Claire's September Poem

Hi all! 

Hope you and yours are out of the path of Florence! Looking forward to your September poems!

RETURN

Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi was released from an Israeli prison on July 29, 2018, after serving an eight-month sentence for slapping an IDF soldier. She had just learned that a soldier had shot her 15-year-old cousin in his mouth.

released from prison
into the wider captivity

on a blue and white day

she is swept

into the embraces
into the breezes of Nabi Salih

at the makeshift press conference:

bristling microphones
and IDF rifle barrels
(neither intimidate her)
take aim at her mouth

where the stories of her people live

she sits planted among the throng

with the patience of Jerusalem

unmovable as its shimmering dome

while her golden hair

the entire wheat field of it
caresses her father’s shoulder

there is resistance in the very
breezes of Nabi Salih

and Ahed’s hair waves and whips

now more recognizable

than the Palestinian flag

in every bold strand a demand

and the birthright

to live unleashed

her defiant curls
pale skin
reminiscent of another teenager

he, freed from a block

of veined white marble

his right hand cradled the fatal rock

hers opened flat in a slap

they were the same age
rooted in these same stone-strewn hills

when they confronted giants.

Vasiliki's September poem

Hi Everyone! Miss seeing your work here! Hope the rainclouds have parted where you are, and you're having a good start to the fall season.

Tuscan

after centuries of raising
things out of rot,
wine and raisins

fraught promises, razed
soil and more work

what rage was wrought
of these sought promises?

to return to the soil
after centuries

what was sought and bought
left to rot

stunned wages--
amidst the wilds and thistles
of the Tuscan hills

epistles whose lines are written still

while the very ground unwinding
by the windmill

and still and still

that with each drop, we shall return to the soil
amended

Start Up Again in September?

Friends--

What do you say about taking it easy in August, and posting again in September?
I am so grateful for our ongoing conversation!!

Hope you are all relaxing and reviving!

With poetical affection,
Vasiliki

Kasey's June non-poem

Hello all,

Just wanted to let you know I need to take a few months away from the group. I appreciate your presence, comments, and poems so very much! But I've allowed myself to get overwhelmed this summer, and am feeling very stressed - plus I need a little time to incubate some poems in quiet. Take good care - I'm sending you great vibes for the next month or so!

Kasey

Vasiliki's June Poem

Hi everyone. I am deeply grateful for your engagement with my poems. Here's another one... early draft. I'm not satisfied with the title, and I'm not sure how/where to put the line about how this is in response to a video. I only watched this video once, and probably could watch a few more times and bolster this poem with more, but so far I haven't.

The Man Poet, the Woman Poet


her hair is a curtain
her man worships behind

            *

he is dressed in fatigues

            *

she might be a chain smoker
growing glowing ash
so that a floating star is always before her

            *

another box yet to be opened

            *

he once disintegrated

            *

he put himself together with words
glued to his chest and innards

            *

as he reads, her look of horror and admiration
as she reads, his look of perfect indifference

            *

fashioned in the fire

            *

they are together but apart
her laughter dissipates like smoke
her voice is undertow

-after watching a 1976 filmed poetry reading by Jack Gilbert and Linda Gregg-

Dargie's June Poem

Hi Team!  Thanks for your ongoing feedback.  It is truly so helpful.

IN AMERICA

 In America there is always a road, yes,

but there is also (for now, anyway) always a football team.

There are conferences a fan has never heard of,

mascots so obscure you’d need a field guide to recognize them,

chimerical hybrids of wildcats and buffaloes and rockets,

regionally-themed cheers complete with cued key-jingling

and foam props passed out by the pep squad.

Listen to the singing, the fast songs and slow songs;

each stadium full of people

knows a different songbook by heart.    

* The italicized words are the title of a poem by Christopher Cessac. 

Claire's June Poem

I hope everyone is enjoying the long light of these early-ish June days! 

Here is a prose poem I started over a year or so ago which, though I have worked on it quite a bit, I still consider a first draft. The last word in particular is problematic, though something in me keeps insisting upon it!

BIRTH IN THE TIME OF EBOLA

8 Oct 2014  MONROVIA  Doctors are charging extortionate fees to women to give birth—not a new practice, but the fee has gone up, said a doctor who asked to remain unnamed, linked to the associated risk of a potential Ebola-positive birth.

Between contractions, she hears numbers. Not birth numbers—the minutes between, centimeters dilated—but the same number in the administrator’s mouth: 400. A room number? Is it the pain or is Abdullah’s face turning grey? 400. Dollars. To be allowed inside to give birth? Five babies she birthed in this hospital and never a mention of $400 to simply get inside the doors. Another wave breaks. She bears down on her husband’s hand. Closes her eyes, the world going grey. When the pain passes and she opens her eyes again, it is to blinding daylight. Diesel fumes. Traffic din, horns and whistles. Her nostrils stuffed with dust. Women’s voices. Women’s hands, hands that don’t ask questions, do not deal in numbers but something beyond numbers. She hears the cry of the first child. Before the second begins his descent, she gazes up at women, ringed around her in the middle of Monrovia in the middle of a midweek day, mid-wives all now, holding up skirts and headscarves to shield her, like a hospital curtain, like a veil, protective, free.

Shannon's June Poem

Hi Everyone,

I hope your summer is off to a great start! Here's my June poem. I'd love your general feedback, but I'd also like your suggestions re: verb tense. I'm trying to switch back and forth in tense to further the sense of imaginative travel. Is this confusing?  

Word Games & Space Travel

            Michael Thompson, Girl with a Hole in Her Stocking, 2008

A hesitation. A hole. A rip.

            Sometimes, my thoughts

proceed like this. Like a teasing

            at the seams where one

thread loosens, then another

            only to contract in another

place. The way I think splinter,

            then sister. O’ the association

games she and I played

            to pass the time. Fall,

she’d say. Leaves, I’d reply.

            Cotton candy, clouds.

Statement-response,

            syllables stitched up

the hours. Almond, eye,

            telescope.

Words aligned imperfectly,

            but that was the pleasure.

In the crevices and cracks,

            we sought out the ineffable.

What do you see?, I’d ask. 

            A  blue earing pulsing

in the baseboards.

            What do you feel?, her follow-up.

My toe pushing through

            a rip in my stocking.

Bending down, I beheld

             the smallest opening

widening, widening

            into ever-expanding present

where I feel grass, I feel bark,

            and leaves and linens

drying on clotheslines.

            Trampolines and hot air balloons.

Yellow wings (are they mine)?

            The horizon is no thicker

than thread from which violet-

            blue beads hang,

tiny orbiting planets

            beneath my touch.

           

Book Suggestions/Reading Recommendations

Hi Everyone,

I thought it would be fun to share what we're reading with each other (inspired by the Mary Ruefle conversations!). I just read Kaveh Akbar's Calling A Wolf A Wolf and loved it if you're looking for something.

Forum on Publishing

Hi Everyone,

I want to echo Kasey's message earlier to say that I'm very grateful to be a part of this group. Thanks for your very generous comments on my poems. I was at a conference in Pittsburgh over the weekend, but I am all caught up on commenting now. So be sure to look at your poems for my feedback (which I hope is helpful!).

Inspired by Vasiliki's question about publishing, I thought I'd start a thread for us to share our thoughts about publishing!

I hope everyone is have a great week.
Shannon