Sunday, February 28, 2010

What Is

Last week's readwritepoem prompt gave me a lot to think about, as it asked me to consider what I believe and what I do not believe. It was quite an experience for me, and I think I will actually have several short poems as a result of the exercises. Here is the first:



I am the Little Spokane
Forced to flow and push
My cold waters against
Unforgiving shoulders of land
And He is the colorless Winter Grass
Who consents to the flattening
Of snow and mud and lays
Himself down alongside me
And remains.
And rustles hoarsely in
My watery ears:
I know, I know…

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Wound

Hello to anybody who might still be popping in to this blog to check for new poems. I've had a lot on my plate lately, and this blog has been a bit lost in the shuffle. However, I am remembering that the more I write, the better I feel...So, I hope to have much more to offer in the near future!

The wound loves the knife
More than stitches
One made her
The others saved her
Her affections are
Torn but then
She can’t deny
Her origins
Or the reason
She was born

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Stripping Down


This week's readwritepoem prompt asked us to be inspired by the idea of "mental wallpaper." I found myself thinking about the wallpaper in our first house.
Our first house was papered inside,
A cavernous nightmare
Of interior design disasters
Every surface—walls and ceilings,
Cupboard doors—covered
In at least three layers
Of other people’s perceptions
Of pretty and cozy

Nothing about that paper was right
The stems and vines
Of the floral patterns
Seemed to fight for release
While the little farmhouse prints
In the kitchen seemed
Too small and suspicious
Of each other

And I worked like hell to rid myself
Of that paper,
Like a madwoman from a
Charlotte Perkins Gillman story,
I hunched and sprayed and scraped
And even gouged
The very walls I sought to rescue
From those layers of ugly

Oh, I know that the paper was once
Someone’s vision of home
But you can’t paper yourself
Into domestic tranquility
After a while, the paper turns
Into a sponge
Absorbing all the nasty smells
Of your past

I’d like to say I learned my lesson:
I’ve never papered over
A wall, never over committed
To a pattern but still
I’ve had to spray and scrape
And rip my way clear
When I found myself knee-deep
In my own domestic mistakes