GLANCING
March Prompt #12
It wasn’t aimed at me,
but the blow broke
the shield
protecting
my heart
and now
all I see
is full
of god.
April Prompts are welcome.
GLANCING
March Prompt #12
It wasn’t aimed at me,
but the blow broke
the shield
protecting
my heart
and now
all I see
is full
of god.
April Prompts are welcome.
IS THAT MT. MARCY?
March Prompt #11
. . . or Manford? Or Mohegan? I think it
starts with M. One of those old volcanoes,
or maybe a whatchamacallit like
in earth science. Block fault? Strip fault? Or wait—
folded up? Like something pushed it. Like a
layer cake. Anyway, it’s a mountain,
and a tall one by the looks of it, but
it’s hard to tell here, with all the mountains
everywhere and the hills leading up. Not
like at home where they just come up—POW!—out
of the flat. You can tell. You can see one
a long ways off and just look at it. For
miles. And it gets bigger the closer you
get. It doesn’t come and go like these, these—
what? Ozarks? Pocos? Andirons? One of
those, maybe, or Blue, or something like that.
THE CHILEAN SKELETON
March Prompt #10
There was nothing to do but baptize it—
God forgive me—that tiny dead thing.
It was still warm, still damp with its mother’s
blood. They were afraid to wash it,
she said, afraid the water would kill it
before they could get it here, to save
its soul. The least they could do, they said.
She kept crossing herself, the grandmother
who brought it to the church. She kept
crying, afraid the girl had sinned, afraid
she herself had sinned. I did what I could.
I blessed her. I lighted candles for the girl.
I washed the little thing in clean water,
sealed it with the cross, wrapped it
in a linen cloth. I offered to bury it,
but the grandmother said they’d see to that.
It’s what women do, she said.
DEFINITELY NOT A ROBOT
March Prompt #9
Even though, now and then,
I click and whirr. Even though,
now and then, I need to shut down,
amnd recharge. My circuits
are not logical, not digital.
The nightingale, that organ
of delight. Peanut butter
for the dog. One thing does not
lead to another. If this, then
that, but only on Fridays.
This pimple in my nose
makes me want to sneeze.
How much stage direction
do I need to put in? And
margins. Good Friday next
week. Gotta burn those palms.
Storefronts. Street signs.
iRx7*v
ART MANGLING
March Prompt #8
90% of everything is crap.
~Sturgeon’s Law
Crumpling works for poems and stories and manuscripts,
for drawings and lighter paintings, too, perhaps.
Crumpling and tossing, with a flourish, into the basket,
and missing sometimes, so that the floor
is dramatically, artistically strewn. Later,
one’s lover can retrieve a piece, smooth
it out and say, “Why, this is genius!”
and the rest is history.
Burning is excellent. Oh, the notebooks and canvases
crackling in flame while one cackles
and takes long swigs from a bottle of red wine!
Bonfires are best. Small fires on the edge
of the driveway arose the suspicions of neighbors.
Is there genius feeding the fire?
Who knows? Who cares?
One can always claim that, in after years.
THE CHAIR THAT WAS FIRST OWNED BY MY GREAT-GREAT UNCLE ASA
March Prompt #7
He wasn’t actually my uncle. He was my cousin’s uncle, on the other side of her family, you see, but we called him uncle because of that chair. It was passed on to my cousin’s Great Aunt Martha (not my great-aunt, just hers) who was his second daughter-in-law, and she passed it on to her son Freddy, who of course was my cousin’s actual uncle. He was the youngest in that family. Johnny, the middle one, married a Brady girl, and we have, at least my husband has, connections to the Bradys since his sister-in-law’s first husband was a Brady, and her oldest daughter. She didn’t marry his brother till he died. My husband’s. brother. Anyway, Freddy—my cousin’s real Uncle Freddy but we all called him that, used to come to Thanksgiving at my Aunt Bet’s. She was my cousin’s mother, Dad’s sister. So he was my uncle’s brother by marriage. He was the oldest. Never married. No one ever said why, but we have our suspicions. And one Thanksgiving, when he sat down at the table on that rickety old chair—you know how everybody has to haul out all the chairs at Thanksgiving if there’s a big crowd and there was always a big crowd at Aunt Bet’s since she and Dad were two of seven and Uncle John—not the John who married the Brady girl—that was Freddy’s brother—my uncle who was Aunt Bet’s husband had the same name— was one of four and by then they all had kids, except Uncle Freddy, and she always took in strays besides. People, I mean, but she did take in some cats, too, but mostly they stayed up in the barn except that orange one that everybody called Blink because it was missing an eye. But he sat on that old chair and even though he was pretty skinny it broke under him. Bumped his head on the edge of the table on his way down. We all laughed, and so did he, but he was never the same after. Neither was the chair, so Uncle John threw the chair in the fire and Uncle Freddy had to sit on a stack of apple crates they hauled in from the shed.
SNUFKIN
People who stay and people
who go, or something like,
and one must decide, and
oh, I’ve stayed and stayed,
a Moomin behind the stove,
a Fillyjonk unwilling to open
the curtains to the light.
And there are things: tassels
and white seashells, my handbag,
the equipment I need to make
pancakes and poems, things a tent
could never hold. And yet, in Spring,
in Fall, when the geese are going
or coming, sometimes I wonder
why I am staying.
If you don’t know Tove Jansson’s Moomintrolls, it’s time you met them.
YARN
March Prompt #5
(Especially for Maggie)
Not far from here in place or time,
there is, in a closet, a box.
A perfect place for mice
with yarns of purple, blue, and green,
too many colors to name.
Soft yarns, striped ones, sparkling ones,
neat in balls and skeins,
stacked by size in pleasing array.
But late at night—when else?—
when the woman of the house is asleep,
they come. Not mice because of cats,
but Tanglers,
a tribe of tiny folk. Who knows
where they live in the day?
Their work is simple.
By sunrise the box is a mare’s nest,
a gallimaufry, salmagundi.
The Tanglers will not be distracted
by good seeds to sort from bad.
Bowls of milk left for them would be
drunk anyway by cats, tiny garments ignored.
Oh, to have the focus of a Tangler,
a single-minded dedication to a task.
Any task at all.
TALK IN MARCH
What does one do about talk
in March? An hour
of medicines, what-he-said,
the kitchen needs paint.
When it’s March and snow
again and sidewalks and roadsides
are full of slush and one can’t
stretch out. When no one can.
When all our talk is weather
and how terrible the news
and how hard to sleep.
When minds need color
and clear space, just one
thing clean and new born.
MARCH SNOW
This snowstorm’s not exactly late,
In fact, they happen all the time.
This sort of thing’s what we expect
For living in a Northern clime.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean
It’s something we appreciate–
Wouldn’t it be more comforting
If winter had a closing date?