good job! you figured it out!
i was at the stoplight
biting the inside of my cheek.
i didn’t know why I was crying,
but the bag of mini oreos and dead
weight in my chest
seemed a good enough reason.
maybe i finally realized
how sad i was.
i was at the stoplight
biting the inside of my cheek.
i didn’t know why I was crying,
but the bag of mini oreos and dead
weight in my chest
seemed a good enough reason.
maybe i finally realized
how sad i was.
(after The Sun by Edward Munch)
the sun is a light bulb in my eye,
a searing incandescent idea
leaping over the edge of the world
with a feather cocked
at a rakish angle above one ear,
both smart and sassy
http://adelekenny.blogspot.com/2020/06/prompt-355-painting-to-poem.html
I’ve finished edging our yard with bricks
found in a corner of our garage:
wavy bricks, solid bricks from the 1880s
fired by The Ohio Paving Company.
To complete the job, I’ve stolen bricks
from a construction site, digging
clay slabs lodged in the soil, among tall weeds.
Paying attention as I mined, I imagined
that I was invisible to the neighbors
and removed two bricks to carry home.
Already I’ve forgotten the empty house
–now a hole in the ground–
or how long the bricks lay there.
What I remember are the bricks,
their weight in my canvas bag, and moving
the bag from shoulder to shoulder.
You scare me with the plethora
Of bugs you bring forth when you open
Your closed fist: mud dauber, potato beetle,
The common grasshopper and the one
You say I’m most related to, The Lady Bug
I’m your four-year-old granddaughter and I like
Band-Aids all over my knee, they remind
Me of the raggedy quilts on your outside mattress
i like to say big words
I like to throw up just to see the frothy milk
I like the cruelty of smashing ants, calmly,
With a hammer in your gravel driveway
I watch them carry bits of puffed corn
To their little baby ants, then whamo. Sometimes
I have to hit them several times and I want
To know how many times you have to die
Before you’re dead.
On clear nights we sleep outside under the stars
I can already pick out the bigger dipper
When your alarm for the space station goes off
We see its unblinking path, like a glowing bathtub
With three people washing under their arms, they
Frown down on us because they want their privacy.
I love to catch fireflies in a jar
Are these bugs like shooting stars in the grass?
Bioluminescence you say. I take my shirt off
Smear my belly with their bellies
I want to blink on and off, on and off
I want to light up with their bioluminescence
Doesn’t stop the sudden mental jolt from a snuggly video session on the couch
A horse van on my suburban street,
neighbors crowded around
and sequestered in the two car garage
a menagerie of live animals:
a young camel, soft-eyed llama,
a small donkey and four or five goats,
clean and soft and ready for small hands
but the intended audience–an elderly woman
in a wheelchair, hard to surprise
after all these years, but this gift
she wouldn’t forget.
I tried to introduce myself, say I know
your daughter, who? she said.
Bleparoplasty they called it
to lift my dragging lids that
cut off vision for reading and such.
Tired of people asking “”Are you tired?”
Afterwards felt like one of those
Keane eye girls with eyes as wide
as saucers.
Felt a fake sense of awe or terror
suspended by those eyes.
Even my dog stared at me in awe
and distrust.
Husband said I looked fine but he would.
The innocuous astonishment lasted a
few days till my mind absorbed my
new look and shifted my morph.
I’m watching a movie about me and see
a full confession stitched across my chest
in big block letters
you are asleep so I stop
the show and go
to the bathroom, put on a
shirt to cover the truth but in the gymnasium
my muscles betray me, each shot falls short,
the ball doesn’t clear the net
on my knees I see
a distant golfer swing with a body I can feel
but it’s not mine
the white ball sails like a flag
flown in victory, lands with intent where it’s
meant to be on the beautiful grassy plain of
irony:
it’s not mine unless I can give it away
and when I give it away it’s not mine
