Day 22 Nursery Rhyme

Edwina & Patsy

Sweetie, who cares about these deadlines or the time?
Right. Cheers, darling!
Here's to vodka tonic with a twist of lime.

Day 21 New York School

Here's a Frank O'Hara imitation, set in Nashville instead of NYC.

The Homeless Paper

One time just going along

down the aisle at the Turnip Truck

by the good-for-you crackers, thinking

how even melted gruyere wouldn’t make them

taste good, thinking how I need to buy a copy

of The Contributor on the way out and did I have

a dollar, and there he was, someone handsome

an actor on a TV show they make here in town

and he’s in my way when I reach for the bad-for-you

crackers and he sees what I’m trying to do and

reaches them down for me, says these are really

good and I’m not so impressed by celebrity or beauty

that I can’t speak, but I just nod, say uhhuh, take

the crackers from his long, handsome fingers

and wonder if I have a dollar or if I need to remember

to ask for change.

Day 20 Voice of a Relative

John Mincarelli

His spoke in whiskers.
He spoke brandy at night and
quarters hot from his pockets
to our palms in the afternoon.
His voice was a tractor, an ancient barn
folding in on itself, old hay, a crust.

Day 19 Seashell Names

Incised Moon

Always on the cusp of it.
I'll give you a sand dollar
for your bottled message.

Day 18 Ruba'i

no pining
no whining
in this heart
on which we're dining

Day 17 Sensory

Once, the beard mattered. Its salty scent.
The silver bits catching light.
The tips of my fingers warming
in its depth.

Day 16 Ten Confessions

It wasn't me, it was you.
I had the money.
Fifteen in one year. Yeah, just fifteen. 
I didn't not mean it.
Not a miscarriage.
Didn't read it. Nope.
Not allergic, just hate the way you cook it.
No protection.
Throwing up daily.
It's you.  It's always been you.

(The prompt was ten lies; but I decided the confessions would be more fun.)

Day 15 Terza Rima

trapped laugh
last
gasp

stashed
sun
smashed

done

Day 14 Questions

What Price Bananas?

Albino tarantulas in Fulton, Kentucky?
The crawlies crawled out from the banana train 
boxcars and made for the bars downtown?
An urban legend? 
A point of pride?
Your podunk town, arrived?

The world's largest banana pudding. There.

Day 13 Kennings

spring you mighty eye-boiler

cough-maker, breath-stealer

nose-stuffer, oh, pretty 

enough in your frills and blooms  

that moody sky of yours

those softening nights

you are relentless

til you go and

I won't miss you then

Day 12 The Replacement Word

Wonder Rabbit

There are several species of wonder, but the eastern wonder
is the most common. Active and wide ranging, wonders need
more than a cage to be happy.  Domestic wonders
make good pets, but wild wonders do not tend to survive
in captivity.

The breeding season for wonders begins in February
and can continue throughout the summer.

Wonders thrive on fresh vegetables but can survive
on kibble if necessary.

Our products have not been tested on wonder. 
We are cruelty free.

Day 11 Anacreontic

A poem walks into a bar.
Of course it drinks too much wine.
It's a poem. Of course it falls in love
with the most beautiful, unattainable woman,
or man, or both, and scrawls itself
onto a cocktail napkin, slips under
her/his glass. Of course she/he
lifts the glass and never sees.
The beauty leaves with the lout
and the poem, the poem says so.

Day 10 Advertisement

Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest American poets, wrote approximately 1,800 distinct poems within 2,357 poem drafts and at least 1,150 letters and prose fragments -- a total of 3,507 pieces before her death at the age of fifty-five. On the triangular flap of the envelope seal A 252, we find this fleeting message inscribed in the lines winnowing down to a single word at the tip: 'In this short Life/that only [merely] lasts an hour/How much--how/little--is/within our/power.'  --by Jen Bervin, "Studies in Scale" Poetry Magazine, November 2013.

You want to write some poetry?
Get all up in some Emily.

Day 9 Playlist

The Mind is the First Thing to Go

Seventeen million hours riding in cars
with boys, my whole hyperbolic life,
and I can't think of one damn song
I wanna hear?

Day 8 Riff

Badass Baedeker

mina loy got the devil in her
silver powder
horned plenty

sleepwalking
thigh-highs
slink
by french doors

finely robed nights
lay waiting to ride
under the hudson

carnival boulevards
dream 
in dotted streetlights 
and jasmined mists

electric weather and white lightning
tidal pools and "one night only"
slash the city's shroud

from the uptown outer reaches
the debutantes and astronomers
name radio towers

and finally carriage horses stomp 
dull tunes in the flowery faces
of downtown's many, many moons

Day 7 Love Poem -- Inanimate Object

albuterol

with a name like that 

you could be a dish in a fancy french restaurant or wine 
perhaps from spain, maybe an arabic prayer, that wise-guy uncle
from the bronx, granny's houseplant, a type of spice

you, my chunkster, in that little red dress 
and one white shoe, oh i cannot resist
you, my last gasp

Day 6 Out My Window

My lungs loiter in the red bud tree,
a cough stalking them below. The usual birds
pop along and pluck the soggy lawn. They don't even notice
when the cough, in its five-day beard and ragged flannel,
climbs through fuchsia blooms, roughs up my bronchi,
leaves a bloody ransom note in my throat.

Day 5 Golden Shovel

the days, an apparition
of history, theses faces
thinking, crowd
those mugging petals
and wetly parse
blackened boughs

Day 4 Lune

*
no sirens tonight
no wind, no thought twisting
in the basement

*
one thing led
to another and we just 
ended up here

*
one more glass
of red wine before bed?
if you insist

Day 3 Charm (For Sleep)

let the bloom close 
let the bloom close
let the bloom close
and
remain that way
until day
until day

Day 2 Based on a Myth

After we rode a long way
     we arrived.  Things had happened. There'd been snakes.
Two or more moons at once.
       People who'd sprung fully formed from rocks, trees. Or grew quick and awful
in what had been cornfields.
     We went also without sun for a long, long time. And rode on. And on. 
And on. Sometimes, Fear climbed our backs, strapped onto us. Sometimes we crawled.
     But we arrived. We'd made it through.

Day 1 Bibliomancy

So, the good folks at NaPoWriMo.net sent me to Reb Livingston's Bibliomancy Oracle for my first prompt.  The oracle spoke. It said:

here begins the 

mechanics of art 

and therefore the 

end of it. 

     *from “in all honesty,” by Austen Roye

To which I replied:

I disagree with his machinery. I disagree with foil moons.

Consider this a caution. Consider leaving soon.

I’ll not be true. I’ll not be fair.

I’ll take dominion everywhere.

He'll see how gadgetry manifests

and then can DIY the rest.