Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
The dry spell ends
it was raining most gloriously
soft, gentle, steady
and she wanted it to continue
all night long
Tag Archives: poetry practice
Day thirty poem, LexPoMo 2014
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry practice, writing challenges, writing practice
Day twenty-six, LexPoMo 2014
My parents would have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this week had my father not died 26 years ago.
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Our 50th Year
there will be no party, no surprise
trip to Hawaii, no family photographs
it feels so hollow, this
anniversary, a golden clanging
bell with no clapper, like me
without you
Day ten poem, LexPoMo 2014
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Sagittarius
She sits at the table, hands wrapped around fresh
coffee. Her fingers trace out of habit
the large red heart on the mug. Yesterday’s news
lies open to the amusements
page, a shared morning ritual now
suddenly solitary. She has finished
the crossword and scramble, laughed
too loud at the comics, clucked amazement
at Dear Abby. All that remains
are the horoscopes. Beneath her husband’s sun
sign she reads, “Your challenge is to explore
the freedom of commitment.” With a sharp
bark of laughter, she lowers the mug and draws the waiting
pile of divorce papers across the table.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry practice, writing challenges, writing practice
Day five poem, LexPoMo 2014
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Drafting
today a sinuous slipstream of poems
roared onto the straightaway
each drawing the one that followed
so close there was no wake
each pushing the one before
ever faster toward the finish
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry practice, racing metaphors, writing challenges, writing practice
Unprompted poetry: jury duty
Jury duty service this week has provided surprising opportunities for poetry, with new people and settings, lengthy silences, and stretches of solitude.
Reflections
move like smoke across the glass
neither inside nor outside
trapped between worlds
phantoms
Posted in Poetry
Tagged jury duty, poetry practice, spontaneous poetry, unprompted poetry, writing practice
Prompted poetry: 5 a.m./supermarket in California
Some of the prompts from 30/30 Poetry have seemed a bit strange to me this year, but I’ve decided that’s a good thing because it stretches me. Yesterday’s prompt (supermarket in California) just left me scratching my head…until I glanced back at Thursday’s prompt (5 a.m.) and something clicked.
The supermarket at 5 a.m. is a place of quiet
industry. No elderly couple blocks the aisle
to argue about gefilte fish. No piercing
toddler wail tracks a mother’s progress
through the building. No man consults
a cell phone before a confounding wall of soup.
Stock clerks tidy shelves. The bakery fills
the air with delicious warmth. Sprinklers
hiss softly over the produce. Slicers whir
behind the deli and meat counters. Voices
rise and fall, indistinct above the gentle
drone of the refrigerated cases.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged 30/30 Poetry Challenge, National Poetry Month, poetry practice, prompted poetry, writing practice
Prompt: anywhere out of the world
This was Thursday’s prompt from the 30/30 Writing Challenge. I thought it was kind of awkward, but the discomfort led me to play with it a bit more than I might have done with something more straightforward. Hey, it’s practice; it’s all good.
No Escape
the world is anywhere
but out, a roundness looping
back on itself like a snake
swallowing its own tail
or that nifty paper trick
from grade school wherein
a single twist is all you need
to model infinity
Prompted poetry: between the sheets
This prompt was from last week’s Poetry Wednesday at The Write Prompts:
Your topic is: between the sheets.
Your form is: three stanzas of varying lengths. The first stanza is what happens before, the second is what happens during, and the last stanza is what comes after.
As usual, I didn’t follow the form. The topic took me in a different direction than I expected, and I’m not sure I pulled it off. Please let me know what you think the poem is about — your feedback will be very helpful!
Blank page
between the sheets
there is nothing
but expectations
Posted in Poetry
Tagged poetry practice, prompted poetry, The Write Prompts, writing prompts
Riff poetry: Daisies
This may be more of an echo than a riff, as much of the wording matches that of the poem that inspired it, Roxi St. Clair’s “Pushing Up Daisies.” Please visit her site to read her original poem. I give Roxi full credit for the word choice here; I merely tinkered with the arrangement. I especially love her use of the word “ogham.”
Daisies
I lie beneath the weather
beaten and faded
with each season passing nobody
knows me but I
know every time footsteps sound
above my joy
trembles with yearning for this
glimpse of presence
enclosed my spirit loses
the meaning of its blossoming
in this dark place as roots
till the soil I no longer stir
to mimic life
on rainy days you can smell the wet
earth where I live when clouds sob
tears of spring and butterflies
spread sail upon the breeze
I remember the Milky Way
aglow in the heavens and Heaven
too a place that aches with meeting
and parting you can lose
time in a place like that for we dance
briefly on the edge of life like water
drops on the tip of a leaf
but here roots grow die shrivel root
again like fingers marking
the passage of time in oghams
of earth and bone I read in solitude
seasons of seed sprout
bud blossom for you to pluck
their beauty and carry
me through the years
Prompted poetry: dreaming dead
I found this while flipping back through my journal. It seemed particularly apt for All Saints Day/The Day of the Dead, when people of various cultures celebrate the blessed memory of those who have gone before.
Dream life of the dead
what dreams dog the dead
in their eternal sleep?
for even those cut off
by dismembering violence
rest in the end
the dead are not uneasy
but in the imagination of the living
whose envy cannot bear
the thought of such abiding
peace
if the dead stir, they merely telegraph
their dreams in cryptic twitches
and inscrutable murmurs, as sleeping
dogs before the hearth
of a winter’s night
Posted in Poetry
Tagged All Saints Day, Day of the Dead, dreams, poetry practice, prompted poetry, writing practice
The Daily Compost 