DECLARATIVE FAIRY

Fairies instead

Now and then, inspired by Emily Anderson’s wonderful Bluebird Fairies (Check them out! Get a pack! Support Artists!), I draw what I call a Slip Fairy instead of writing a daily poem. Here are a couple of recent ones.  (Slip Fairy because they’re drawn with the non-dominant hand.)

 

 

 

words: Work for the Day

favorite

billow

after 

container

 

 

WORK FOR THE DAY

Your assignment: design a container

for the sea. It must embrace each whale 

and fleck of plankton. Of course, you will think

of your favorite tropical fish, the rich

coral canyons, the deep kelp forests,

the sea otters and singing dolphins, but

you must must include the rest:

great white sharks and red tides,

the deadly stinging jellyfish. 

Your container must hold every calm

and billow, every island and basin

and estuary and brackish backwater.

Leave nothing out. The tsunami must be

there, and the pale blue impossible calms

after the storms have passed.

PROVERBIAL

I’m reduced to looking up old prompts and combining them. This is the result of two: “make up the world,” and “new proverb.”

PROVERBIAL

 

In this world, nine stitches

hold Time together.

You’ll  need waxed thread,

a curved bookbinder’s needle.

When you have finished

sewing up Time’s spine,

all the eggs in your basket

will hatch at once. One swallow

will settle on your hand

to twitter up the summer

and two will call from a bush,

then lead you on.

Follow them to a meadow

where a red morning sky

is opening the roses. 

All the horses you have wished for

will thunder from the mountains. 

Choose one and look in its mouth,

but don’t believe a word.

words: POSTCARDS FROM THE ROAD

Wrote this one early on and forgot to post it.

 

flagrant

underneath

travel

lavender

 

POSTCARDS FROM THE ROAD

How travel assaults the senses!

Black pudding and grilled tomato

with a poached egg stealthily pocketed

for who in full jetlag could eat

such things so early, or at all?

And who would offend 

the dear old hosts of the Irish B & B?

 

Pushed underneath the lumpy bunk

in the smoky German hostel,

what might once have been

a chicken wing.

And who could forget

that rainful cycling trip through France,

the flagrant scent of lavender?

REHEARSAL

REHEARSAL

 

It was all rehearsal: ways to dampen

anxiety. Yoga, Qigong, prayer.

meditation. Long walks. Gardening. Art.

Old household skills: bread and soup and cookies

and soap. Getting along with others. I

recall how the Brits kept going during

the blitz, my aunts and uncles in Poland

after the war. You’ve had the dream, I think.

You’re in a play, about to go onstage,

but you don’t remember your lines or worse 

never learned them, or worst of all you’ve never

even seen this play, and the director says, 

“It’s theater, for Chrissake. Fake it. Make

something up! The curtain’s rising. You’re on.”

THE END OF POETRY MONTH: A RANT

THE END OF POETRY MONTH

~a manifesto, or possibly just a rant

 

People who write poems do it ALL THE TIME.

Even when they aren’t writing.

When they’re walking, eating,

sitting in the coffee shop staring out the window.

When they’re watching movies,

running errands,

drinking with friends.

ALL THE TIME.

And once a year,

in the cruelest month,

you haul them out,

put them on display,

act like you care.

THEY ARE NOT LIKE A DISEASE

requiring an awareness month.

You do not pay them a thing

and they do not ask you to.

Maybe they should. 

Maybe they should

go on strike.

In April.

No bookstore readings,

no interviews. 

No new poems.

The extremists among them might

knock poetry books from library shelves,

might stand on street corners.

Their placards might read

 

NOT POETRY MONTH

HAVE YOU NOTICED?

LOCATIONS

LOCATIONS

“. . around the edges of oddness”

        ~A Bluebird Fairy by Emily Anderson

 

You won’t find it 

in halls of ivy, or

in the chambers of kings.

It isn’t between the covers 

of carefully curated 

volumes available only

to members with reservations.

Never in anything 

organized 

by color or size.

Never in anything glossed

or listed or rewarded. 

    But look!

It’s teetering on a tooth

from a reconstructed

conodont. Spinning

on the rim of a sixpence

balanced on a pole

balanced on the rubber

nose of a clown

riding a unicycle on 

a tightrope stretched

between a stormcloud

and the beak of a raven.

It’s lurking in the garden dirt

under the left thumbnail

of the weaver’s second

daughter. If you want it,

you might start there.

STILL LIFE WITH VAN GOGH’S EAR

STILL LIFE WITH VAN GOGH’S EAR

Gala (Elena Ivanovna Diakonova), c. 1936

 

Pink chrysanthemums melt and spread

across the surface of the black-bound bible.

To the left, a clear glass jar of yellow pencils,

each with a small, fierce face and tiny

wings. The ear,

no longer fresh,

has dropped a bit of blood

on the Spanish lace table covering.

Outside the thinly-curtained window,

the sun shines over a field of what we presume

are red poppies. At least,

that’s what we’re meant to presume.

THE POET’S STUDY

THE POET’S STUDY

(oil on plywood, 4’ x 8’)

~after David Weinstock

Not a simple abstraction—

if there is such a thing 

as simply abstract—

but layered.

Ghosted.

 

Under the brown glaze, 

green—or rather,

greens—escaping 

like leaves,

blades,

tattered flags.

 

The finest edgings

of red,

fingered outward

like flame.

 

Are those human faces

in the cloudiness

at the center,

or pomegranates?

or are they cats,

or planets circling

a central sun,

or is it—a bowl?

Or is it merely the gold

at the center of everything?