Wide Path Poetry

2009-10-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

http://rockmusicpresents.com/zu2a7lUNKY.html

2006-08-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

Please visit me at my new blog:
wide path poetry

See you there...

2006-08-17T04:23:00.000-07:00

mid-August,
our second winter:
will the water
in the garden hose
ever run cool?

2006-08-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

Memorial Tattoo

This past Memorial Day my son Zane went with our friend Scott and his daughter to catch tadpoles. Scott is a city-employed hydrologist and had a certain pond in mind at a local park. The kids were thrilled to see it alive with tadpoles. Zane brought back a jar full of these small, black babies and dedicated to raising them properly, we moved them into a crystal bowl filled with room temperature spring water, a large pink rock, a plastic frog and a microwaved piece of spinach for food. They thrived for weeks before we noticed one had sprouted legs…then arms…then, within a couple of days, lost its tail and became a new frog.

We moved the small frog, still the size of a tadpole, into a habitat with more flat, dry space onto which he could jump. I warned Zane not to play with it but he couldn’t resist— the poor little guy didn’t last the night. I gently told Zane the news in the morning and he sobbed, “But he was the first one to turn into a frog!” as if it had supernatural powers. Downstairs, getting ready for the day, Zane requested that I make him a special pancake. It didn’t come out the way I intended as I tried to make it look like a frog from the side, but pancake art is rarely precise. It was more of a rear end view. Zane ate it without any remorse. After all, there were a dozen more tadpoles to watch.

Later that day, at work, someone in my office created a sign and happened to choose a border from Word clip art that astonished me— it was my pancake! It did have decorative elements my pancake lacked, like a long, curving tongue and a filigreed lily pad, but the frog was exactly the same shape. I immediately copied it in an email to my husband Chris and noted that it would make a cool tattoo. He agreed and I was determined to have the frog tattooed on my back that weekend. Getting a tattoo wasn’t such a rash decision. I considered getting one to cover a scar on my foot and I had researched the best places in town. Everything I read or heard from people with tattoos was that getting one on top of the foot was a bad idea— it would fade easily from the constant friction of socks and shoes and would be very painful as the foot bones are so close to the skin. During my research I visited the busy Southside Tattoo parlor and liked them; I lined up an appointment for Saturday afternoon.

Once there, I found myself perched on the edge of a massage table, leaning over my legs with the waistband of my shorts pulled down. The room was decorated with tattoo art and a sign which read “No Crybabies Allowed.” Michael, my artist, cleaned the area of my lower back with rubbing alcohol and shaved it with a disposable blade. He applied the transfer he made of the frog and got to work. Before he began, he asked me if I took Lamaze classes with my husband and that I should just breathe through the pain— I told him I had a c-section. But it was good advice. I breathed and meditated through 20 minutes of searing line work before he did the filling in which wasn’t as painful. Perhaps because I wasn’t a crybaby he gave me some special cleanser for free along with the ointment I bought and had to apply four times daily for two weeks as the tattoo healed.

It’s been almost three weeks and my frog tattoo has stopped peeling and itching. I can go swimming, finally. During this time the other tadpoles have gotten fatter and one or two have grown legs but Zane isn’t as interested. For his birthday we gave him a pair of mice.

2006-08-13T06:18:00.000-07:00

unable to see
the moon, just its radiance
I feel your fever,
think why being a mother
is always hardest at night

2006-08-09T18:21:00.000-07:00

black-capped birds
chase through the branches.
I wait for your return
with a glass of rosé,
this apology

Read more at http://www.modernenglishtanka.com

2006-08-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

cakes rise as
icing on the counter
loosens up

not knowing when
your gift begins
and ends, I thank you

I sit till my feet
tingle— then I sit
until I forget

2006-07-16T05:12:00.000-07:00

humid morning—
someone has piled rocks
at the buddha's feet

2006-07-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

Florida Holiday

my new sandals
on the conveyor belt—
Austin airport

clouds above
clouds below
the flight attendant’s smile

Spanish moss weighs
down the cypress—
long drive ahead

almost eighty
but my mother’s voice
when I was five

Marco!
Polo!
I leave the pool

Congo River golf…
in the water hazard
lotus flowers

tourist shop colors
in the sky—
Clearwater sunset

waiting for dad’s
meds to kick in
his beer bottle shakes

thousands of shell
fragments fill my hands
not yet sand, not yet

Fourth of July
every night in Orlando
my son asks why?

sand in our pockets
we wave goodbye—
darkening clouds

2006-06-30T04:14:00.000-07:00

crescent moon—
your lopsided grin
under the sheets

***

the air tastes of regret…
sunset pink, hint
of night, my kisses
close your eyelids
so you will not forget me

2006-06-23T16:05:00.000-07:00

Here's to everyone's ex...this is as close as I get to country music lyrics...

E X A N N E X

I have forgotten
all the words
you whispered to me,

clasped right to my ear,
reinterpreting
the air going through.

And I can't remember why
I called you tonight;
bedside murmurs remind

me of uncalculated
things, this distance
that connects us,

still bewildered,
nothing to say.

2006-06-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

Where do those neighbors go
every evening?
On the same
patch of earth—
her scent, my footprints

2006-06-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

Ginko at Solidago Sanctuary
June 10, 2006

almost summer...
the cracks in the earth
are my road map

a universe of gravel--
that white rock
the moon

standing cypress
points the way in--
Solidago Sanctuary

such a short door
to the garden--
first bow of the morning

water flowing in
water flowing out
it's just nice to sit

2006-06-03T16:51:00.000-07:00

Photo Shoot

I work at a retreat center in central Texas and volunteer (with three others) to be models for a travel magazine’s photographer. We are here for our own reasons. Martha— because she thinks it’ll help her self esteem. June— because she’s bored with her job and any excuse to play is a good excuse. Tricia— because she thought it would intrigue her boyfriend. Me— only because I like having my picture taken. Ages ago, when I worked at a National Monument in northern Virginia, I was photographed by a man with a handlebar moustache for some biker magazine. Looking winsome in Colonial garb, I posed leaning against the herb garden gate. He suggested that I loosen the ties of my dress. Today I’m hundred years older and probably not the first choice of this young chick photographer from NYC but it appears that they have no money for this shoot. They gotta take what they get.

fallen logs
in between
the budding trees

The photographer asks us to walk single file on the trail, first down the hill then up and then down again. I look over my shoulder and laugh and the photographer likes that, she asks me to do it again and I trip. We all laugh. She asks Martha to step aside, four are too many. Standing in the shadows, Martha adjusts the crotch of her pants. Back at the locker room, the photographer had asked her to put on looser fitting pants, her panty lines stood out like a muscle-man’s veins. Now she looks down at her feet, clad in the photographer’s shoes since hers were not quite right.

passing clouds—
leaves settle
on her hair

I get miffed because the photographer is shooting the Buddha statue at the edge of the trail instead of us. She walks around it, tilting her head to the right as I try to look photogenic on a nearby rock. Martha watches as Tricia and June whisper like sisters and the photographer pulls the cover off her test shot, exposing a picture only she will see.

mudra hands
carved in stone—
off the path, laughter

2006-05-31T19:39:00.000-07:00

dining al fresco
a wasp hovers over
the crumpled napkin

2006-05-30T18:43:00.000-07:00

catching the news
with her nose to the ground—
daily dog walk

2006-05-29T04:54:00.000-07:00

Mars, the Sun god, was originally the god of agriculture, not war.

everything he had
everything she had
why did the sun grow cold?

—Memorial Day, 2006

2006-05-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

roadrunner with a worm
crosses my path—
TGIF

2006-05-23T18:58:00.000-07:00

The Captive

May morning—
A wheelbarrow full
of weeds

A captured bug
fills the bottom
of my water glass

his back a hemisphere
of troubled clouds…
Hercules beetle

2006-05-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

"The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green earth,
dwelling deeply in the present moment
and feeling truly alive."

- Thich Nhat Hanh

2006-05-19T04:20:00.000-07:00

Rebecca’s Garden Ginko

Wednesday, May 17

Gray moons, blue
biscuit— gravel snaps
below our feet

the smell of mint!
a cat leaps
over the path

goldfish in the pond…
five slow gulps
then it’s gone

a rainy spring—
mosquitoes enjoy
the buffet

five different mugs
on benches, on the ground—
the meeting of friends

2006-05-17T01:51:00.000-07:00

three petals fall
from the purple coneflower...
almost summer

2006-05-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

“[Comets] were imagined
in ancient times to be prodigies hung
out by the immediate hand of God
in the heavens, and intended to alarm the world.
Their nature being now better understood,
they are no longer terrible.
But as there are still many who think
them to be heavenly warnings, portents of future events,
it may not be improper for the tutor to inform
his pupil, that the Architect of the Universe
has framed every part according to divine order,
and subjected all things to laws and regulations:
that he does not hurl at random stars and worlds,
and disorder the system of the whole glorious frame,
to produce false apprehensions of distant events,
fears without foundation, and without use.”

Astronomical and Geographical Essays by George Adams, London: 1790

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4754797.stm

2006-05-13T18:49:00.000-07:00

SOIL STUDY AT SUGAR HOLLOW
Near Charlottesville, Virginia

By the creek bed beneath waves
of drowned grass
I help you, the future science teacher,

dig a hole twenty inches deep.
First quarter inch yields
river sand, no mystery.

The grains in your hand
are prisms of green and amber quartz,
but the field guide

written by a Japanese scientist
to standardize the globe’s soils
insists it is brown. So it is.

You flick the sand from your hands.

As you study the hole I, the poet, see
that Demeter’s been to Sugar Hollow.
Hungry to turn the land stark

and cold she’s shaken the leaves down
around us. You say a front is coming in.
It flows between us like her black cape.

I say You know how spring smells
Of earthworms; summer, onion grass?
You nod. Autumn air rifles through clumps

of leaves in the crotches of trees.
Winter is white breath and ice.
I stand staring into the hole we dug,

it looks warm and deep. Your hand comes up
with a slice of clay you roll in your palm, sniff.
I say it’s the color of dried blood but

the book corrects me: this clay is brown.
I step close and take its photograph,
you smile, sprinkle it into a little bag.

Seven bags later the hole is filled.

We cross the plain, the bending grass,
carry shovel, spade, book and bags.
Back at the car, the unpaved road,

you kiss me for the first time.
I feel like a seed stretching
blindly, finally, through the brown dirt.

2006-05-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

From an eMedicine article on scorpion stings:

“Curious individuals are at risk because of increased interaction with the scorpion.”

scorpion sleeps
in a discarded toy—
he thought it was sand

my son’s screams
hurt as much
as the sting

he looks at me
as if I know everything—
ice, kisses, orange syrup

a day later
“it’s still like this, mom—"
his fingers grasp air

on the step he jumps
up and away
tiny centipede

2006-05-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

stomach and foot
are one--
snails in the garden

2006-05-04T19:34:00.000-07:00

spilt coffee— the orange stripe of a ribbon snake

2006-05-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

Today is our 10th wedding anniversary...it's been almost 10 years since this poem was written. It first appeared in Emigre No. 41 in 1997.

What I Know

This is not a new world,
our bodies are flavors

familiar as milk or bread.
The first words we speak

each morning are not poems.
Or words...with eyes just open,

your skin never closer, I hear
what I know: our names,

sometimes in the voice
of the woman who married us,

and music from the evening we met,
excitement like a scent

made us dance.
What I know isn't a secret.

Love is the impulse to breathe
you in like ocean air

and to roar as if I sighted
a new and splendid land.

2006-05-02T04:29:00.000-07:00

Under Our Window

My lover and I are on the floor
in the late

daylight of our hotel room
as the school across the street lets out.

We hear bright voices
under our window, whispering names.

Then he hurts me,
hits his dry mouth against mine

like a hand
swats flies and stops moving.

Children, he says.
We lie there, try to breathe

as the giggles of schoolgirls rise.

2006-04-30T05:05:00.000-07:00

Internalizing Life

This morning I woke up reminded of an assignment my college prose professor Jack Gantos gave us one semester: to keep a journal with three daily entries. One for reality, one for reading, one for dreams. This way we could see the fusion of life's activities with the images we've imagined all played out in our dreams. I see this kind of journal as a reality blender, the way writers should always reflect upon their lives. It ties together how we're inspired and the many ways we internalize the various stimuli we encounter.

Recently the word "internalize" has been used to describe the reason Kaavya Viswanathan's debut novel went to press with plagarized passages...apparently she reread Megan McCafferty's novels so often they became One with her voice and in the rush to publish not a single editor saw, or cared about, the similarities. Yesterday I read several articles about Kaavya's plight as I've been a member of the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and feel quite sorry for the girl because she may never be taken seriously as a writer ever again. It brought to mind other novice authors such as certain celebrities whose literary efforts aren't strong but are guaranteed to sell tons of books because their fan base is so wide.

No wonder I woke up this morning after having a vivid dream about visiting Madonna at her London townhouse. In reality, my husband is from greater Manchester and I dreamed that we were in England to visit his family but first we were invited to drop in at Madonna's. I am not the biggest fan of either her music or children's books, but I there I was, watching Madonna sneak up to me and stick my left pec with a device that collects one's personal scent (in reality, yesterday I took a deoderant holiday from my usual uberstrong man's brand which works wonders but does who-knows-what to my body chemistry). In my dream Madonna berated me for abusing my arm pits and not letting my true essence come through. My husband and I were then asked to spend the next day at her country estate where I hoped to have more time to talk with her about writing and maybe drop off the middle grade manuscript I've written.

Back to reality: this particular manuscript is a non-linear memoir that I've been told by an editor to rewrite as a novel (the opposite of what James Frey was advised). I wrote the first fictional chapter but got bored as I felt I already wrote the damn book. Now I really believe I should stick with the "true essence" of my story as it is my story, home to the many voices of my childhood.

2006-04-28T18:14:00.000-07:00

SAPPHO

Wait

a moment:
all of me survived.

Like many women
I have not been heard fully

I have been misread,
as others spoke through me.

See me in the olive branches
on Lesbos any morning:

they arch shakily outward,
hang fat fruit like eyes

over papyrus, a girl
wanting to read.

2006-04-25T18:48:00.000-07:00

something's lost...
footsteps upstairs
grow louder

2006-04-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

I SAY HELLO

to my old school yard
now a sullen place, neglected,
the black top blank

as a shut-in’s face.
I stand at the wired gate
two feet from where I fell

at recess thirty-four years
ago, hands first, knees last, buckling
like an umbrella closed

too fast. No one saw because I ran alone.
Alone like the new kid I always was,
plump, too tanned for Connecticut

in May, teased for saying “cuts”
instead of “frontsies” or “backsies.”
What a stupid thing to say. I ran

from boys snapping their arms shut.
I ran from the endless hellos
before classrooms of unsmiling faces,

I ran from the bullies and I ran
to bully myself because my family
didn’t have a home. Because other girls

in second grade got dance lessons, why not me?
I ran in circles around an unforgiving heart.
I ran too hard, I ran too fast.

I was taught to run, to say hello,
fall hands first, lick my cuts and go on.
Keep moving. Hello. I have to run.

2006-04-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

earth day swim...
toes stretch wide
in the cool water

2006-04-22T00:48:00.000-07:00

Saturday, three a.m...
I wait for your plane to land.
Birds make loud plans
for a celebration,
a coyote sends regrets

2006-04-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

This poem originally appeared online in an early edition of the Blue Penny Quarterly, now the Blue Moon Review. I started writing it in college and only considered it ready for publication 10 years later.

THE DRESS

1.

We met in August
in the unforgiving heat
for a walk to the reservoir,
the black water.
You undressed there
without speaking, dived
in without me to come
up like a fish's
instinctual arc.

Watching you I thought
it too easy to be lovers,
to say yes.

2.

Women deceive themselves,
you tell me. They've hurt
you, you feel it coming
like a rumble.
What is it, what makes
me bring your head
to my blouse, kiss down
the curls of your hair...

3.

I place your body
in the dream water,
it lifts, twists
as I stand on shore.
Meteors break
up above us,
come down close.
With my eyes closed
a voice pulls out your name.

4.

You're very good
at apologies and excuses

but there are more important
things to say.
For instance,
today I bought a dress

5.

because I imagined
another man behind me
in the mirror, unzipping
it, helping it down
to my ankles
where it would feel
like water, shallow
and warm. How long
would it keep me there,
hold me before I dive.

2006-04-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

Bubble Meditation
(on the deck with my young son)

blow too fast
the bubble bursts
before it is

fresh bubbles…
see how many colors
ride on your breath!

bubbles taste
like spring—
sweet, cool air

my every breath
is a bubble
kissing your face…

how long does it fly
before popping?
the biggest bubble

2006-04-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

100 degrees...
even the hummingbird
droops over her work

2006-04-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

Night Combo

One night a psychic dreamed of six numbers. She woke her husband, asked him what it meant. "The lottery?" he said, turning toward her the first time that night. "I'll play them in the morning." Days passed but he never did and the numbers won someone else millions. When I heard this story I thought, hey, I've dreamed of things that came true. Why not put my dreams to work? Lying in bed I counted the ways I'd spend the cash, considered numbers until my eyelids felt like moneybags and my dreams complied. Halfway through the night with half a combination: 22, 18, 32. Damn, I thought, smacking the mattress and waking my husband from a dream of what he wouldn't tell me. Maybe the measurements of an exotic girl or part of a phone number he tries to forget or the address of where he lives when he dreams....

before we met I read
how your place burned down,
saw a calm and kind face.
I had to meet you,
show all was not lost

2006-04-15T05:39:00.000-07:00

stinkbug gobbles
an inchworm--
april fifteenth

2006-04-13T07:31:00.000-07:00

IDYLL

In the morning
saucer magnolias
loosen their tongues

and we walk on a palette
of pale rose and white,
naming flowers

walking nowhere.
It is later, taking
me, that the litany

of names you gave comes
to mind: while your tongue
nudges me I see the red quince,

honey locust and that flower
with leaves like hands
giving thanks; I remember

buds tipping up
toward heaven, mouths almost
open from a sudden touch.

2006-04-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

saffron spills from
a hummingbird’s goblet—
wild columbine

2006-04-11T03:43:00.000-07:00

on the floor,
my heart is hiking
mountains—
a houseful of clocks
begin to chime

2006-04-10T03:35:00.000-07:00

instant message--
moon reveals more
of herself each night

messagerie instantanée  --
la lune révèle un peu plus
d'elle chaque nuit

translation by Serge Tome

2006-04-09T06:06:00.000-07:00

Farfelu Reading

Last night was the first time I read the following poem aloud to a large group and, to my surprise, applause! This poem is in the current issue of www.farfelumagazine.com

MARCHING THROUGH SIBERIA
April 30, 1987

The night is shiny
in its coldness. Ice glimmers
upon pink tulips

in city gardens.
Is it nearly May? I am
wrapped Eskimo-like,

on my way to hear
Yevtushenko read. In cow
skin coat and fur hat

I trudge to Faneuil Hall.
The air is familiar, wet
and unforgiving.

Why do I stay here?
Warmer parts of the country
celebrate spring now,

somewhere leafy trees
and redbuds lighten the roads.
Why do I stay here?

My nose is so cold.
I walk into the Hall, sit,
and keep on my coat.

April thirtieth,
In Boston, Massachusetts,
Yevtushenko says:

“Thank you for coming.
Welcome to Siberia.
I feel so at home.”

Rounds

2006-04-07T20:05:00.000-07:00

My mother wanted to be a nurse. Half way through her studies she dropped out of nursing school to marry my father. Many years later he left us and my older sisters and I went to work. The last thing I wanted to do as a seventeen year old was wipe old people’s butts but my mother convinced me to join her as a nurses’ aide at the local convalescent home. First she told me I could just make beds. But we knew I’d make more money as an aide. After two weeks of training my first task on the 7-3 shift was to fill a cart with towels, washcloths, soap and sheets and do the morning rounds. I had a long hallway to hit before breakfast, but usually no more than twelve patients. It became sacred to me, tip toeing into the rooms, gently waking whoever was still asleep, greeting them with a back rub where the slit of the Johnny coat fell open. After changing soiled sheets I sponged clean a blank face and limbs, noting the range of motion and new sores, working as gently as I could. This took five minutes.

yellow toe nails

curve uncut,

unnoticed

My favorite patient was Bobbie with Parkinson's. In the 1920s she knew a tattoo artist and became his canvas. He drew deep blue ink into her arms, chest, legs, back. The foliage and faces were very feminine and still vibrant sixty years later. She loved to tell the story of how she got her nickname; the thick curls piled on her head reminded a teacher of an English policeman's cap. Always before I left I would ask if she needed anything. Her usual reply: "A ten pound box of fifty dollar bills."

"Coming right up," I'd say.

painted lampshade—

a woman's hands

waver in her lap

Down another corridor two ladies in wheelchairs would sit outside their room and converse loudly about when they were going home. Every day they were sure someone was coming to pick them up, to get them out of this terrible place. Their conversations went no farther than they did, starting anew whenever anyone was in earshot. Every so often one of us aides or orderlies would come over and adjust their posture, pat their backs or wheel them into the dining hall. Then park them back in the hallway again.

circles—

wheels of chairs

that take you nowhere

One afternoon a new patient passed away and I was summoned to clean the body. My mantra was "I can't believe I'm doing this. I can't believe I'm doing this." I didn't know her at all; she came to the nursing home only days before with three daughters who never left her side. But now she and I were alone. I was amazed at her weight, at how the body works when it really shouldn't, at how silent her daughters were comforting themselves in the hallway. I couldn't believe I was doing it but I did, and

in the end a sheet

billows up, flattens

like your last breath