for honeyed light,
and fuzzy blossoms,
warmer breezes,
brighter days
daffodil and
cricket whispers
Mary Oliver
songs of praise.
calmer seasons,
softer reasons,
searching, finding
helping ways,
words of wisdom,
sanguine answers,
Barbara Kingsolver
takeaways.
calm reserves
and ample courage,
understanding
of the mess,
fortitude
to band together,
Margaret Atwood
cleverness.
Mary Shelley’s
flip the monster,
Virginia Woolf’s
collective views,
Madeline Miller’s
new perspective,
Alice Walker’s
use the bruise.
Perkins Gilman’s
righteous anger,
Angelou’s
escape the cage,
Angela Carter’s
dark and twisty,
Hansberry’s
take center stage.
Women Writers
came before us,
Women Writers
writing still.
may we read them,
may we be them,
grab our quills,
exert free will.
do some damage.
wreak some carnage.
sound the gongs,
and right the wrongs.
strong solutions
and ablutions,
lead the way
to brighter days.
I woke to the shrieks
of blackbirds roving.
Again.
Every day
for the last 20-something,
they’ve picked at anything
trying to wriggle a little life
out of this cold planet —
their raucous beaks slicing
as if the world is on fire,
when in reality,
there’s no way.
It’s blueblack cold and cracked here,
with frosty hearts on full display.
I wanted to say hearts unfrosted, but that would have been wrong.
The White House Valentine, with its chronic anger and bulbous, floating heads, proves that sentiment wrong.
Oh, also sentiment is wrong.
Inefficient. Fraudulent.
Surely a liberal initiative and thus dismantled completely by dodgy, draconian beaks as too woke.
I woke to the shrieks
of blackbirds.
We three wore comfortable shoes
and smiles on our cheeks
while chasing windswept leaves,
chocolate croissants,
and all the sights we could see:
the coyly smiling diva beneath her pyramid,
the Grande Dame in her scaffolding,
the famed tower on the Seine,
the tree lined boulevards,
marble-mouthed accents,
cigarette smoke and accordion chords,
the hushed blend of crepe trousers,
bicycle spokes, and Shakespeare and Company crowds.
The harsh scrape of blisters
and bistro chairs
clustered like the grapes
pressed and poured into glass balloons
poised near berried lips
as perfumed hands snapped selfies
beneath silk flowered awnings,
ribbon-braided balconies,
and stone so creamy you ached for a spoon.
All elegant and expected
and somehow, so not –
like the massive teddy bear
tucked in the crotch of a tree
and the painted elf carousel
at the street corner in Montmarte,
and all the memories that spilled
like sepia-toned love notes
from my daughters
when I spotted a stuffed bear
in the corner of my son’s closet
this Valentine’s week.
Earl Grey Morning
Even the name of it soothes.
the violet soft of it,
purled, curling stir of it,
rising through cold
like a promise.
From dark there is dawn --
first fog, then a song.
And even the sense of it soothes.
The cupped balmy breath of it,
pressed against palm of it,
steeping the dark
like an oath.
From warmth will come glow –
soft first and soft-slow.
Easy, the taste of it soothes.
The deep woodsy heft of it,
rich malted zest of it,
breaking the black
like a vow.
From dark will come light,
cool bergamot bright.
So, for now, just feel
for the sunrise,
the wayfinding blessings
are always unwinding and
binding themselves
like a pact.
Find fragrance in the dark.
Seize promise.
Feel the spark.
Fast and furious
Apollo’s gold Bugatti
banks chlorine blue sky
asphalt, a stovetop,
boils order to turbulence,
air rifts in ribbons
lawns, deep-fryer crisp,
once locust feast, now famine,
amber waste of grain
poolside barbecues
swim-suited shish ka barbies
rotate in the heat
collarbones glisten
sweat stipples bellies, arms, breasts
salt crusted temples
silk Bernini saints
cut from farinaceous clouds
clot in curdled air
sunsets melt so fast
ice cream too, fireflies blink and
summer’s gone away
silver tinsel sliding from angel palms
to slicken evergreens and other greens,
white oaks, red maples, hydrangea-blue poms,
my vision rapt with heaven’s garland strings --
When ribbons of rain thin as fishing line fall
from hosts of rods in the sky, casting, catching
rainbows in their threaded, shimmering haul,
my pulse entangled and splashing --
When champagne streamers spill from glistening,
sun-scented fountains, filling the tender
flower flutes with honeyed nectar, fizzing
my soul – sublime-stoked, I seize the ember.
Burning, I haggle with poetry’s muse,
drunk and in debt to ephemeral views.
That groundhog is cute,
I say. He’s covered in bugs,
you say. No that’s layers
of fur, I say. They’ve got two. And look how he holds up his cute little paws — those tiny front paws — like a toddler in prayer. He’s nibbling a nut, just look at those teeth, his gold chicklet teeth and that slack-bottomed jaw. Watch him whittle his food. Get a load of that nose as it twitches and stills, watch his wobble turn stone at first sign of threat. He’s so cute! I go on. Get a load of that bod, that pudge full of pudding, that folds like dough. It can twist all around to that itch on his back, to that two-coated stubbed silver fur on his back – see that weak-whispered chin of his going to town? He’s the cutest, I say. But you say, so unmoved,
Your pudge pudding boy
just ate bugs off his back. That itch –?
that nut –? Both were bugs.
The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
with their dark wet gold out,
bartering with the wind
over the pond’s reflective mirror — bruised
azure acrylic, butterscotch glass, anyone’s flesh-tone, chrome.
Listen You.
Who disappeared into those shadows?
Joined at the spine with death and life?
Unravelling like smooth threads?
Listen to the rhythmic thumping inside water,
like black birds pushing against the glass
to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
words frothing out merciless and angry:
You can’t abandon your history
and it won’t abandon you.
Down over the rocks, an explosion, a discovery
of the torched & reckless hour
in this carved gold of shifting faces:
tree limbs, tiny veins of burnt leaves and a scorched coil of greasy hemp,
scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell
of gasoline,
thick glass blood cells, a throat slit pouring silk
whirled in the ochre light —
the light of truth.
His head is a rose being burned alive.
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf,
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
and the small wings
unfold from the fabric of night,
bound up at length for harvesting,
darkness after it, dark riddled through it.
Manna does not fall.
Saviors do not save.
The earth drinks men and their loves
like wine.
Souls which are planted . . . continue growing . . . until generations
will tell tales of having met someone who knew.
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves,
and all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth —
it’s breaking apart, it’s turning over, it’s pushing up.
Listen You, if no one else,
Can you feel the ground rumble under your feet?
Back through the brindled understory
etched in wood…
You can’t abandon your history
and it won’t abandon you.
SOURCES: The Brindled Understory Cento is comprised entirely of lines borrowed from the following poets (in order of appearance): Edward Thomas; Roger Reeves; Lynda Hull; Jill McDonough; Tino Villanueva; Adrienne Rich; Sonia Sanchez; Anne Sexton; Brian-Komei-Dempster; Lucille Clifton; Margaret Walker; David Bottoms; Jake Adam York; Mary Oliver; Lynda Hull; Sonia Sanchez; Richard Wright; Robin Glow; Jane Kenyon; Nikki Giovanni; Roger Reeves; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Mary Oliver; Jake Adam York; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Daisy Fried; Lenelle Moise; Yehuda Amichai; Nikki Giovanni; Sylvia Plath; Philip Levine; Anne Waldman; Tino Villanueva; Anne Waldman; Donovan Kuhio Colleps; Laura Da’; Jake Adam York
She slips into her fuzzy bathrobe with all the sleep-rimmed focus of cream unfurling in coffee. Eyes but slits, she stirs the marble mist. Shadows spin and settle; shrubbery and tree line appear. Lawn purls silver-sage, and the yearling slips from his bed to graze at the sod-scalloped hem between clearing and wood. A roll of her perfumed wrist and his coat froths cappuccino; the dogwoods don lemon lime skirts. Onward she shuffles now, gathering steam. Wiping her eyes: the limbs limn tears. Flexing her toes: the moss fuzzes stone. The yearling cocks his head to the arched swirl of undergrowth, an almost-cave of wonder and wild behind him. The sun-sprinkled lawn, bustling and bursting with civilized snacks, in front. Inward or out? he ponders in pause. Meanwhile, sliding off her slipper and sash,
Dawn lifts gold arms
to comb back the last clinging
haze from her crown.
postmodernfamilyblog 