what it’s like to be naked:

no costumes, no barriers,

no defenses, no lies, to be bare,

to be open, an unpainted house,

water in its vapor state, unadorned,

revealing and revealed, to exist

in your most pure form, to be free

to dance on a rooftop at sunset,

to be truthful,

truly, tell me

so I can learn to be that, too.

I made a videopome!

I wrote a poem, and then I made a video for it.  I hope you enjoy this little two-minute project!  It's a poem I wrote during this past April's 30/30 NaPoWriMo.

SIGNAL BOOST

I've been having a rather rough time of it financially due to having to leave my previous life.  In order to start a new one, I'm holding a fundraiser.  But I'm not begging, I'm making deals, and you get to select what sort of deal you'd like!

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/teaching-english-in-taiwan/x/4135053

Please consider helping me out, or at the very least, sharing this link with your friends.

Thanks a mint!

in which i mark "return to sender" every package of anger that has showed up as of late

i will not carry a cross
for you anymore.
two years was four
too many.

Monosonnet with Parenthetical

When
Holland
Taylor
Slapped
My
Mother
I
Thought

(or perhaps realized, for the first time, that I'd always wanted to do that myself, but I was so small and she was my model for God, authority, and the nature of what I should become, and the fact that a child had slapped this mountain this monarch over something so trivial when I had good reason but had always held back shook basements of thinking, made me quake in my small jelly sandals, planted some kind of seed in my guts until finally the day came when I no longer had any buttons left unpushed and the world went grave-dark and silent and when it came back there stood the woman who was my first home but her face had been punched and my fist was singing its loudest, highest notes, and all i could think was how neither of us had told the other "i love you" in years)

I
Should
Have
Done
That
First.

Synonyms for Pleasure

Synonyms for Pleasure:

BRIE.
My long arms and the way they reach so many things,
the way they move me through water,
water.
The sound of the ocean with its solid teeth, its
stoic feet, its cheekbones, its eternal change.
Rooftops.
The wild wind in my hair, the distance
between people, between places, the electric
geography of absense.
My dog when he snores.
The songs of crickets,
the syrup of memory,
the chlorine cologne of the hotel pool at
the birthday party, the family reunion.  The year
you learn you can't possibly ever learn everything,
the smell of sun-soaked skin.
Wisteria, honeysuckle, magnolia, mimosa.
Your sleeping breath.
Avocados.
The smell of your scalp.
Mangoes.
Your loveless arms and the day
they pushed me away.

This is not poetry. This is therapy.

I wish you would quit punishing me
for doing what I had to do
to save my own life.

Two years putting you first until
one day I put me first
and you freak out.

All this space in my mind you're
taking up, paying no rent.
I need to evict you.

Everything you claim
about yourself, so proud,
you've proven untrue.

bargaining

I will cut off all my hair
and send it to you in a box
wrapped in gift paper
some holiday design or perhaps
an old map, tie it all up
with a bow or some twine if you'll send me
in return
your most recently worn undershirt.
Sweat in it good for me first.
For one more night
with your shoulder as my pillow
you may have
your choice
of my teeth.
Take them all.
For your voice,
soft,
saying anything, reading
magazine ads in my ear
while you stroke my hair
I would cut out my heart,
that raw animal, so noisy.
I haven't even used it
in days.