now showing!

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Me and three of my photographs!

Me and three of my photographs!

Stonehenge Studios is currently hosting a month-long gallery-show featuring VoiceCatcher 6 art — including four of my black and white photographs! (A small one sits somewhere in the gallery.)

The opening was grand and the show continues through the month. Find the directions and hours at the Stonehenge Studios website.

Leah Stenson hosts the Studio Series: Poetry Reading & Open Mic the second Sunday evening of every month at the gallery/shop. VoiceCatcher 6 will be featured (tonight!) on May 13th, 7pm with open mic starting at 8pm. It’s the last VoiceCather 6 event, so please come, even if it is Mother’s Day!

And stop by the gallery any time to stock up on beautiful cards. Friend Stonehenge on Facebook, too! Thank you, Jacqueline Jones, for supporting Portland art & poetry!

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April 30

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Before Birds Had Names

I remember when I didn’t plant or pull
but ate dirt. Searched out pure patties
in perfect shape, a flat prism of luscious
ephemeral and melted them on my tongue.

I remember my first all-on-my-own bird:
red-winged blackbirds clinging
to reeds in the Back Bay marsh.
Gurgling conk-a-reeeee sweet in the sun.

I remember when I slowed on the freeway
to admire swarming starlings, acrobatic
schools of avian fish shoaling in a Southern
California sky. The bean fields, long gone.

I remember when I skipped
everywhere instead of walking, when I ran
as fast as I could until pennies rested
on my tongue and my white socks browned.

* * *

I end up writing about those socks a lot. And thus brings and end to my April write-a-poem-a-day, formally. Except for Day 9, which is still a blank. It might yet happen.

Thank you to Maureen and NaPoWriMo, and all the poets out there writing and posting and not writing and not posting who inspire me.

* * *

Some folks are participating in a Couplets blog tour, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books. Angie Werren will be sharing her micro-poetry space at feathers with other poets. Sherry Chandler is also participating. Do give a read.

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April 29

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Untitled

Buddy carried salt tablets
into desert summers.
He’d take off his cowboy hat,
reveal a brilliant half dome
above a deep brown tan
traced with dirt. His snap-
fastened shirt showed sweeps
of dried sweat. Little vials
filled with tiny pills, sprinkled
on kitchen and end tables
like a heart patient’s stash
of nitroglycerine. A burlap
water bag hung off his truck’s
grill, dripping, disappearing.
Pineapple only came in a can
and all lettuce was Iceberg.
Miracle Whip every day or Thousand
Island on payday and I dreamed
of Mediterranean shorelines
as obscure as lost tribes pictured
in the National Geographic.
I thought the chrysanthemums
in my mother’s garden exotic
and cleaned her purse looking
for spare change, pennies
to make me rich, peppermints
to wet my tongue against the dry.

* * *

Yesterday’s poem written today. Prompted by SB Poet over at Watermark. Used her words salt, pineapple and chrysanthemum. And added memory.

* * *

Some folks are participating in a Couplets blog tour, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books. Angie Werren will be sharing her micro-poetry space at feathers with other poets. Sherry Chandler is also participating. Do give a read.

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April 28

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Space was my employer

and tried to be my lover, too. Space made
me divide my priorities, set me on edge
as sharp as a rule. Scale he called it,
the measure, the aspect, the sense of belonging
to the body you walk in. Pinch it, bind it.
Stroke that body, or the stranger’s lying next
to you. Let space expand to fill grey matter,
explicit portions allotted to it in this 9 to 5 world.
Sometimes you can share space, as long as it isn’t
at the same time. Then it’s called fooling around
or having a family or getting in the way
of the big picture. Anyhow. Space is as space does.
It expands, sure.
Everything leaves once the food has been put away,
The bottles opened and emptied and opened
and emptied, recyclables set to the curb. Breathe deep,
take two big gulps to clear your eyesight. Stretch
your arms to the ceiling above, and look for clusters
you can name: Draco, Cepheus, Ursa Minor. Measure
using your fingers as calipers. Set your hands
on your hips. Retreat to the underpinning of eaves
set tight and drop every space you’ve ever owned.

* * *

Something about space. I started to read Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space last year, but didn’t finish. There is a long story about the trying to read it that makes me sad. I think this prompt might beget a series. If I am lucky and have bad luck.

* * *

Some folks are participating in a Couplets blog tour, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books. Angie Werren will be sharing her micro-poetry space at feathers with other poets. Sherry Chandler is also participating. Do give a read.

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April 27

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Chickaree Clapping Song

In 4/4 time:

RAT tat TAT-ta tat-ta RAT tat tat;

ta RAT-tat-tat ta-ta RAT-tat-tat

Who’s that barking from a big pine tree?
A chickaree, it’s a chickaree!

Tellin’ his neighbors that the cat’s got free!
A chickaree, it’s a chickaree!

Why a bark from an itty-bitty squirrel?
He’s the lookout watch in a leafy world.

See him sittin’ with his tail in a curl!
He’s out in the rain like a working girl!

He lifts his leg and scratches a flea!
A chickaree, it’s a chickaree!

Smaller than a red and cute as he can be!
It’s a chickaree, a chickaree!

* * *

WHO’s that BARKing from a BIG pine tree?
a CHICKaree, it’s a CHICKaree!

TELLin’ his NEIGHbors that the CAT’s got free!
a CHICKaree, it’s a CHICKaree!

WHY a BARK from an ITTY-bitty squirrel?
he’s the LOOKout watch in a LEAFy world.

SEE him SITtin’ with his TAIL in a curl!
He’s OUT in the RAIN like a WORKing girl!

He LIFTS his LEG and SCRATCHes a flea!
a CHICKaree, it’s a CHICKaree!

SMALLer than a RED and CUTE as he can be!
It’s a CHICKaree, a CHICKaree!

* * *

A kid’s “song” in need of a melody! Have at it! Douglas squirrels are our natives, and are as cute as a bug in a rug. I swore no more rhyming poems this month. That’ll teach me.

* * *

Some folks are participating in a Couplets blog tour, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books. Angie Werren will be sharing her micro-poetry space at feathers with other poets. Sherry Chandler is also participating. Do give a read.

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April 26

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Elegy for a Squirrel

The squirrel’s erratic path while crossing a street is an attempt to confuse the oncoming vehicle… thereby causing it to change direction. This is obliviously the squirrels biggest, and often last mistake.

These are the times
when you get distracted
by finding food, fighting over mates
but what do I know about squirrel love?
Only the flick of a tail, no whiff of a gland or fluff
between ears. What forces the female to choose this year’s
mate: Pick anew every season, select for strength – make him
catch you, then drive to your drey, that cobbled stack of sticks high
but not too high in the pine tree, in the cross of a bough, a tumble of rubble
you’ll nurse your blind and naked kits and we’ll never see them until they are loose.
And tires squeal.

* * *

Today’s prompt is the elegy. And an animal poem prompt from Poetic Asides. I wasn’t ready for a serious prompt today. I don’t lament, praise and console like a elegy should.

* * *

Some folks are participating in a Couplets blog tour, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books. Angie Werren will be sharing her micro-poetry space at feathers with other poets. Sherry Chandler is also participating. Do give a read.

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April 25

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The city changes hourly

We’re not like that, we living things,
shining loss is now a thing to be praised.

Life might be so. Quick and neat. Calm
this morning, we know we saw radio waves

reunite with their shadows. The sky clouds.
Thunder distorts their words. Every day,

dirt prints on the kitchen floor.
There is no kindness compares to silence.

We are in love with the idea of trees,
and trees grieve their leaves far longer.

A bruise creeps up our big sky,
bent boughs beneath this ashen dusk.

* * *

Maureen suggested a centro after yesterday’s hard work. So I lifted lines from Beth Adams (her prose is often poem), Kathleen Kirk by way of Dave Bonta’s poetry-book-a-day, Sherry Chandler, Joseph Harker, Dave Bonta, Jill Crammond, Luisa A. Igloria, Dale Favier, Catherine Fitchett, Carolee Bennett Sherwood, Dick Jones (whose first book is due from Phoenicia Publishing next week. Congratulations, Dick!) and James Brush. Do read the original text/poems, which are rich in image and meaning and heart.

* * *

Some folks are participating in a Couplets blog tour, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books. Angie Werren will be sharing her micro-poetry space at feathers with other poets. Sherry Chandler is also participating. Do give a read.

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April 24

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Without a bit of d-e-b

Rough pain is so much magic:
a chain, a car, a lost facility.
Join short rain maniacs to jot
our own costs in ink, float as if
ions still arc or is naturally a gas,
a cross. Lump all grass & snack on
coattails with a formula to floss
any flow, lyrical, particular, a ghost
not wrong in fog. Spigot a crag
in our crop, a way to cuss, to quit –
no – sway. Plug your contract jack
to our country, arch situations
cannot fossil now. Oh! rally
supply conscious intact.

* * *

Well. That was interesting, for me, and not likely for readers. :-) It was a word-play: “Today’s challenge is a lipogram/Beautiful Outlaw/Beautiful In-Law. A lipogram is a poem that explicitly refrains from using certain letters. The most classic letter to swear off, at least for English speakers, is “e.” A Beautiful Outlaw is a variation on a lipogram, wherein you refrain from using any of the letters in a certain name.”

So it’s a lipogram/Beautiful Outlaw. Fun to think of words. Next time I shall attempt a better poem worthy of the name. (Many words were taken from a chapter of Rifkin’s The Third Industrial Revolution, which is one of my current reads.)

* * *

Some folks are participating in a Couplets blog tour, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books. Angie Werren will be sharing her micro-poetry space at feathers with other poets. Sherry Chandler is also participating. Do give a read.

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April 23

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Signs

Linework

Recall the trajectory
between two points
the division of have
and have nots, the wrong
side of the tracks
the way lyrics stick
and repeat way past any
asking or sensibility
how children are taught
to move between boundaries
all in the name of fitting in
and it’s not such a bad
lesson to learn to get
along, but every once
in a while, every one
needs to move out of bounds.

* * *

So this one is kind of a plug. That’s my photo, above. One included in VoiceCatcher 6, and one that will be hung on a wall (in affordable alligator board with stand-off mounting) along with four or five other black and white photos. In a gallery show. Next month. Come if you can. See the sidebar for more information.

And if anyone needs an image to write to, ekphrasisaly, have at my photo. Just give me the link-love.

* * *

Some folks are participating in a Couplets blog tour, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books. Angie Werren will be sharing her micro-poetry space at feathers with other poets. Sherry Chandler is also participating. Do give a read.

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April 22

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Knife Edge

Pitted rusty and worn
a recipe for repetitive
stress injury, wanton
cheer, evolution set to
a grand scale, gorgeous
cheery yellow set sail
little infant lion teeth
piss on the side of a walk
gliding and burrowing
deep as if you are not
weeds, as if you are folk
healing and spirit, wine
and salad and gladness
but I would be rid of you
and spend all day cutting
your roots, trying to twist
just right to take all
of you from the clay
soil moist in April, hard pan
days in August will win your
will. I’ll give up, but until
then we dance in the soil
your likable flower
and the knife my father willed
me to take charge of a garden
such dreams, progeny

* * *

Oof. I have mixed feelings about these versatile and important plants.

* * *

Some folks are participating in a Couplets blog tour, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books. Angie Werren will be sharing her micro-poetry space at feathers with other poets. Sherry Chandler is also participating. Do give a read.

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