Caroline's 100 Poems in 100 Days (Yikes!)

Poem #37: Upon Making Her 24th Valentine

2010-02-12T10:16:00.000-08:00

Dearest Rose,
for whom finishing things
is always challenging, with the only blemish
on your folded report card:
Does not complete work on time!
angering you so. For a cardinal
out the window, the fire truck passing,
books waiting on shelves, adult
conversations with all those words,
and your little brother—everything that pulls
at you, like a never-ending tug-o-war.

But here you are, belly to linoleum,
elbow-propped, pencils and crayons rolling
out from you in every direction. Focused.
Project mode. Spread across the kitchen,
construction paper love for every friend
and all four second grade teachers—
not just your own! A sticker stuck in your hair,
pink fingers, black smudge across your face,
you carefully scribe messages like:
“You are the best math teacher in the world!”
You use up four green markers and boast
over this, and fret about Sarah, left off the list,
forgotten. You will give her half of yours!
Though it takes a full day, you finish
the 24th card. When it comes to giving,
you have no problem. Giving, always giving
away little pieces of your heart.
Love, Mom

Poem #36: Loaves

2010-02-12T09:37:00.000-08:00

~ for Richard
Up before anyone, you nudge the house awake,
coaxing lamps, placing your hands gently in drawers,
shuffling pots and pans, pre-heating. Above,
I bury my face in blankets. Another snow day!
The children breathe deeply in their beds,
so I retreat, let sleep take me back
into its arms. What we don’t see:

the large bowl you fill. In the beginning, an egg.
Floury innocence, all-purpose love. A pinch
of patience. A sprinkle of this and that. Vanilla,
which itself is love. Your sleepy musings. You turn
it all round with a wooden spoon. Sometimes,
you add chocolate chips like secret kisses.
The day before, I would have grimaced
at the oily bananas on our kitchen counter,
called them spent, swatted at the fruit flies.
But you see potential, an essential ingredient.

The warm scent seeps comfort through
the walls, meanders up stairs, into our dreams.
I conjure steaming pots of coffee.
Do the children dream of milk?
Your wordless love speaks to our stomachs,
which answer, without our knowing.
When the bread is done, and the timer has sung,
our eyes finally wake. Like a gift, it waits
on the range. The oven door an open mouth
greeting us. We huddle in its breath.
Sometimes we are grumps and say, “Another
bread!” But, if we tallied your love in bread,
we would be rich in love, rich like a bakery.

And then the butter! The melt, the spread,
the bread warming us from the inside.
You and I smile at each other across the table.
Rowan licks his lips. Rosabelle licks the drips
down her wrists. This is love! Yours for us.
At times, life is as simple as this.

Poem #35: The Thaw

2010-02-08T16:54:00.000-08:00

In every other yard, the gravel eyes of snowmen and women slide
a tear-like procession downward, carrot noses tip and tumble
from Picasso faces to land in gritty snow, where they shrivel
and become host to spongy black mold. Buttons jump off one by one.
Mouths sink inward or fall completely away. Rains fall, cleansing
it all. Tree limb arms cannot hold themselves up. To make the leap
from the playful occupations of children to death, the ravages
of disease, or a loved one slowly leaving seems adolescent,
like the poems filling the local college literary journal, titled
Footprints or Airy or something like Fate and Fury,
but it’s February and the sun has been absent for weeks.
I’m not alone; this neighborhood breeds artists and writers
and others who must see more than merely snow when driving by
all these melting shapes. I write these words: "The slip from
whiteness and form to nothingness summons something like sadness," and consider submitting to the aforementioned journal.
Almost no traces of the inches of snow that fell over the weekend,
except these grey, jagged half-bodies—a solitary round ball
wearing a skirt, a headless snow-being holding a broom,
as if chores must still get done. The collapse, the melt,
the thaw—torsos hanging on, but letting go. And those of us left
shuffling around in galoshes, picking up the mess,
the clothes in a soggy pile. Scarf on a lump. Standing there
staring down at what was. Did we even snap a photo
of this? A damp hat in hand, I wonder where to put it now.

Poem #34: Tom Waits,

2010-02-08T16:22:00.000-08:00

Pour me another absinthe and holy water—I can catch up. Thank you
for the poem-songs, the nightmares, the fiction, the grit and gut.
Take me with you; I’m on board. Thanks for the roundtrip ticket
to the strip club—or was it a church?—housed in a jangling lyric,
for remembering sons newly home from war. I’m almost there.
For sounding like my grandfather, a preacher, my dying lover,
a Victrola, the choke and smoke, the gravel in your throat,
the blues and gospel hour, the sugar-tongued-coffin-salesman
of love. Speaking of love, I love your percussive thump, your bull
horn, your bag o’ tricks, the slap-of-a-toilet-seat instrument,
the high school marching band glockenspiel, your broken guitar,
your pump organ, your anything-makes-a-noise. Don your tall hat
and plume. Let me waltz with you, get lost in your ghost land.
Hold my hand. Lean me against the jukebox, feed it sleeping pills,
let’s sway to the sax. I will close my eyes while you sing, lose
myself in the inner workings of your dreams, like a timeless clock,
with the tick and tock and unexpected knock of cuckoos. Let’s run
through the carnival of your soul, casting away spider webs
and sunsets of worrywart, with the soundtrack on the wrong speed,
while digging deep in our pockets, which are more like wells,
for one last locket holding a photograph of someone we might
have loved, a century ago. Keep on rummaging, churning music
out of everything—like the bar drunk bellied up with the tattoo
of an eyeball on his forehead buying shots for the amputee
in love with the vampire-turned-Christian for the sake
of his mother-in-law. Someone said, “Tom waits for no one.”
Or was it time? Slow down. Wait for me, limping along,
kicked but inspired. Until the red velvet curtain swings shut,
until the song ends and another begins, I’m grateful.
Yours.

Poem #33: Tapestry

2010-02-02T12:39:00.000-08:00

Like a solitary droplet of blood,
a barn sewn onto white snow.
Envision a needle poised sky-high,
an eye the world could fit into,
an unimaginably large hand, god-like.

Not too far from the barn,
a patched clapboard church,
churchgoers speckle the hillside
coming down, as if to a ringing bell,
for a morning of winter worship.

The sun frays outward, rays dangling
like strings, melting things. Imagine the maker
breaking thread with teeth, like an ordinary artist,
while pulling it together—stories, lives,
the fabric of it all stitch by delicate stitch.

And out from the church in the vale,
a small town with a school, a hospital,
and a museum, and then other towns,
and cities, countries, continents, and bodies
of water. All the busy people!

And if something were to get a grip
and pull and rip, tearing at the pieces,
unraveling the stories, the lives,
finding the threadbare, the weak spots,
could the holes wrought ever truly be mended?

Poem #32: Nashville National Cemetery

2010-02-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

My son thinks the headstones
resemble teeth jutting up
from an earthen mouth.
He mimics the toothy grin—
laughing in the face of mortality.

Poem #31: Hibernation

2010-01-31T07:58:00.000-08:00

A tiredness long as shadows in the sun.
Breathing slows. Eyes roll.
Heart beats a holding pattern,
remembers first love. Legs twitch
and sprint through grassy fields,
hands cup petals and creek water.
This test-run for death. January
somnolence. Second gestation.
Laying down in hollowed-out darkness,
moon rays casting, nature’s snow
blankets covering, soundproofing.
Snow quiet. Just before the stretch,
the yawn, the new dawn, the pencil
to paper—the poem, the song, or child
who becomes the mother of a child
who becomes the mother of a child
who becomes the mother of a child.

Poem #30: Wolf Moon

2010-01-31T06:39:00.000-08:00

New year’s first full moon
lolls in the position of perigee
shrouded in snow clouds.
Can I trust you are there?
with Mars, to the left of you,
reddish and star-like,
bowing in your magnitude
that tilts heads skyward,
breeds madness, begets life--
yet cannot satiate, like a jewel
too grand to pocket or the pull
of tides--showy but of no use
to the cold wolf, who
by Native American legend,
howled to your white eye
in deepest winter hunger.
Tell me: Did you listen?
Did you answer his call?

Poem #29: Snow Day in Tennessee

2010-01-29T08:48:00.000-08:00

It starts as most snow days in Tennessee,
with no snow. Predictions of inches,
blizzard-like conditions, unprecedented
accumulations, just wet dreams of forecasters.
Civilized adults in hand-to-hand combat
over the last loaf of bread and jug of milk
at the market. Salted roads. Sleds sold out.
Children poised at windows with mitten hands.
Schools closed and businesses slowed.
Traffic near nonexistent. All crews on call.

So much depends upon the first snowflake
painted with hope onto the winter canvas.

Poem #28: Seasonal Longing

2010-01-28T11:46:00.000-08:00

Last fall,
the trees slowly undressed—
leaves strewn about their trunks.
Embarrassed in their presence, we looked away,
looked to the evergreens, who covered their slender branches
and hid their crevices with needles, pinecones, and sap,
so as not to leave us shivering all winter
with longing for spring’s beds
of blossoming buds.

Poem #27: Zombies or Blame It on the Automatic Brain

2010-01-27T18:49:00.000-08:00

6 a.m., NPR in the background, navigating
the route I follow each morning. My hands drive,
the way fingers recall a lock’s combination without
contemplating numbers, or a telephone number
dialed for years, or the curves and arches of the body
of a mate. The NPR bit drones on about how people
possess an automatic brain—a part of the brain
that would choose cake over fruit if a person
under duress, such as having to hold a 7-digit code
in mind, is suddenly asked to choose between
a piece of chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit.
My mind skips to my day’s lessons. Did I plan
sufficiently for first period, did I make copies,
will the Internet go down during that clip?
The 31 poems in 31 days challenge pops into my mind.
How will I produce poem #27 today? I’m poem tired,
poem spent, poemed out. My mind trolls for a topic,
taking in all I drive past—barren trees, icy cars, lightless
houses, the bus stop, where people fully dressed stand
in total darkness, not facing each other. Naturally,
I decide they must be zombies. My poem will be about
zombies, of course. Not about my marriage, my children,
or teaching. I choose zombies. Who else would be outside
in 27 degrees? Zombies waiting for a zombie bus driver
to come and cart them to where zombies work, where
they will fall in step with other zombies in halls
and onto the elevator and ride up to their zombie cubicles,
until their chipper boss arrives decidedly late
with coffee steaming and a smile on his ridiculously awake
face. He’ll sing out, “Good morning, Vietnam!” And—
as if on cue—the zombies will roll their bloodshot eyes,
lick their cracked white lips, raise their arms
to the zombie stance, and slowly, oh so slowly
amble toward the warm-blooded human being.

Poem #26: Little Stone

2010-01-26T18:31:00.000-08:00

Turning your tiny blue jeans inside out,
I wonder what stained your knee yellow.
Did you smile mostly or cry? Miss Susan’s
lively notes quote cute things you say,
but what quickened your heart today,
made you anxious, sent you into giggles?
Only yours to know! You seem too small
to carry it all. When I return from work,
you have forgotten the answers, or maybe I
forget to ask. Mulch has collected in your cuffs,
pouring out like dinosaur dust from playground
excavations. Before dropping the evidence
into the wash, out tumbles a stone
from your pocket. I hold it like a gift;
my fingers inspect your secret, then enclose it
in the palm of my hand. Was it a magic bean?
A pirate’s coin? A fairy tear? A super-power
pellet? A raindrop? Or just perfectly smooth
and comforting. I understand. I collect too.
You are my little stone—and everything.

Poem #25: 1211 Lillian Street

2010-01-25T16:09:00.000-08:00

Concrete stairs lead up, up, up
to the white cinderblock church.
Grass and weeds reach ankle high.
Belief pulses throat deep. Crooked
mailbox roadside, messages waiting
to unfold, to be held. Double doors,
double cross. The family just across
the way whose child went missing
years before. No trespassing nailed
to their tree. Sunday hymns float
to their windows, open but barred.

Poem #24: Traveler

2010-01-24T14:42:00.000-08:00

Heart like a glove compartment—
smashed, abandoned, still coveting
antiquated maps with folds and creases
like aches so familiar they’re congenital.
Journeys and dreams plotted in ink
or blood now choked with obstacles—
shards of glass, metal, rubber. Planned,
charted, and traced routes thwarted
by anachronisms, obsolete roads, dead
ends, changed names, bridges where
bridges weren’t before. Lost without
ever beginning. Halted, yet haunted
by the fatalities of junkyard love.

East Nashville Photo by Jill Block

2010-01-24T14:39:00.000-08:00

Poem #23: Toys

2010-01-23T19:19:00.000-08:00

I bring toys from my home and childhood
and urge my students to play together
in English—their common language.
I wonder if high schoolers will say: “For babies!”
but Operation is an instant hit for many
of the Egyptians, whom dream of med
school, like their doctor parents, who
now work at Tyson. They yell when
they shock the patient, more determined
to pull the white pieces from the body
using the “surgical tool.” Everyone loves
Perfection, forming teams to fit
the geometric shapes into the slots
before time runs out and the game board
pops up, spitting the parts everywhere.
The Pick-Up-Sticks remain in their tube,
unpicked, unused. Yet all students, Latino,
Egyptian, Ethiopian, and Sudanese, in third
period can’t wait to hold the Magic 8 Ball
and ask it questions about their futures:
Will Papa get a job? Will I pass the driver’s test?
Does my boyfriend have another girl?
And Lupe, who asked it the same question
at least six times, grinning and holding the ball
out to show me: “Maestra, look! I’m pregnant.”

Poem #22: The Visitors

2010-01-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

A gate-keeper at our basketball game,
I’m charged with distinguishing their fans
from ours. Theirs sport ties, khakis, bouncy
pony-tails, pricey watches, salon cuts,
and seem leery of their parking spots.
They hand over their five dollars to me
like charity, and I direct them to their side
of the gym. Their team stretches in the hallway,
snickering at the dated paintings on the walls.
I look away. They’re just teenagers, someone’s
sons. Our boys—both black and African—circle
in the gym to pass the ball between one another,
and even though I know some of these boys
by name from class or the halls, I visualize
a native ritual of trust and instinct.

We lose the game: 49, 53, but like a consolation,
one parent stops as he’s leaving to tell me
how impressed he was when he entered the school.
One student opened the door for him, another
gave him directions to the gym, and a third
showed him which door to use. I smile, want
to say, Is it so surprising? But just say thank you,
and am reminded of what I already know:
these are good kids at this school.

The next day, in the office, I learn how two
of the visitor parents’ cars were broken into
the night before—perhaps a student,
perhaps someone from the neighborhood.
GPS, electronics, and some loose change
stolen, windows smashed, leaving bits
of glass sparkling like broken promises
in the parking lot for everyone to see.

Poem #21: The Distancing

2010-01-21T12:02:00.000-08:00

Taking evening strolls on treadmills
in living rooms across America
while watching Nature on TVs
and out the windows. Children,
in other rooms, playing at sports
with their hands and a big screen.
Disguising, seasonally, the shrubbery
with synthetic eggs, spider webs,
neon flowers, and perma-green
garlands, forgetting anything was
underneath. Buying vegetables scrubbed
clean, meat processed, preserved,
and packaged with no hint of animals
or soils. Grimacing at the country girl
who picked a berry from a bush
and popped it right into her mouth.
Taking pilgrimages to spots once known
for natural wonders now transformed
into crowded sprawling meccas
of stuff to entertain and stuff to buy:
souvenirs, outlets, wedding chapels,
anti-gravity, aquariums, I-max, fudge.
Believe it or not, forgetting to look
at the mountain range, the canyons,
or the ocean between handing over
credit cards and getting receipts.
Forgetting planting, picking, weaving,
hunting, slaughtering, losing pathways,
combinations for tools, recipes for cures.
Youth turning into adults without knowing
how to de-bone a chicken or plant
a garden. Evolution. Growing more
and more allergic to the outdoors—
the grass, the trees, the pollen from bees,
the mildew, the mold, the animals.
Yet in childbirth—less distancing—
even the sanitized, anesthetized versions.
But the doubt, the wondering, could a child
survive, even thrive, otherwise?
Remembering, the once upon a times,
in some other world, when a woman squatted
and moaned, grunted like the animals
around her, with sky and stars faithfully
above, as she brought forth a newborn
into hay who took a breath of oxygen
from the world, giving it hope in return.

Poem #20: Helium

2010-01-20T11:12:00.000-08:00

I suggest composing notes
on the aqua helium balloons
my children receive
at the all-American eatery
and setting them free
into the beyond:
Please call us if you find this!
or perhaps, What goes up,
must come down. Or even:
Consider this a beginning.
My daughter, eyes widening,
shakes her head vehemently,
“Oh no, no, no, we shouldn’t
give our number to strangers!”
And in a moment of reversal,
I plead, “But then strangers
we would no longer be.”

Poem #19: Where Do Stray Bullets Go?

2010-01-19T19:53:00.000-08:00

High above it all,
a robin nestles three hatchlings
and one adoptee.

Poem #18: How Do I Explain Strip Clubs to My Daughter?

2010-01-18T08:13:00.000-08:00

Challenging to avoid, even with creative
circumlocutions, no matter which route you take
through downtown, but sometimes, we pass
The Glimpse. I might feign interest in a homeless
woman with too many layers, point her out
on the car’s other side. She has to look somewhere,
my daughter, who reads everything, even the KY
box while waiting for antibiotics at the pharmacy.
She stares down the neon as if cracking a code,
furrowed brow, Encyclopedia Brown, a question
resting on her lips—the shadow dancers with exaggerated
chests and hips. “All Nude!” Her own nakedness
and her brother’s a commonplace around our home.
Even mine and her father’s just a part of the day.
I worry about the landscape of this childhood,
wonder if there are more fire hydrants than trees,
more cars than fields, more rent-to-own stores
than creeks. Would the policeman understand why
I speed past these places? Just on my way out of town,
Officer. With her, in the backseat, demanding:
“But where are we going?” and me wearily answering,
“Shhh! Not now! I’ll tell you later…once I know.”

Poem #17: Bolton's

2010-01-17T06:58:00.000-08:00

Be prepared to sweat,
to covet glass after glass of water
or beer, to rejoice in momentary
poultry deliciousness. Be prepared
to need a shower before letting
your hands go near your eyes.
Be prepared to cry, or at least look
like it—be prepared to smile,
at first, out of delight. Be prepared
to notice a fire radiating out
from your core. Be prepared to suffer
1st degree burns at the corners.
Be prepared to inhale the sides—
collard greens and beans,
white bread soaked cayenne red
to sop up the toxicity in your intestines.
Be prepared to need recuperation,
so stay close to your home.
Be prepared to curse and moan,
then— let me warn you—
be prepared to want more.

Poem #16: Musica

2010-01-16T21:54:00.000-08:00

Outside, icicles drip. Our children spin out of their heads,
so we embrace an evening excursion into the urban thaw.
We choose Musica, the bronze and limestone statue atop a knoll
in the center of Music Row’s traffic rotary. The nine nude dancers,
three or four times life-size, that once scandalized Nashville,
spring forth into dusky sky, with the center dancer floating
above the others, holding a tambourine. Beneath our muses,
we contemplate the rush-hour traffic circling round about us,
honking and screeching, drivers still befuddled in a region
more accustomed to squares. We joke about the wrecks
that must occur as drivers glue their eyes to the super-sized
genitalia, drivers who refuse even to look, on their way to church
or work, or those who take another route altogether. At the base,
my four-year-old collects sticks and stones and barely
glances up at the colossal bodies frolicking above his head.
My daughter, mesmerized, wants to touch the dancers’ toes
and ankles. She contemplates the artist and how he moved
the statue here. She pulls me to her height, grins, whispers,
“Look Mama, he made a penis,” and then bounds away from me,
mimicking the dancers’ stationary poses and exclaiming,
“Musica” to passing drivers—and the world! Finally, we drag
our inspirited children away, break back through the traffic,
little statue-cold hands in bigger hands, the four of us,
skipping and rollicking away, away, away into the darkening.

Poem #15: Cubescent

2010-01-15T18:31:00.000-08:00

My Honduran student sketches cubes
on his notebook paper while listening
to me explain prefixes that mean not:
unable, injustice, immature, illegal.
His cubes evolve into dice and he refuses
to look up, but seems to be listening.
In his journal, he writes about graffiti,
about his little sister, his mom.
Spider webs with spiders dangling adorn
the corners of his homework. I’m instructed
to report all gang symbols—and his clothes
are the suspect colors, so I find myself
watching, wondering when a spider
is just a spider, counting the numbers
on his dice, questioning all art.

Poem #14: SSA

2010-01-14T19:38:00.000-08:00

My student hides her pregnancy
under her billowing dress and hijab
from the other eleventh graders
all dressed in navies and beiges.
No one notices her hands—
how they gravitate beneath her desk
to settle upon her midsection,
while she writes and erases
for the state mandated assessment
about standard school attire.
Her English is close to perfect,
her introduction flawless,
with three solid reasons
and even transitional phrases
flowing one into the next.
Her handwriting, steady and convincing,
outlines each of them:
First of all, how can we focus
if we’re uncomfortable? Second,
SSA doesn’t hide who has more money.
Third, we cannot express ourselves
as individuals. And through it all,
she holds to her position,
opposition to the dress code,
and I am struck by her conviction,
knowing she’ll earn a passing score,
but I wonder who she pictured
as the members of her audience
when she attempted to persuade.

Poem #13: Jesus is Lord at Wendy’s

2010-01-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

…where 99¢ reigns almighty
and value is in the mouth
of the beholder, and we sinners
beseech: What do I get for a dollar?
If you got it to-go, I’ll take it
and pay: communion, salvation,
redemption. Skip the blessings,
the kneeling, the savings,
just gimme what you’re offering
and I’ll be on my way
to infinitesimal bliss:
Value. Price. Convenience.

Poem #12: Phone Call after My Father's Surgery Today

2010-01-12T18:57:00.000-08:00

At the first sound of my mother’s voice—
for a slice of a second—
my heart was a stone sinking me down,
but it was just her voice
roughened by lack of sleep,
by their 4 a.m. alarm, the pre-surgery dance
of doctors in and out, and the waiting,
waiting amongst strangers
who were also waiting
in rooms designed for waiting
with things to read while waiting.

“Hi, Caroline,” and her momentary pause.
What things can travel through your brain
in the shortest length of time!
And—in that second—I cursed a world
that could keep a daughter working
right on through such a day.
Are we so used to these bodies
we’ve been loaned that we keep on doing
what we do--making copies, taking notes,
attending meetings about meetings?

It was three when I finally called.
“He’s with a physical therapist already,”
she said, and what she didn’t:
"And the world can go on like we know it
for a little while longer now."

Poem #11: Remnants

2010-01-11T16:45:00.000-08:00

Paper chains across the dining room,
crumbs beneath the table,
wine bottles, colored paper,
plates, forks, flowers bending,
taper candles inches shorter,
dearest father one year older,
photos taken to remember
what the eyes betray.
Through all our celebrating,
just a state or two away
my aunt was leaving—
the kind of leaving without packing,
the kind with inadequate goodbyes,
the leaving behind those who remain,
who must decide
what to do with a pillow,
slippers, cards, her sisters,
furniture, broken hearts—
sometimes more, sometimes less.

Poem #10: We Are Not Aphids

2010-01-10T08:05:00.000-08:00

Asian lady beetles are invading
our house and drop like kamikazes
from ceilings, crawl stealthily
across the hot stove, ambush us
in our beds— infiltrating our dreams.
One appears on the computer,
and like the Ouija’s planchette
suspiciously flits to the letters:
s-u-r-r-e-n-d-e-r.
Still, casualties mount, they collect
in the basins of light domes—
crunchy and dry. Between fingers,
they turn to dust. Lines of them
fill windowsills, as if euthanized
while marching single file.
The children have finally captured
one, named it Captain Casey McCutie,
and sentenced it to confinement
in a jar, with a leaf, stick, and stone
and three punched holes for air.
It circles round and round,
magnified, and attempts wildly to fly.
They observe its every move, insisting:
He’s ours now. He won’t die.

Poem #9: Concerto in Snow

2010-01-09T11:26:00.000-08:00

I. No Two Moments Are Alike

A single flake falls
from the paper white sky—
floats and dances
down,
down,
down,
to kiss the cheek
of a child’s upturned face,
where it melts
into a new word on her lips: snow.

II. Monochrome

Oh Cardinal
in the leafless tree,
how can you bare to be
the loveliest creature I see?

III. Bigger Than Words

My niece signs bird,
with her plump fingers flapping.
Soon her mouth will form the word,
which may feel less like flying.

Poem #8: Unbound

2010-01-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

A woman tears pages from a book at the quarry’s edge.
They flutter flock-like, haphazardly down—
the story unbound, set loose from chronology, freed
from plot, untold, chapters and sentences perhaps too
complex now abandoning grammatical sense
and the mechanics of it all. Concentrate:
hear the mournful music of characters torn apart,
their goodbyes, revising themselves mid-page, mid-fall,
mid-way down. Will you wake before they hit?
The scene is too quiet, like writer’s block, more silent
than a blank page or another person’s wordless dream,
more disquieting than award-winners on nightstands.
Her dress is blowing, her hair reminds you of something
you forgot to jot down. Perhaps she is someone you’ve met,
if only you could see her face. It may have been Neruda
or Hemingway or Synergy in the Work Setting—
or something she wrote for you, to amuse, to whisper
into your ear while you sleep. Nurtured word by word
over the years, by the same hands now liberating it
on its non-linear path. Or perhaps she is a lover,
unleashing out of anger, the novel of her true love,
and any second, she will swoon with regret and throw
herself hopeless after it, or use the final page to wipe away
her tears. Ah, who cares! A voice from the sky needles:
It was probably no good. Now the pages are bound
in different directions, while she stares at empty hands,
as if she could puzzle back together what she’s done.
At her feet, a page cowers, crumpled, dismembered.
Does she think there is a way to undo, unwrite, unread,
unknow what’s been said? It’s heartbreaking how she sways
back and forth. Doesn’t she know? Hasn’t she learned? In daylight,
some stories just can’t hold themselves together properly.

Poem #7: Silent "p"

2010-01-07T11:58:00.000-08:00

~for Jason

One pillow beneath two heads
an inch apart in different worlds—
I closed my book and watched her read
The Incredible Invention of Hugo Cabret
and realized, at seven, she reads faster
than I do, as she turned a page before
I finished. I could have said, “Hey-
slow down!” but it was her story, after all.
Are you getting everything? I thought.
As if on cue, she stopped and pointed
to a big word, demanded, “What’s this?”
The teacher in me smiled:
Ah. She needs me!
But with just my pronunciation
of pneumonia, instant recognition
moved her body and eyes back to the page.
Without glancing my way, she said:
“Like Uncle Jason,” who’d been sick
in New Hampshire in December.
A page later, she paused again, asked,
“Can someone die from pneumonia?”
I knew she was thinking someone I love
and not a character in a book. So I answered,
“It depends”—and it was not the first time
I’d given her an answer while thinking:
There’s so much I don’t know.
I could not distract her with tickles or kisses,
so I sat back and watched her progress,
her mouth occasionally forming a smile,
and wondered how many more times
she would encounter pneumonia,
with a silent “p.”

Poem #6: Big Brother on Shelby Avenue

2010-01-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

He walks his sister home from school,

even though he is too young to walk himself home.

Sister toddles along behind, as he tugs her forward

by the hand. She is lost in a coat

that might have been his a winter ago.

He concentrates on each step he takes.

Hand in hand, they cross Shelby Avenue.

The crossing guard looks both ways for them.

They pass the Bi-Rite, the bus stop—

where adults who are not their parents

glance their way—and the park,

where other children play.

He pauses to wipe at her nose

with his coat sleeve; no one wipes his,

and then he trudges on.

Poem #5: Play Homeless with Me

2010-01-05T13:38:00.000-08:00

My oldest asks my youngest: “Do you want to play homeless?”
and they build a house of pillows and blankets
in the middle of our living room.

Earlier that morning, atop the Shelby Bridge,
we huddled and smiled through chattering teeth—
the four of us, tight like a pact, looking down
at the bone cold river, the boats, the steam,
and then we spotted the makeshift shelter way below
on the bank of the Cumberland.

From that distance, we could make out movement
and we stared until we realized something was waving at us.
"It's a man!" my son shouted, pointing.

Even on the bridge, the burn of privilege warmed our frozen cheeks,
the privilege of being able to withstand the January cold
because we did not have to stay out in it,
the privilege of our coats, hats, and gloves,
the privilege of knowing we were just on a walk
and that back in our minivan, we would thaw
in the blast of heat, and drink water from our thermos,
and our car would deliver us safely
back to our home,

where my children can play
homeless
whenever they want.

Poem #4: After the Fight

2010-01-04T13:50:00.000-08:00

She tallies hawks, like omens, perched on treetops.

He drives, eyes on the road’s sudden turns.

Their free hands span the distance between them

and lace together, mountain-like—all knuckles and bone.

Somewhere, a fire smolders as hikers descend

from a campsite. A train dinosaurs through a forgotten town

with mines beneath--arterial and empty. The signs are obvious

as the setting sun and warn the travelers of dangers:

falling rock, sharp curves, steep inclines, until fear

straps them back to each other, with miles yet to go,

until they are only two headlights piercing the darkness.

Poem #3: Love Song

2010-01-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

Rose presses her cheek

to the hollowed curve

of Daddy’s guitar

to feel the song.

Poem #2: The Heart of Winter

2010-01-02T06:02:00.000-08:00

Frozen puddles like mirrors

reflect the sky’s likeness.

Trees groan and creak

and threaten things beneath.

A girl in a white gown crosses

a frozen pond, stitches

and fractures slither in either

direction at her footfalls.

In her chest, her heart thaws

with each step because

she is alive and it hurts like flame.

Somewhere a hunter aims

and brings a bird from the sky.

Droplets of blood on snow

paint a startling Morse code:

Life. Death. Life. Death. Life.

Poem #1: January 1, 2010

2010-01-01T11:52:00.000-08:00

A plastic bag flaps from the branches

of the barren tree. Birdlike, it lifts and flutters

like the sentinel of a new decade, an angel, a dove.

Expectantly, I watch from an upstairs window,

hypnotized by its erratic attempts

at flight. The clouds throw

their shadows down and animatedly rush

fast-forward past on the brown screen

of the ground. The sensible thing

would be to go and greet the morning sun,

to rid the yard of the beer cans, the sparklers,

the garbage that clings to it, that has blown in

over night, to start the New Year with my eyes

open and hands busy. To set the bird free—

but, honestly, it could go either way at this point.

Old Habits

2009-12-18T04:37:00.000-08:00

I made a conscious decision not to write
poetry my entire first year teaching high school.
It seemed practical at the time, even wise—
like the decisions you make “for the health
insurance” or because “it’s a trustworthy
[insert auto, appliance, boyfriend here].”

But here I go again, picking up old habits.

It could be worse, I could be a songwriter.
In Nashville, they tumble from candy machines
in strip malls and Chinese restaurants in small
handfuls for a quarter a pop, and you feel sorry
for them and take them home with you
by the dozens in your pockets, only to regret it
later when they write songs for you
and you feel obliged to clap and feed them.

At least this way, no one will take me
too seriously—teacher, poet, blogger, whatever!
Or if they do, I’m one of “those people,”
who carry a journal like this green one—
guess I should say laptop so as not to date myself—
and who sit alone, out of choice, in places
where coffee and stronger beverages are served.
Oops—just spilled my laté…will continue poem later.

I guess I'm blogging...officially in 2010

2009-12-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

Exam Review B6

I listen to the waves
of language as my English learners
study aloud in small groups—
Spanish, Arabic, Somali all blending
together like some aural verbal quilt
of culture and intonation, yet the students segregate
naturally and study in their own languages
for the exams they will take
by themselves
in English.

To blog or not to blog?

2009-12-13T18:48:00.000-08:00

This evening, while we rearranged the furniture
to make room for Christmas, some loot fell
from the crevices of our startled sofa chairs
as we lugged them from one spot to another.
As if we were shaking them down for their last penny
or crumb, they sighed and gave us what they could:
a solitary dice, a magic-less marker, an army man
with a bent bazooka (or whatever it's called), and Oh!
-- a whole other child, the one we somehow misplaced
while taking care of the two we haven't lost all year.
So we celebrated by falling to our knees, crying
and gasping. "It's what we've always wanted!"
Then, as quick, when we saw it was just a doll,
we laughed: "Ha! Good one! Joke on us, ol' chair ol' pal!"
Embarassed by our premature joy, the furniture
resigned itself to its new position in our home
and the evergreen settled into our living room
like a new friend. As for us, we just sat in silence staring--
holding hands, dazed--at the wonder of it all.