Poetry Thursday: The Beginning of Wonder

This week's Poetry Thursday prompt is to use an image as inspiration for a poem. I've been taking a lot of pictures at school to document our greenhouse transformation. We've started some urban gardening worm composting and I love seeing my city kids find touchpoints to nature. This is a rough, rough draft at a poem...right now the picture is about as much poem I have energy for. I guess this is my attempt at a composting poem.

















this is the beginning of wonder

that we could throw our lunch
into the grainy soil of the Earth,
where she will hold it in her round belly
chewing it over days and months
spitting it out
as new dirt

Poetry Thursday: Ten

This has been a long week. THE TEST has started and the worms have arrived and yesterday the AIDS people returned to hand out prizes and pamphlets.

After an endless morning of coloring bubbles we tried to coast through the afternoon. At 4:00 we reported to the gym to hear a twenty-one year old woman speak about her experience with AIDS.

I'm off my medicine, she proclaimed. I'm tired of taking it.
I wake up every morning and hate what I see in the mirror.

The test weary audience was glazed over with only a few giggles when things like anal sex and vaginal fluid came up.

Then it was time to go around to tables set up with brochures and pamphlets and tablets and pencils...all the things a bunch of kids will lap up like a treasure. They were handed shiny red bags to hold all their paper. Just as they were leaving, a teacher discovered that there were also condoms. Handfuls of condoms: strawberry and lime, female and ribbed...our ten year olds had strips of condoms piled in their bags.


















I am not opposed to educating kids about contraceptives but I do think it's important to actually educate them, not throw them in a bag and hand it to them like candy. ("I want a piece of candy!" one first grader whined while passing by) And I think ten is too young. It's already the beginning of crossing out of childhood. No one wants a bag full of condoms with that.

And so, I share this recently discovered poem by Billy Collins. I keep reading the last two stanzas over and over again because they are that perfect.


On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

-- Billy Collins

Poetry Thursday: Red

This week's Poetry Thursday topic is Red. I kept looking for red this week but everything seemed grey and green. The only red I could find was the lines of brick rowhouses. And no poem was coming from there this week.

Then tonight I was making marinara sauce and thinking about the movie Mostly Martha (a favorite of mine) which tells the story of a chef. It has all sorts of beautiful food scenes in it. And I just recently found the main musical theme of the movie, which I also love. So I set to writing a food inspired poem to Country by Keith Jarrett on repeat. I think the poem may be trying to go in a few too many directions, but here's my offering for this week.

Red

the tomatoes
swim out of the can--
fibrous hearts,
stringy and bloated

this is the beginning of destiny

they want to fall
in the lap
of an Italian grandmother
they want to be part
of the one true sauce

but it is only weeknight
trial and error
half-best
let’s get dinner on the table

the most ordinary fate
of tomatoes

this generosity of life
the garlic, the wine
the sticky pasta

that we wake up every morning

Poetry Thursday: Knowing Things

My poem is not on topic for this week's Poetry Thursday. This was inspired today after a conversation I had at school. Perhaps a bit more narrative than poem but here's what I have for today.

Knowing Things

Brooke looked up from
The The Popcorn Book today
to ask if she could
write a letter to the president.

She had a question about popcorn.

Do you think the president
is the best person to ask
about popcorn? I asked.

Well he’s the president.
He should know things.

I couldn’t argue with that.

I wanted this spring hope
of writing a letter to the people
most-in-charge
because they had sat
around a table, drinking
strong coffee and figuring
out the world--
global warming
education
peace
popcorn.

I’d write letters
with questions
and watch the mail
like an old-timey sailor
counting the days
to shore.

But it is only us
with our fathoms
of unknowing
anchoring us to
this mantle of earth
trying to peer
over the side
of the world.

Poetry Thursday: The Unraveling

This week's Poetry Thursday prompt is the body knows. I spent some time drafting a poem for the draft, but nothing worth sharing came out. So, I'm reposting a poem from the fall about skin...which was a direction my poems were heading in during my drafts.


The Unraveling

Bria is peeling off her skin
in strips, like an orange
from the tip of her index finger
across the canyon of her palm
scattering the refuse across her desk
like a thin curl of pencil shavings

That the skin can come off
with just a thumbnail is a puzzle
it is all that connects the insides
these muscles, bones, veins--
the very center the very heart
could tumble onto the floor
if this gauze disappears

One more layer and there will be
a prick of blood waiting, she convinces herself
this will be her smoky red earth
her something strong her something
good this will be her root
she digs like a child looking for China

there's not one scarlet drop

All this fragility
this is all we have

Poetry Thursday: Where We Lean on Our Hands Looking Out the Window

This week's Poetry Thursday topic was to write a prose poem. I must say I often skip over prose poems when I come to them in a book. I like my poetry to be poetry and my prose to be prose. However, I thought I'd at least try my hand at it.

This has been my week of pondering the snow day. On Tuesday we teachers were checking websites, watching weather patterns and whispering behind our hands, hoping for an early closing. Today we got a snow day and so I've enjoyed Jamaican rum pancakes and laying on the couch with my valentine...and even working on writing some curriculum. There is something perfect about having a day with no obligations. It's a gift. Here's my poem.


Where We Lean on our Hands Looking out the Window

Kneeling at the thin computer glow, teasing out the promises of meteorology, the low and high pressure areas stretching across the country in swaths of red and blue. I watch the changes like a presidential election then reach one long arm to fold the grey sky in half, six times, and trim it with scissors. Triangles and ovals, thin slits falling down like hole punch rings and moons. The streets are lined in blank paper. Salt. Rice. Popcorn. Milk. Ceilings laid end to end. All this dreaming for one cold perfect day.

Poetry Thursday: What Doesn't Change

The theme for Poetry Thursday is changeI decided to think of the absence of change for my poem. Somehow lately I've been struck by the things that I can't change.

What Doesn’t Change

the slant cold of February
sinking into socks

the war droning
like time at the mva

the test-- waiting
at the doorstep to
clobber

the streets wide and grim
looking for children
to swallow

the boarded houses
standing sentry

the eleven o’clock news
full of yellow tape
and glass stories

this is what
we glimpse
out our window

even the pavement
is groaning

we grip tight
this tired space

straining our necks,
looking for the green
of tomorrow

Poetry Thursday: Geographical Equation

The theme for Poetry Thursdayis to use mathematical language to create a poem...potentially in the form of a proof. I have suffered from severe math anxiety since the sixth grade which continued until I became an English major and could no long be bothered with anything mathematical. However, just these past few months, I've had to start teaching math (gasp!). Thankfully a professor from a local college is working with our staff and I keep saying, "Why didn't anyone show it to me this way?"

I may be starting a journey of learning to love math.

My poem this week is a pretty rough draft, but I've enjoyed playing around with math words. It's a prompt that came at a perfect time.


Geographical Equation

Let x equal a compass
spinning like a whirligig—
the faithfulness of north
always in your palm.

Let this be the point
that tethers you to the globe--
as your seesaw heart
creaks up and down.

You may zigzag the
latitude and longitude
always looking to
the next shoulder of land
or elbowed cove,
craters like the inside
of your knees

walking the circumference
of the world will only be
the beginning of infinity

the pebbles you gather
from every continent
to rest in your pocket

keeping your fingertip
on home.

Poetry Thursday: Echo

This week's Poetry Thursday challenge was to use the line from another Poetry Thursday participant. I chose a line from L. Monique, "there is certain holiness in repetition" @ http://lthepoet.wordpress.com from The Swallow Project: a guide to consuming obsessions

(I have just switched from using a PC to a Mac and am having trouble with hyperlinks. Can anyone help?)

Echo

there is certain holiness in repetition—

not just the liturgy circling a year
or the bent prayers laid
on new coffins

not just the constancy
of multiplication

or four legs
on a chair

the tides marking
each hour in shattered shells

toenails growing
unstoppable

these patterns, we remember

mark them in tallies
on the muscular wall
of our heart

count them like promises

this is what we live for

Poetry Thursday: The Dead Line

Today’s Poetry Thursday topic had to do with clichés. I was not feeling inspired until this afternoon in class when I heard Daya telling one of her group members that they had to work hard on their Science project so they could meet the Wednesday deadline. “Dead?” Teya said, aghast. “You shouldn’t talk like that!” Daya tried to explain that it was a due date, but Teya wasn’t catching on. I started thinking about a dead line. It’s not a cliché, but it is interesting to think about the word derivation. Here’s my playful attempt at a poem.


The Dead Line

Lying jagged on the floor
panting for a last breath,
banished from the textbook
and its home between ray and segment

Who killed the line?

Vicious scissors
tasting the iron power of
breaking infinity?

Maybe it was the circle or curly-q
wishing for the length of an endless sidewalk
maybe the perpendicular line decapitated it
in a frazzled rush, maybe it was vehicular
manslaughter on the daily commute

And what do we do now?

A whole universe left with
curves
spirals
arcs—
even the chairs creak low
on saggy knees
light spines bow
like pinky
snail shells.

This avalanche of form—

the silence
as we press our cheeks
to the fading tile floor.

Poetry Thursday: The Streets

CBS.CBS.CBS
is scrawled across the playground wall
in loopy letters, on torn notebook paper
crumpled in balls, across the windows
shuttered by cinderblocks in the lost
brick houses.

Calhoun. Baker. Stricker.
Calhoun. Baker. Stricker.

This trio of streets
makes a crooked U
a territory, a calling card
Whoa CBS the kids chant
beats falling off their hands
like the skip of an irregular heart.

This is home
this spot on the map
a strand of hair on a head
compared to the rest of
the wide and glorious world.

No one needs the Mississippi
or the Amazon, no one dreams
of France or Nepal.
These distant specks could be
Mars or Atlantis
so out of reach
from everyday hands.

But there will be some
who crave a slit of sky
trace the constellations
with an index finger
stroking the curve
of the earth.

CBS

This is the world.
This is the beginning.

Poetry Thursday: Histories of Houses

The neighborhood and city that I live in has many abandoned houses. In fact, the house I live in was abandoned until our recent renovation. I often think about the lives of these houses, their history, their demise. I believe in their resurrection. Somehow this poem took on more than I intended. My attempt at this week's topic, If these walls could speak...


Histories of Houses

It's 1900.
Row houses spring up
like flashcards in red brick
and link elbows
open their narrow doors to families--
who rush in with their lavender dreams
and cram the stoops
on warm summer evenings.
The whole city leans back
glimpsing the too blue sky.

The trees stretch tall and
the children have grandchildren
who skip to the corner store
for handfuls of candy.
They bring in formstone
to cover the cracking brick
and push back the years.

But then it's the drugs--
and the uncles fading
away to the grey streets
the stealing of the copper piping
from the shut-eyed basement windows.
That's when the leaving begins
the packing up of the station wagons
to drive to the suburbs to find a
new life

The grandchildren's children
glance over their shoulders
as they hustle to school each morning.
In art, they paint planks
with pinky curtains and
turquoise dahlias
to frame the many empty windows
For hope the officials beam

These skeletons--
sagging and leaning
hold the story of a century
and look at tomorrow.