Packing a Suitcase

Tuesday December 21, 2010

Packing a Suitcase

I take words
and fold them carefully
into each other
so they all weave
together.

Then I place them
into the suitcase
of a poem
smoothing them
down.

When the bag is full,
I let it take
me away
into another
world

where thoughts
are airplanes
and meaning
is a tropical
beach.

And It Was at That Age

And It Was at That Age

Is a line from a Neruda
poem. I love Neruda
with his celebration

of common, everyday
items. He could build
a poem out of nails

and boards, and cement.
I wish I could iron
poetry as crisp as his.

I take words out of the laundry
basket, smooth them a bit,
spray Niagara all over,

and begin to press.
Steam rises but, somehow,
the creases are crooked,

the collars buckle,
then they hang lopsidedly
on hangars in my kitchen

waiting to be put away.
I hide these poems
in a dark closet

then sit in the living room,
open a book of poetry
by Pablo Neruda

and read of the sea,
his home, food, carpentry,
and fresh laundry.

Big Tent Poetry #1: Poetry Reading

Big Tent Poetry is a new poetry site.  Each Monday they put up a prompt and on Friday people can leave their poems for others to read.  This week's prompt was to write a persona poem by adopting the persona of someone working in a circus.  But I didn't do that.  I had a chance to attend an evening with Naomi Shahib Nye so wrote about that.
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Trip to listen to Naomi Shahib Nye, Poet, Speak in Manchester, NH

We went from baby leaves
to robust teenagers
in two hours

We left fisted lilacs
and traveled to open-faced
perfume factories

We said goodbye
to clean parks
where children play

and hello to Wayne,
a bum living with other
homeless people

Mountains shrank
in our rear-view mirror
while words

grew larger and larger
through the windshields
of our minds.

Anaphora for TOP

I bought a book of poetry
because I was in a bookstore.

I bought a book of poetry
because it jumped off the shelf
and into my arms.

I bought a book of poetry
because poetry is the moon
to my sun.

I bought a book of poetry
because I needed shelter
from the winds of life.

I bought a book of poetry
because I was on vacation
and it was an inexpensive treat.

I bought a book of poetry
because, when I opened it,
I smelled a whiff of prayer.

Desire

Desire for Writers’ Island January 29, 2008
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I carry it in a pouch
low down
its weight
heavier than rocks

It moves with me
through the day
tentacles
of pressure

I feel its insistence
as I stand
in front of my class
it hums

it hums
through lunch
and meetings
I’ve swallowed

a violin
and the bow
plays across
the breasts

of my thoughts
until I get home
and tenderly birth
a poem

3WW for January 2, 2008

3WW words for January 2, 2008

button luck pretend

Just a little bit of my day that stuck in my mind.
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January 2, 2008 Block 3

Josh comes up to me,
a pile of papers
in his hand,
“I’m cleaning out
my notebook. Can
I throw all these
poems away?”

Every day I make
copies of and read
a poem to my students.

I think of Billy Collins’s
“I Chop Some Parsley While
Listening to Ed Blakey’s
Version of ‘Three Blind Mice’”
and Jack McCarthy’s words
about his son,
“Just before he died, I heard
him cry,”
and Kaylin Haught’s “God Says Yes
to Me” sitting in the bottom
of the garbage can
and I say, “No!” to Josh.

The trees outside
my classroom window
are shaking themselves
of snow
like puppies
after a bath.

Josh, cute as a button, slinks
back to his seat and threads
the rings of his notebook
back through the holes
in the papers

not even pretending
to understand his crazy
English teacher,

having no idea
how lucky
and rich he is.

I glance outside;
the sun is now painting
lemon stripes on the white birches.

I catch Josh’s eye
and smile.
He shrugs his shoulders
and closes his fat notebook.

Words from a Novel

Read.Write.Poem for December 17, 2007

For this prompt we had to take the last noun or verb from several chapters in a book that we love. I chose To Kill a Mockingbird and picked the following words from the fist eleven chapters which is the first section of the book: house, thing, blankets, laughing, lawyer, hear, face, said, word, gentleman, paper.

The thing about poetry
is the laughing
my heart feels like doing
whenever I transform
ordinary sheets of paper
into blankets of words.

Oh, sure, a lawyer
might argue
that it’s still paper
and, as nice a gentleman
as he is, he has no idea
that every time I write
a poem, I’m really building
a house
where feelings live,
a shelter for bruised
emotions.

He can’t hear
the music
a poem makes
or the prayers
that are said
in whispers

and he certainly
can’t hear
the laughter.