Poems, thoughts about poetry and links to places that have published my poems
My poem “We Talk of Trains” and my photograph “Train in Round Rock” were published in the latest issue of ouroboros review. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a really classy poetry and art journal. You can read the magazine online or purchase a copy through the site’s bookstore. Whichever way you go, you’re in for a treat. I’m honored to have my work, which can be found on page 24, included with so many fine writers and artists.
I’ve been writing a bunch of poems lately about vultures and grackles. One of those, “My Tourist Yard,” was published at Bolts of Silk today. Check it out and have a look around while you’re there. Lots of good stuff to read.
We grabbed sounds from the air,
stuck them together, draped
language around actions,
tethering ourselves to history
inscribed in vellum, barked
and trumpeted for all to hear.
All this tonnage… it seems like magic.
We learned to tell convoluted
tales, twisting facts like
movements in a bellydance,
sapient and seductive.
What is that mist out there?
We carved the world like onion slices
to be devoured one-by-one,
ignoring the other passengers’
wrinkled noses.
Hold my hand.
Thumbing through the final pages, I skimmed
the moribund bibliography of My Heart:
Bark, Vellum K. Tether the Bellydancing. New Drape City: Moribund Hand, 2003.
Trumpet, J.J. “Tonnage.” Devouring Convoluted Onions. Mistburg: Sapient & Sons, 1993.
Fasten your seatbelt.
The plane will be landing soon.
—
This is for Read Write Poem’s wordle prompt (#79). The idea is to write a poem using a given set of words. All of those words comprise the bibliography portion of this poem.
Another of my “small stones” (obervational micro poems) is up over at a handful of stones: Turtle stone. Check it out.
Whispers flicker in the void, explaining
each color present and how it combined
absent light with permanent darkness.
Overpowering and blinding,
a quasar burns static and noise.
Here, we don’t need sound;
we imagine music and try to sing.
That radio sun burned out ten years ago.
Or so they tell us.
—
This is for Read Write Poem’s Opposites Attract prompt. The idea is to write 2 poems each dealing with opposing elements, experiences, memories, or whatever. Then alternate the lines between the 2 poems to create a single poem.
This was an interesting exercise that went in an unexpected direction. I started with the ideas of darkness and light. Sound crept into both freewrites, thus creating a third layer of opposites. When I combined them, it seemed that the opposing forces in the poem shifted to light and sound rather than light and dark. After combining them line-by-line, I started fiddling with the lines to get a smoother flow from one thought to the next.
Below, I’ve included the original drafts so you can see how the poem developed.
Darkness draft:
In perfect darkness
Whispers flicker in the void, explaining
the absence of light, the permanence of darkness
a radio sun, burning static and noise
we hear music and try to sing
Light draft:
In perfect light
Each color present, combines
Overpowers and blinds
Here we don’t need sound,
The radio sun long ago burned out.
First Combination:
In perfect darkness
In perfect light
Whispers flicker in the void, explaining
Each color present combines
the absence of light, the permanence of darkness
Overpowers and blinds
a radio sun, burning static and noise
Here we don’t need sound,
we hear music and try to sing
The radio sun long ago burned out.
Update: Changed the first line from “Flickering whispers fill the void” back to the original “Whispers flicker in the void.” I think I like that better. Thanks Julie for making me think about whispers and flickering.
One of my small stones is up over at a handful of stones: mockingbird stone. Check it out.
gauzy clouded sky,
like ink bleeding through paper—
unreadable blue
—
This week’s Read Write Poem prompt (#74: Hyperlink Your Poetry) was to hyperlink a poem and try to add a bit of depth. I wanted to try to hyperlink every word so I chose a haiku I wrote yesterday. In addition to hyperlinking, I decided to make use of the HTML title attribute so that when readers mouse over the words, there will be something to read that perhaps adds (or perhaps removes) something from the poem.
What emerges is essentially an annotated poem. Mousing over the individual words will reveal one of the following: a related haiku/mircopoem, word associations, a question, wordplay or process notes. Following the links will lead to other (sort of) related sites.
I tried to think of each word individually to see where associations would take me both in terms of what I wrote and the sites to which I linked.
Follow the links, too. Especially that last one.
For those who may want to play with the title attribute, here’s an example using the HTML for the word bleeding in the poem:
<a href=”http://www.xacto.com/” title=”how many times while cutting mattes have i bled for my art?”>bleeding</a>
Please visit Bolts of Silk. My poem “A Texas Highway in Springtime” was published there today.
Have a look around too. You’ll find lots of good stuff there.
When you use spider silk to build a nest,
You take an awful risk.
This is what I learned from a hummingbird
Trapped in a spider’s web.
Still alive, the bird fought for his freedom,
The spider watched, waiting,
Shrinking back when I moved to intervene.
I gently pulled the bird
Out of the sticky tangles of the web.
Afraid I might crush him,
My fingers, trembling, pulled the silk away
From tiny, tightbound wings,
Glowing iridescent in the sunlight
When I opened my hand,
He shot into the air, flying swift north,
seeking another web.
—
This is a true story from a few years ago. I’ve written a few other poems about it, but this one is the latest. I’ve been experimenting with writing lines with specific syllable counts and sometimes stumbling into formal meters. Experimenting with rhythm, I guess.
Check out more good stuff at Read Write Poem, where you’ll find a number of folks who wrote a poem a day for the 30 days of April, aka National Poetry Month. I didn’t shoot for that, but I did write more poems this month than usual, many of which are at a gnarled oak or in my journal. And, I revised a lot of older ones.