One discarded slip of food
and I feed the thousand minute
faces smiling from dark sand.
The ants spiral around my palm
like little black angels, like I am
a generous god, offering proof.
Sweet ash, the tourists come
smogged out by thin cigarettes
to gather around crumbs of art,
bluebird tiles on the wall, the gates
who arch open to heaven’s garden:
roses larger than my head.
For stopping her
at the Kroger
to tell her that her
hair is beautiful.
Now that we are engaged
I feel, I fear, that my own
compliments are more or less
like this row of unwashed cars,
the silty puddle, the marooneed
shopping carts that is, they are
predictable, unimaginative
routine, compact, for lack
of a better word befitting
the occasion of her. The jubilee
of herin a rainsoaked
grocery store parking lot.
For her hair is like unto
rays of sunshine streaming
through the muck clustered
clouds, which someone
once said, and I believed, is
indeed the voice of god.
Welcome to the second half of the month! Whether you write and post every day or write, agonize, and revise to post only the 5 poems required to be considered for publication, you’ve contributed to the 1,700+ poems already posted this month.
Each June, I’m amazed by you all. If this is your first time writing with us, thank you for trusting us with your writing. If you’ve been with us for years, know that you’ve built an inviting safe community for people to create and explore life through poetry.
A short anecdote before I let you get back to your line breaks: I was in a non-poetry related meeting, when I happened to mention Lexington Poetry Month (as I often do during June), and one of the members of the meeting said, “Do you mean LexPoMo?!” He was just as excited to talk about it as I was. Funny thing though, he isn’t writing with us. He just liked “reading all the different kinds of poems.” A friend had introduced him to the site a year ago.
That floored me.
So, I invite you all to share the work you are doing this month those around you who may not write or even read poetry, you never know what could happen. And for the second half of this month of writing, ask yourself: what evokes awe and wonder in your life?
Chris
waiting
on PayPal staff
customer service call
a modern day purgatory
on hold
We drove to Texas the summer just before I started to wear make-up.
It was an 18-hour drive from Kentucky
on a road dug into the South’s red earth,
littered with dead armadillos.
They’re just like possum, my dad told me.
Polecats, we called them.
I watched the brown spots shrinking through the back window,
counting carcasses to mark time.
It would have been nice if he’d asked me to be his co-pilot,
given me the map so that I could follow along.
He did that once, when we were driving back from Aunt Ethel’s,
and the whole way, we talked about our dream house.
He let me lean forward, between the front seats,
and we planned every inch of that farm.
He was even going to let me have chickens.
On that trip, he didn’t mind that I got bar-b-q chips
all over the backseat of his new Ford Pinto.
In Texas, there were no dream houses—
only burning days of scorpions and storms.
We stayed with Aunt Naomi, Mom’s sister.
He warned me about Uncle Paul’s lesbian sister.
“Don’t go anywhere alone with her.”
And as an afterthought, “Stay away from the Mexicans, too.”
From the back seat, I could see him
staring at the road ahead;
I was subdued by his strange topography,
his face full of wrinkled biases
and notions carved deep.
Maybe it’s the buzz
of the tiny little motor
or the bright
colored balls
that dance inside it’s center
the way it picks up
bits of fluff and dust
magically from the floor
You run it
‘til the battery dies
then rush
to find an outlet for charge
shake
from the inside
waiting
‘til it’s got enough juice to restart
It’s all you wanted
It’s all you asked for
A two-and-a-half-year-old’s
Christmas delight
Forget the candy
all the other toys
right now, this vacuum is
EVERYTHING.
marigold’s
conversation from within
flips an internal absorber
bounces off the cups
of our ears:
words
inside out
& upside down
born like a baby slung
over her mother’s shoulder
carried recklessly yet somehow
with care
marigold’s
slow unfolding
a doubling down on the primal urge
marigold’s
surprise
an issue in the politics of living
& no matter what’s the matter
you will come when you come
and make the world new again
sights
i wish
i could somehow share
with you
a cloudless midnight
on the way into work
I stroll like Gemini
with all the constellations
the moment the tips of my forklift
gently light upon the racks releasing
build ups of static electricity creating
tiny stars visible only for an instant
how beautiful you are
in the first smiles you beam
at the start of your day
my sunrise
