Day 30 – Fact

After the Cancer

Matisse began paper cutouts. Small pieces at first. Then bigger. Then murals. So many pictures
made from pieces. Goldfish. Dancers. Portraits. Horses. So beloved, these friendly spectaculars.
Le Bateau hung upside down at MOMA for 46 days and no one said a thing until a stockbroker (imagine! a stockbroker!) noticed and told a guard and newspapers got wind and it all made a kerfuffle. But I suppose boats may go anyway but under, so perhaps it didn't matter. Anyway
after the cancer he found a new way and went on until he died at age 84. Heavy color. Impossible shapes. Bright, bright assembly. A blue nude doing yoga. So many flowers. His great paper gardens go on and on, curves and swashes gouache and glue going and going. Henri you float my boat.

Day 29 – Plath Calendar

Listening

I hear an owl cry
From its cold indigo.Intolerable vowels enter my heart.

      From "Event" by Sylvia Plath

Morning: all wrens and finches whistling
or soft doves whoo-clucking on wires
bright cardinals bounce from fencetop
to branch to bloom. Each bird totes
its own vowels, sounds them in sunlight.
Another language to learn, all those
dialects! How they delight the air. Poor 
desperate Sylvia, ruined, undone.

Day 28 – Prose Poem

When in Spain

we'd bought cheese and wine, returned to the rented villa wondered at the light beyond
the ridge what town glowing so in darkness? a name, ached for a name, drank the wine
ate the cheese on the balcony wondered some more the brightening glow of the town
over there world's end above the gleaming surface of the too-cold-to-swim pool drank
more wine had some olives watched the town's glow grow fat climb the ridge
break into the sky entering curved like an orange moon indeed the moon breaking
the Spanish sky open taking on the night taking night by the dark bright destroyer

Day 27 – Pick a Card (Tarot)

The Moon

reveals our animal nature
and imaginative thought
nocturnal light
lunar presence
pulls my own
personal tide

Day 26 – Sensory

Quarry

she stood on the quarry's lip her back
to green water thirty feet below
the great grey bowl rising
into a summer afternoon of salty
mouth and lotioned limbs
stoney scent of sun
and oh she leaned
into it tipped
and flipped and dove
her tanning self
into the mineraled
emerald miracle
a white knife
sinking

Day 25 – Warning

beware

the white chickens with red combs
upon which light depends
for its shape

or the coop so square
and bound up in fence

beware

the open water
the open eye
the head

did you know
when you signed
up for me
that things could be
like this?

Day 24 – Elegy

Before

plans made more plans made
generations of plans made entire
family trees of plans so many
plans but not this
one not this plan
not now or more
precisely not this
not plan

we have evidence
a picture of me
before and if you
look you can
see maybe
a plan in my eyes
making another
at that time

now (not before
when I wore
a red and black
checked flannel
shirt in that photo
because fall permits
such fashion) I recall
soap bubbles
we blew on your
birthday in the before
before how each floated
and all burst

how now I purse
my lips
into a plan
and blow
wonder in saying
so if that's a curse

Day 23 – Sound

Heard

what is your executive confidence?
improperly dispensing meds?
quite a striking collision I would say
the only thing I can think of is
he's laughing at you ya damned
boy scout all the things could be worse

Day 22 – Impossible Things

The Sun

The sun can't rise in the west
except on Saturdays in space
one of many
impossible
things

Day 21 – Narkissos

Little White Flower

in love with your whiteness and yellow
center in love with love with the face
of yourself with your whiteness with
what keeps you safe your whiteness

Day 20 – Rebellion

Little Rebellions Everywhere

in the bloom as it pushes out splitting sepals
in the persistence of moss
the heron gliding just above the lake
an armadillo digging
my cranky knee
bending

Day 19 -- Erasure

Road Trip

what Memphis?        swamp vibe

almost got a job

second-runner        up a whole

state    away      practically

Mississippi           but not

quite           oh   Tennessee

eastern hills

                monied middle

King Cotton’s

          flood plain    of the west

music in you        dark

lonesome

Day 18 -- Revision as Call and Response

*The prompt for today is to take a published poem, and line by line from the bottom up, write a line in response, "revising" the original work, seeing it anew. The effort feels like call & response, and the original poem floats beneath the new, making a palimpsest. I chose to work with a few verses of Sonia Sanchez's "Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman", which appears in the April issue of Poetry.


her legs catch light
they bridge and lift you
a golden hope away

unbound dark a shield
pressing, pressing
out, out

free rain
free air
on your skin

our own way
curved, arched
spinning our power

Day 17 -- Story from the Past

What We Lost

The palace, never truly ours, burned.
Cave-homes collapsed, and all
the cottages crumbled. We lived
outdoors after that, in small grey
tents near what was left of the water.

Day 16 -- Play

Slips

We wore them then  under skirts, dresses
slips called in the olden days small coats
she had a slip, a little slip and had to start
counting her sober days from zero again
she slipped on some old slick and busted
dreams, broke open because, said life, I
ain't playin girl, you can't give me the slip
I get all of what you got, your last chip

Day 15--Sad Villain

Under the Bridge

hungry boy big boy big galumphing beast
of a boy eater such a big eater of man-
flesh of flesh under cover of night
he cannot remember his making can-
not see the sun wonders how wonders
if wonders when the end will come

Day 14--Dream Dictionary

Teacup

In dreams the type of cup matters. The type of tea matters, but less. Broken cups don't mean what you think they mean, like something broken or dying, only that forces are at work. Dainty teacups on rustic tables occur more often than the reverse, which suggests we all need to feel pretty sometimes. If it is jasmine tea in a cup without a handle, things will go well, but perhaps not right away. A mug indicates longing; if you wrap your hands around it and it is warm, your longing will be satisfied, but perhaps not right away. Hot tea in a clear glass means you are old-fashioned and long for a kosher deli on the east side. If you warm your hands in the steam, upon waking you will need to make something. Drinking tea, no matter the type of cup, you should never do in dreams. You should never eat or drink in the other world. You will never be the same.

Day 13 -- Familiar Phrase

Now You've Done It

I find you relatable
in the way all cliches
find bottom, the way
you put all your eggs
in one mattress
stitched nine
pennies to your pillows
in no time you poor silly
running around like
a chicken with a chopping
block and who layed all
those eggs anyway?
Now you've done it.
Everything's gonna
be the same.

Day 12 -- Haibun

I take back what I said about spring in Tennessee in March. The weather teased us with sunshine and early blooms a few weeks back, and today, a mid-April day, it blasted us with snow flurries. Here on the hilly eastside of town, one can't help but admire the wisteria and dogwood blooms flouncing themselves in the pearly grey light. They look cold, though. Have the blooms stopped pushing themselves out, awaiting a warmer day to reach fullness? The streets fill with after-work dog-walkers, pulling their jacket collars up against the wind. Everyone and everything hunches into the sudden, deep chill, a bit appalled at the season's backsliding.


mid-spring snow surprise
how could you? even dogwoods
look disappointed

Day 11 -- The Future

The State of My Union

hey now a gas a wondrous blast
swing song dance craze chaos
haze my stately calendar eats dates
winging into outer space our
home on roam connected
to the coconut by limbo leanings
oh lush life all starlight and dust
that antigravity jump and jive
out of time out of time

Day 10 -- Both at the Same Time

Birds Bring It

birds bring it back:
the sandpit, the long
abandoned backhoe
and slimy pond
defunct detritus
from the go-go days
of building it all up
to nothing now
surrounded by sumac
and sugar maple

the birds bring it:
a spring Saturday
how the rusted
digger glowed as if
it were not dead
and she was not dead
because she heard their
birdy trilling across
the open pit and shed
a new jean jacket old
t-shirt jeans and panties
in the green sunlight

the birds and a girl
of maybe ten
wearing nothing
but work-boots
answering finch
and sparrow
with whistles
and a song from Oliver! 
whispering to the singing
woods who will buy this
naked jaybird who will buy
this beautiful bird 

Day 9 -- Big and Small

Big and Small

soil its life in creatures

beetles grubs earthworms

furred things snug in their dens

grooving the underground

spinning the planet

once my dog found three newborn

rabbits stashed down a shallow hole

in the backyard and nearly

demolished them but

I stopped her in time

though her teeth had nicked

one and there was some blood

and they were clearly terrified

I put them in a clay flowerpot

laid on its side and left them

in a snug corner on the other side

of the fence hoping the mother rabbit

and not some cat would come

and fix them up

then I went to the bar

and who knows but

of course they were gone

when I came home

and who knows

who knows what happened

Day 8 - Magic

Oh She Said

the birds wake her
finch and sparrow and jay
oh, she says, oh it's like magic
every day, like a sonic
gift, small song sprouting
thickening like the light, like
the bean seeds, like longing
oh, it's like, no, not like, not like

Day 7 - Identities

She Always

day late hectic forgetful
in her head
staying too long
talking things she
does not know
all make believe
and big magic
naming us
like dollies

damn she thinks
she knows all the words
says ineluctable
and requiescat in
such a way it
makes a body
be still

she always watches
light come in
to wrap the rising
dust like angels
lifting off and means
to join them

Day 6 -- Line Breaks

Could

I could write a long poem in long lines another time but just now I have waited
too long to do the task that must be done and so the long poem will have to wait.

Day 5 - From a Photograph

Sempervivum

hens and chicks thicken
at the edge of what I
could have called
childhood back then
in other people's gardens
spilling from pretty clay pots
rounding brick corners
looking prickly but not
oh my first succulent
with the cute name
and soft spikes did
not but could have
I thought clucked

Day 4 - Nouns

Fact

red tulips and a scented hedge, full
of birds, the sidewalk chalked
in pink and blue for hopping
at least until the rain comes

Day 3 -- Names

What to Call It

This American sentence grew up drinking Rheingold beer for breakfast. This American sentence went home and ate all the kraut and sausage. Those were the days before the cement plant closed and the papermill closed. We called it good enough, we called it a life and lived it like a future.

Day 2 - Voice

You Put It Out There

Like a line cook you put it out there
like an order of fries pick up ding pick
up dammit but no one comes no
one is looking and so what
I say? You love it don't you?
No, you say. I don't know, you say.
Maybe I could. Do you? It doesn't
matter what I think. It's your thing.
Love it. Don't. Whatever you want.
Whatever you want.

Day 1 Secret Pleasure

Driving in Silence

day road green quiet
persimmon pink horizon
ears just resting