Bringing Bread to the House of the Bereaved…for Read Write Poem

Bringing Bread to the House of the Bereaved and
Cleaning the Refrigerator After the Guests Have Gone Home

I bake when I don’t know what else to do, when dye stains
my hands, a cheek. A gift made to disappear, something

that goes stale or moldy makes as much sense as bright fake.
Wind tears silk petals from plastic stalks, shrines’ lost sparkle

glittered saints and earthen prayers askew facing faded
brown beer bottles. I’m alone walking the space between

two row markers aiming for new mounds formed and littered
freshly shredded. Cookies and loaves and single-portion

meals sit like stones forgotten. A freezer memory.

*

This week’s ReadWritePoem prompt suggested we turn our own writing upside down and that one way to do that was by line length. I loved this prompt because I have been thinking about it lately, realizing my own recent “best work” (things I’ve liked and that readers seem to, too) tended to use short lines, and little or no punctuation.

So I tried to give a longer line a try. How long is long? Though the initial scratched form of this piece had used about 6-8 syllables lines, I changed it up to 13, trying to use this self-created rule for this poem to trim unnecessary words, adjectives (I didn’t do to well in this category!), and prepositions. This did challenge me, but I think I ought to have tried for a longer long-line poem, or perhaps worked a form, such as a sonnet. There wasn’t quite enough time for me to do this work this week, but such thoughts percolate—or fester—and I’m sure will make themselves known again, soon enough.

*

The imagery for this poem came from walking the DeLeon cemetery near my Texas grandmother’s home when I was there last month. The ground was littered with colorful bits of petals from perpetual vases and the newer areas showed the Latino influence of shrines and memento-assemblages. When in Texas I always clean out Grandmother’s refrigerator, and these thoughts & images mingled together as did her sometime in the not-too-distant future death.

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4. Not Quite an Ode to My Eyebrows for Read Write Poem
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