Apologies!

Hi Everyone,

I'm so sorry that I've been absent. I have to admit that this fall has been overwhelming in both joyous and stressful ways. I've taken on too much and teaching is wonderful but intense. I'm going to have to take a hiatus, but promise I'll be back at some point. Thanks for your support and wonderful feedback.

Wishing you happy holidays!
Shannon

Vasiliki's November (also September) Poem

Hi Everyone, I'm reposting my poem from Sept. which Claire already responded to. I hope Shannon and Dargie, (& Kasey?) might send a few notes my way. How are we feeling about the monthly format? Do we need to change something? I value this group and hope we can keep it going despite the other commitments we all have. Happy Thanksgiving!

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

Claire's November Poem

Hi all! October got away from me...so here is a November poem. Hope everyone is doing well! <3

WILD ASTERS

In memory of Sylvie Semaan

Driving I-95 this morning, I spot them—

                  a frill at the edge of the woods, their stars

brightening the deep oak and maple shade—

and I can still see Sylvie that day, heading back to the City,

                  waving from the rented car stuffed

with her family and the galaxies of asters, blue and white, 

                  we gathered on the bluff above the harbor

(two weeks later, she had called to say

                  the wildflowers still lit their Manhattan rooms, 

and we’d spoken again of that rare, simple day:

the soft late-summer air, clear marine light!)

This morning I see her again  

(this time as an image preserved in brine)

as I never saw her in life, this time a vision: 

shaven head, alone on a frigid beach, salted edge

of her native Normandy, attuned

to something beyond the gun-metal ocean

frothing white at her feet.

Salt sprays the lenses of her glasses

                  dries there to a lace of stars, obscuring

this, her borrowed world, but not dimming

                  the magnitude of the next.

Shannon's October Poem

Hi Everyone!

I'm sorry for vanishing on you in September. My dog was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and we were preparing for an intense last month with him. Fortunately for him (because he didn’t suffer) and unfortunately for us (because we miss him terribly), he went into failure just three days after his diagnosis... We had to say goodbye so quickly. I’m just now getting back to poetry and to my regular schedule.

Here is my October poem! I’ll comment on your poems soon! 

Sketches of Daydreaming

A musician hauls his piano into the open-air market to play his scales;

all around him, vendors balance fresh dates, mangoes, and pears on scales.

Hundreds of miles away, a woman stands by window reading old letters

on paper embossed with leaves that scale

the margins—the way dry leaves curl under a boy’s feet in a park

in Delaware. To him, they’re dragon scales.

At home, his sister sketches blueprints of her perfect city,

one with spiral staircases and glass elevators drawn to perfect scale.

The ink becomes oceans, streets and trees, becomes notes.
This is where the singing happens. It starts with the simplest scale.

Dargie's Sept/Oct poem

WHAT THE COWS ARE DOING

 A little bit of light

is better than no light at all.

Indoors you wouldn’t even know the light

had started; you’d be boiling water,

getting breakfast

under the overhead lights.

But out here there is the river’s incandescence.

The turf farm’s strange agriculture. 

What the cows are doing,

there in your favorite pasture just west of the tollbooth.  

Can you read an omen

in the cows’ formation this morning,

in whether they are massed together

or straggled out over the hillside—

or whether one, or several, are wading, chest-deep,

in the livestock pond,

or are brownly scattered up the drainage,

under scarce trees?

Did you catch it?

The landscape,

saying something,

here, under the Kansas sky. 

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-