Posts for June 30, 2022 (page 5)

It’s been a fine potluck, don’t you agree?

Compliments and recipes exchanged, 
some of the dishes about licked clean, 
enough for everybody to take a plate home.

I didn’t bring what I’d call my best:
some were clean-out-the-freezer concoctions, 
others simmered a long while on low
and still tasted undercooked, 
and a few I threw together, last minute. 
I used my late mother-in-law’s method on my favorites–
sipping a little somethin’ while stirring. 

Hard to push yourself away, isn’t it? 
Lordy though, it’s late,
and    I     am     stuffed!

**Thanks for all the feedback this month and for being such a supportive community!

So I fell off the poetry wagon
Night after night on my stool
Staring at a blank white page
Shouting One More for the Road!
When a haiku, a rhyme, and a free verse walk into the bar
And the rest is poetry

What an enjoyable month this has been.  Thanks to all for your poems and your comments.  Amazing work everyone!  See you next year.

Mamaw used to tell a story
about how she and her sister 
would buy sack after sack
of perfectly pearly new potatoes
from them Amish women in Ohio.  
For next to nothing! 
Those women shook their heads,
bonnets bouncing at a couple silly girls
with babies on their hips and pedal pushers
and wondered why on earth they’d bother
dragging a wagon all the way
from Little Kentucky 
just to fill it with itty bitty leavings
when there were fat, full grown bushels
spilling over at their feet. 
Mamaw would smile 
like she’d got one over on them
and hustle to the house with tender
tater bounty in tow to a bucket of lard
and a cast iron skillet
squatting in the kitchen
waiting to help fry up a taste of home.

I transplanted a few flowers rescued from the boxstore’s neglected—

two lanky brown-edged lavenders, two leucanthemum (picture 

five inches tall, daisy blossoms that needed dead heading)—

in midday exhausting heat because I had neglected 

to do so earlier in the morning. They needed roots 

planted in cooler soil to thrive. Sweat drenched, 

I came in and stripped my clothes to cool off. 

Then I saw rain move into the subdivision behind my garden, 

a very unusual direction. Mr. Man still mowing the lawn 

as this unpredicted rain swirled toward us.

I sat on the back patio and felt the rain from both directions, 

saw Harmony nesting out of the rain, and felt the temperatures drop

thirteen degrees. As the rain let up, an ice cream truck 

sang “Sailing Sailing” in the hills, sang sailing in the hills. 

Mr. Man, finished mowing and soaking wet, joined me. 

a goat beys at a traffic jam,
nibbles a panhandler’s discarded cardboard
and the animal controller
unfolds the leash
when the light turns
green.

You in bed with ice packs, your
mother flapping and
yell-whispering about the
tasks of the day;

I am a volunteer/ voyeur in my
old life, walking our dog, kissing our
daughter. Driving back to my
new house, hot tears
bubble over.

All those rooms you
waited in for news
of me, smiling when I
woke from my cold
anesthetic slumber,
reporting, driving gingerly over
speed bumps on the
way home, telling me in the
following days to be
patient with myself, my body;
day four always the worst,
the drugs and fear
releasing themselves from
my cells, dark and depressive.

You gave me solid ground for
twenty-five years, and today
I could not repay the favor.

Here’s a tip for you
Please do not keep pushing me
This Jenny will KICK

A huge thank you to this community of amazing poets and artists. I enjoyed the glimpses into your hearts, minds and worlds and look forward to seeing you again next year 
-Jen
(LittleBird)

If you water the shadow of a tree,
dark against the sun-white sidewalk,
what will grow there by your act?  

And if you’re three years old,
and you water the shadow of a tree,
what will grow in you with the years?  

And if you’ve grown, old but not concrete,
will you watch out the open window,
cheering other water, other shadows?  

(after watching the 1996 short film Prelude, by Guy Sherwin)

Several have wandered away in the wispy evening, others rejected
for instance, I refused to write a parody of the Dead Milkmen’s 
“Now Everybody’s Me”  called “Now Everybody’s Gay”
Because
I realized that the entire 2nd half of the song
references a left handed, Lesbian, midget, albino Eskimo
“Life can be very difficult for the young lady”

Nor did I write about the big Dead & Co. show
Where the pretty girls must have been required to wear
almost nothing, but talked too much and many of the 
handsome boys appeared to be rookies destined to be cut
from the Psychedelic Warriors who also talked too much

I didn’t pick on patchouli chicks this year, perhaps for the first time

I didn’t write about the US Women’s Soccer Team
but I’m still watching all the games

I was not prepared to write about the deaths of
the “fucking bobcat” I wrote about last year
hit by a car in the alley or the “last feral cat” (also last year)
who died of lumps in the lungs

I was going to write about the way forward
But Philip Corley did that for me today

I didn’t see any poems about Brittney Griner, which surprised me
maybe I missed them

Brittney, wrong place, wrong time, wrong stuff
I’m so afraid you are fucked
Paraded like a pink elephant
to the kangaroo court
Tomorrow you have a 1% chance
of not being doomed

Remember, all governments would like this power
Soon, it may happen here
and many will think that’s a-ok
Free Brittney

And when you find yourself tongue tied
You’ll listen to the larks and the Chickadees
And you’ll remember why you do this in the first place.
Attention-grabbing
Love-seeking girl.
You do it for youself.
Grounded in morbidity.
Writing your eulogies
For places you’ve never been
And people who never loved you back.
You are equal parts tragedy and comedy.
The pain of a father’s manipulation 
Weighed equally to the love you have.
Crying out bird calls in the backyard.
Watering the pumpkins.
Scooping up a centipede and carefully placing it on a vine.
You love to make others laugh.
The sarcastic court jester.
The defender of those she could’ve been.
The witty, cocky, looking for a fun time, girl.
Every period of shameless self-love followed by a period of self-hate.
But you’ll bounce back.
With every new beginning you bounce back.
And let yourself be vulnerable again.
With every broken heart and every audition gone wrong
You’ll write an ode and revel in the one thing you can rely on.
You’ll cry but find joy in the tears. 
You’ll love and find tragedy in the kisses.
You’ll hurt and find beauty in the pain.
You’ll find curses in the blessings and blessings in the curses.
You morbid, lovely, tragic, harmonic, triumphant, poet.