Fog

after the fog cleared
they found and empty school bus
in a cranberry bog

a woman wrapped in a shrub
found three unlit cigarettes
though she'd only dropped two

and a small dog got the upper hand
on the neighborhood bully
the dalmation from number 8.

it was a dense fog.

lean into gratitude

lean into gratitude is an expression gifted to many by the late Kathleen Burkhalter. if you knew Kathleen, you likely already understand the value of the phrase. for those of you in the world who missed her, she was the most genuinely accepting person i have ever known. she opened her arms, her home, and her heart to everyone.

i miss her. i cannot imagine how severely her dear husband, David, and her six beautiful children - Mercy, JM, Ana-Maria, Seraphina, Kiko, and Rosie - must miss her every moment. but, i feel so grateful that i had a chance to tell Kathleen just how powerful her message was for me. i miss her, but i feel grateful for her. i lean into gratitude.

it gives me strength.

lean into gratitude has a similar meaning to the phrase "look on the bright side". but what happens when you lean instead of just look?

to look means to picture, to imagine, to watch from afar.

to lean means to acknowledge, to accept, and to use positivity for support.

it gives me so much strength. it forces me to know what i am grateful for instead of simply imagine. for me, it makes gratitude and positivity real. it makes gratitude and positivity something i can use to take action.

like a sail leaning against the wind.

lean into gratitude also offers a delicate balance. to lean, not to fall, not to engulf, but to lean. to hold yourself up with the help of gratitude. this powerful phrase allows me to stand and be strong with support of my thankfulness.

perhaps someone else could articulate the phrase's meaning better, but i offer this as an explanation of how i have felt for the last month, and an explanation of how i have coped with much over the last month without collapsing, as hard as it has been.

Nathan

I have this friend. I know for a fact that he considers me a friend.

His name is Nathan, but his friends call him Nate.

His grandmother invented Oreos. They are a secret family recipe, you see.

Even though I have known Nate for a while, I don't know where he lives. No one else seems to know, either.

Sometimes he goes to Maine. Thinking about it now, I am not sure where in Maine he goes.

He goes there to speak to animals.

Nate speaks to people the way they speak to him. Short, quiet sentences or long, excited sentences. He can make any type of sentence.

He is an old, wise wizard in his youth. Nathan the Wizard.










it has been 18 days since leonard cohen died.

2 minutes

for 2 minutes every morning
i let my toothbrush do the work

let the bristles vibrate the plaque
off my tea stained teeth

and i think about cleaning
the grim off the door

about one foot off the ground
where the cats rub their cheeks

and i think about whether
i should have responded to that

facebook post about abortion laws
or if should have let it be

and i think about your voice
and how much more i like

the words on the page
and how guilty i feel about that

and i think about all the extra calories
that i should have said no to the day before

and then my tooth brush stops
the built in 2 minute timer is up

and those three teeth
that i mindlessly held my brush to

are really clean.



it has been 1 day since Leonard Cohen died. i think i will be okay.

day zero

the lights are going out
clink. clink.

i don't know how to make them stop
clink.

clink.

today, Leonard Cohen died.

pri(s)m

the way the cat sees it
the fractured light

is an erratic and chaotic
intruder through which

irradiation is only achieved
through diligent and aggressive attack

to yield the desired dispersion
of the light creatures.

strange though it might seem
that the efforts by the cat

, no matter how fierce,
take exactly the same amount of time

as it takes the sun to move
from ground to sky and back again.

interesting things you can do with sandwiches

a poem for MeeSherr

there are many things you can do
with sandwiches, but

there are only so many things
exclusively interesting

interesting without being gross
or childish or contrary

pure interesting is a talent
a special skill, honed

by those with love for the craft
and dedication to their work.

it may seem interesting
to put a sandwich under your bed

but most beds harbor dust
and fuzzy carpet

this is gross.
would you eat a furry sandwich?

it may seem interesting
to cut off the crusts and carve

your sandwich into fun shapes
like dinosaurs or hearts

but children do this to their food;
therefore, it lacks the exclusive allure

of being interesting simply
by being interesting.

it may seem interesting
to put chips in your sandwich

and it does taste great if your chips
are delicious and they go

with the flavor of your sandwich
but how many people have to do it

before it is no longer that interesting?
it may seem interesting

to substitute your bread with other foods
like lettuce or waffles

depending on your diet,
but we have seen this done

by large food chains now,
and so the interest is disappearing.

so how can one be truly interesting
and do interesting things with a sandwich?

perhaps the most interesting thing
one can do with a sandwich

is be completely normal with it.

her story

sitting down outside drinking something
hot from a paper cup

an old woman
skin like chocolate bark

except for pink fingertips
and white scar tissue

in the shape of a clover
under her right eye

you want to know what happened
curiosity tingles, motivates

you ask nicely
what happened to her

she doesn't look at you
she gets up

she walks away
like she never saw you

...

shrug it off. she's old.
maybe she's def?

how they met

they could have grown up together
and shared a short walk to the bus stop each morning

until he learned to drive and honked his horn
when he passed her, to make her jump every morning

until she started anticipating it with a middle finger
and a forgiving smile.

but there are many ways they could have met...

they could have gotten trapped in the same
broken elevator, or under the same awning

during a torrential rain.

they could have passed each other
for hundreds of days on the street

smiling each time, maybe wishing each other
a happy holidays or a sheepish wave

until one day he gives her a carnation
that he stole from the open front shop

around the corner.

they could have tried to adopt the same dog
or reached for the same jug of milk.

Mind Me

The mind, my mind

It doesn't always.

at the stern

leant over the rails
at the stern

of the passenger vessel
bound for an unbound land

lush with hope and rich
with the stentch of opportunity

there she was
hair wafting in tandum

with the windsocks
admiring the wake of the ship

the back of her dress
constantly threatening

to reveal some flesh
unintended for peeping passenger

the girl at the stern
is the only one thinking

about the world left behind

stinger

I am stuck on an impossible idea
which is typical, at least for me

and not just an idea of impossible measure
but a mud-caked wreck of an impossible concept

lovers of O'Hara will appreciate the risk
of ending up in a knot of an unpunctuated triptych

it simply cannot happen
it cannot be formed into something you see

in a world where you are the most possible
the impossible flutters around you like a bee in heat

and it never lands.

the mark

hard to hide it from some. those who know you already, those who think they do.

when all of a sudden
you start treating someone
someone you just met
like you've never treated anyone
before.

hard to hide it. because they know you.
they know the mark.

a planet with long views

IMPROMPTU #7
with the Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month

The Prompt
The Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira created the cento “Anthology” (see below) using lines from his own poems, instead of employing the traditional method of cento-construction (in which you build a poem entirely out of lines from other people’s poems). Following his example, write a cento that is a self-portrait, or anthology of your life, utilizing lines and fragments from your own work.
Or, alternatively, create a “self-portrait” cento using lines and fragments from

1. other people’s poems (the traditional method), or
2. song lyrics, or
3. prose (fiction and/or nonfiction)

*To see the basic stipulations for writing a traditional cento, see http://myenchiridion.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html

The Poem

dan woke up
he is six years old
and he lives in a house with two cats

humans built the kitchen
bacon, eggs, mushrooms,
whipped cream, earl grey

she made them all
some elderly woman
every sunday afternoon at 5am

down the road ben woke up
to find his kitchen in a cloud of bread flour
Muriel and Beatrice created this great blizzard
they called it a donut shop

outside, three teenagers pulled beets
from the garden
they dreamt of opening a tapas bar
and calling it Norman's

a curious neighborhood
from the cats' perspectives
but the raccoons paid no attention.

Greater

IMPOMPTU #5
with the Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month

The Prompt
Ok, here’s the prompt: pick a song that you find dynamic. Track its moves. Try to replicate that movement with a poem.

The Process
Sarah's awesome prompt is... well, very involved. I am taking a baby step towards the goal, by taking a song's lyrics and replacing them. I asked my husband to pick a song. He chose "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" by Weezer.... I am translated part of the song.

The Poem

Greater
I fit to keep it neat like I just won't dance
But soon you'll be stitching in a signature

We're like a team with a magical dream
I howl like a wolf when You fill the moon

You get the moon and I get the ground
We've had the plot to take on the world

We've taken this all the way
and Curse on them for trying to take us down

retraction

IMPOMPTU #6
with the Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month

One of the Prompts9.
Write a prose poem of five sentences. The first sentence should include a pronoun ( not “I”) doing something that itself includes an image/object. The 2^nd sentence should have a different pronoun doing something else with the same image/object. The 3^rd sentence should be a statement about this image/object. For the 4^th sentence, write a simile that is unrelated. In the 5^th, use “I” and relate part of the simile to the original statement. I know this all sounds rather clinical, but here by way of example is one I wrote:

The Problem

A woman accidentally walks into the men’s room. A man deliberately walks into the women’s room. I don’t believe in dialectics but abide by them nonetheless. It is like a painting of someone sheathing a sword. The problem is it is also like a painting of someone unsheathing a sword.

 

 

 

The Poem

 

we retracted the comments about the fish. they took the fish back anyway. the fish was not what was asked for. it was like getting a futon instead of a table. I wouldn't know what to do with it, I already have a bed and a couch.

 

 

wonder market for monsters

IMPOMPTU #4
with the Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month
Prompt: WordBlocks
Words have multiple meanings. Meanings have multiple words. I think of wordblocks as a single-word stand-in to express multiple meanings, or an ambiguity of meanings. I use them in my writing all the time, and often generate them as a warm-up exercise before I write.

1. Write a word.
2. Make a list of other words that are related to this word, in meaning or in spelling.
3. Combine these words into one wordblock sharing letters. (See pictures for example)
4. Keep rearranging, adding, or subtracting words until you have a wordblock you like aesthetically both visually, and linguistically. A wordblock rarely looks great on the first try. Wordblocks have vast potential both handwritten, and typeset either digitally or with moveable letterpress type.
5. Your wordblock can stand alone as a one-word poem, or be placed in a sentence. Try stringing multiple word blocks together. The result is a sentence that provides multiple ways to navigate it.

See Examples Given Here

so i made this thing....

L A N G U A G E

IMPOMPTU #3
with the Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month

Prompt
Stare at a word until the letters start to discorporate. You will find that letter cohesion, the letter glue that keeps letters stuck inside a word, is disrupted and dissolves. Fragments of letters will dislodge too. You are then free to visually interpret or document the life of letters outside their word existence as loosely or succinctly as possible.

L A N G U A G E

language

languish language language languish land squish land switch

i immediately heard the word language. and i immediately heard the limitations in it.

i only know how to say thank you in seven languages. there is so much more to learn.

learn language. learn limits.

and our learning has limits and our length has breath. and this too is in the language of things.

Letter from the Illuminati

IMPROMPTU #2
with the Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month
The Prompt
This prompt is modeled after that project. You can start with any piece of junk mail or advertising, or any legal document or bureaucratic form (it’s tax time!). Choose a few sentences. Remove the nouns. Replace them with:

• words from a poem you’ve abandoned
• words from one or more poems you love (by anyone, yourself included)
• any other source that works

From there, work what you’ve got into a poem.


Note
My husband and I just renewed a particular policy. Can you guess what kind of policy from the poem? ....

LETTER FROM THE ILLUMINATI

With respect to the Majority,

You may claim that abandonment benefits loss.
You may call your local House.
But you have Selected.

So now you have Reflected?
You cause Volcanic Eruptions to Damage us?

To expect your best is your business.
Only your obligation is our priority.

And you will Pay your Share
when we pay for the glass roof and hidden rot.

This was made clear upon signing. You have already
Paid in Full.

Your obligation and Your risk, these are our Delight.

We know You will renew your policy.

Thank you.
The Trampoline Dog of Law

--REFORMERS--

IMPROMPTU #1
with the Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month

the prompt:

 
 

the pages:

 

 

the remainders:

work done is by master. eleven were in on the government. according to the mechanic undergoing storm assembling. complete steam undergoing repairs and work and work and two and thirty-two repairs machinery. found all the coal approximately. making consumption. all used for the power. at the three men, one man, each man acting. were during making the consumption total water. to which chargeable. consumption, adjustment, attention, the end. adjustment, the attention, which the government of the occasion of country. enough has to end in view, the three big indicated in this. and need is this and need as now the whole is necessary as to quick unhealthy. healthy if the interests changes are going change. country government will be through the community. some will be merely the methods. minds need and goods we keep. heads and these things in a little army. the task of everybody out by labor four asked the government the sum. press principle in the construction for construction for operation. for made in construction the dock state. France sailed from France the two other. the battleship and five peace of powers is remains until in and terms to second this determination to press the past will wagon. funds for operation a necessary expenditure for the country. line is as a remedy for the slow when the refund to consequence expiration of the resolution without excuse is urged to present aid. to secure government, government between a necessary and improving condition based on that than any to know wagon and government. bad and by during stormy November. cleared in the week.

 

the poem:

work done well is by a master.

 

eleven were in on the government. according to the mechanic --

which is undergoing stormproof assembling.

 

complete. reformers steam ahead. undergoing repairs

and work and work and work and work and two and thirty-two repairs --

 

machinery work. or so they found all the coal --

approximately.

 

making consumption for government. all used for the power.

at the three men, one man, each man acting.

 

as if power were working.

were making the consumption total.

 

to which the men are chargeable.

consumption, adjustment, attention, --

 

the end. adjustment, the attention,

unto which the government  --

 

of the occasion of country

is enough  and has the end in view.

 

the three big indications in this.

is this and need  --

 

as now the whole is necessary

as to quick unhealthy.

 

healthy if the interests of men

change and are going to change for good.

 

country government will be through the community.

some men will be merely become the methods.

 

government minds need --

and goods men keep.

 

heads and these things --

as in a little army -- these are the tasks of everybody --

 

out by labor.

 

four asked the government

the sum. press principle --

 

in the construction for construction

for operation. for made in construction --

 

the dock state of France

sailed from France to the two others.

 

the battleship and five peace of powers

remains until --

 

in and of terms to second this determination

to press the past will of men like a wagon.

 

funds for operation are a necessary expenditure --

 

for the country. line is as a remedy  --

for the slow when the refund to consequence expiration --

 

of the resolution without excuse

is urged to present aid.

 

to secure government,

government between a necessary and improving --

condition

 

based on that which more than any

to know the will of men as if by wagon --

 

and government.

bad and by doing so during a stormy November.

 

but cleared in the week.

 

the notes:

upon lifitng the text, i inserted my own punctuation, namely the period. in the manifestation of the text as a poem, words were added to benefit the narrative, and breaks were added to benefit the breath. as this is my first erasure piece, and outside my comfort zone, as it were, i brought the content into familiarity via couplets, of which i am very comfortable.

 

 

crow

i watched a crow
move in a spiral


from the outside
of the cul-du-sac


to the center where
it spun in place


before burring its beak
in discarded candy


that had been buried
under snow


since Halloween.