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Year: 2012

Most Beautiful Thing

April 24, 2012 • • 8 Comments
US 290 East

Most Beautiful Thing

highway, the highway, oh beautiful thing
flowing under a circling sky
our son asleep, eastbound
wildflower spring, old prairie towns

flowing under a circling sky
blackland prairie, gnarled oaks
wildflower spring, old prairie towns
cedar along barbed wire fence rows

blackland prairie, gnarled oaks
long rolling hills, windblown grass
cedar along barbed wire fence rows
speeding trucks, dusty roads

long rolling hills, windblown grass
our son asleep, eastbound
speeding trucks, dusty roads
highway, the highway, oh beautiful road

—

This is inspired by Fiona Robyn’s new novel The Most Beautiful Thing. Since I’m doing napowrimo, I figured I’d use it as a prompt for today since this is the day Fiona is blogsplashing the book by offering the Kindle version for free. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve read her novel Thaw, which I enjoyed very much.

Creepy School Cafeteria Nutrition Posters

April 23, 2012 • • 6 Comments

Cauliflower’s been working out, ripped clothes and muscled arms urge everyone to dance. The blueberry girls and grape chicks with their leafy hair giggle and smile nearby. In walks Whole Grain Hipster, sporting a suit of bread and cereal like a seventies cartoon pimp, swaggering down the lunch line, healthy, cat, healthy, he nods over at the clique cliché of all the artsy individualistic girls: the lonely beet, eyes closed playing Dylan on her sad guitar, the bubbly pixie art grape, splashing paint so dreamy. Off in the corner by the water fountain, a cluster of grapes with black-eyed peas for eyes, fruit from the vineyard by the reactor, laugh through their carefully carved mouths while a lone mushroom makes his getaway on a hot rutabaga balloon made from some unfortunate member of misunderstood beet girl’s family, turned upside down, greens shredded and stalks used for lines. It’s a tough world for veggies and the fungus always wins but it’s healthy, man, so healthy.

—

I administered our state social studies test to a group of sophomores and juniors in the cafeteria today and so I had a lot of time to study the posters in there. File this one under ekphrasis.

Ghazal for a Nearly Forgotten Rain Goddess

April 19, 2012 • • 5 Comments

Wilderness is a circus ride; I jump
silver turnstiles and dodge my fare tonight.

Somewhere on the withered plains, coyotes
howl and cry as they leave their lairs tonight.

Lonely weather satellites trek all through
the salted skies like robot prayers tonight.

You claim constellations for forgotten
nations on dusty roads we share tonight.

Your voice, mellifluous, you whisper and
name the hurricane wind-stirred air tonight.

Come thunder and southern lightning storms you
rejoice, “Let rainfall be our heir tonight.”

—

I’ve had my students experimenting with ghazal writing. It’s been interesting, and some of them have really gotten into it. A few had trouble grasping the radif (that repeating word at the end of each couplet) and wrote some decent poems sans radif. Trying to help them figure out how to get a radif in there, I turned to Johnny Cash and suggested they try his example from “I’ve Been Everywhere”:

I’ve been everywhere, man.
I’ve crossed the deserts bare, man.
I’ve breathed the mountain air, man.
Of travel I’ve had my share, man.
I’ve been everywhere, man.

Not a ghazal really, but a ghazalish chorus at least. And so I got a few ghazals that use homie and dawg as the radif. Several of them worked quite well and would even make decent raps, which is why I think the kids who are serious about rapping really latched onto this.

Oh, and mellifluous was the word of the day. Bonus points are added to any assignment in which students use their SAT words of the day.

A Review of Birds Nobody Loves at Via Negativa

April 18, 2012 • • Leave a comment

Dave Bonta, author of Odes to Tools and the recent Words on the Street inaction comic book, reviewed Birds Nobody Loves over at his blog Via Negativa:

This is a fun book, and light-weight enough to slip easily in a knapsack with the field guides.

I like the idea of it joining the field guides on a birding trip. The review is part of Dave’s amazing annual effort to read and review a poetry book every day during the month of April. I usually wind up buying a few of his picks each year, and this year will be no exception so it’s indeed an honor to have my book included in such fine company. Do go check out the review and be sure to read about some of the other books Dave is reading. Thanks, Dave.

Moths

April 16, 2012 • • 1 Comment

river of electric firelight
illuminated tracks
each tie a droning beat

glimpse of moth pulled
into light, flash of wings
a windshield smear

night moves as
any night made slow
by tons of steel in motion

a woman in white flutters
from the embankment
onto the tracks a door

closing on the night
flash of her lost eyes
and then the thump

half a mile gone
before he could react
or reach to pull the brake

a million moths
flit in spaces between
the shadowed trees

—

The other day a butterfly smashed into my windshield. Just a moment to see its beauty before impact and nothing I could do. That reminded me of a some stories I’d read a few years back about the effects on engineers of people who commit suicide by jumping in front of trains. There is nothing they can do but watch, turn away and in some cases spend years trying to forget.