Somewhere for Sunday Scribblings

Somewhere

Every time I pick up a book
somewhere becomes real.

Each page is a wing;
each word a footstep.

Somewheres sit on my bookshelves,
a line of geographies.

Today I’m going to visit
the Boston area in two eras

as I finish The Bone Garden
by Tess Gerritsen, who is from Maine.

Tomorrow, another somewhere
will whisk me away.

Imagination for ReadWritePoem

Eyes

I moved my chair
into a coin of sunshine,
poured a glass
of merlot,
then settled in
for a little afternoon
reading delight.

I started losing
myself in someone
else’s life, flying
above the trees
and people
in the campground

when I felt
eyes
staring,
staring
at me.

No one passing by
on the road,
no sunbathers
at nearby campsites
but, still, those eyes
watching me.

Prickles on the back
of my neck.
Hair
standing at attention
on my arms.

I tried reading
again
but those glaring
eyes would not turn
away.

I glanced
at my own camper
and there
were the faces
of the pansies
I’d planted that morning,
bobbing
on thin necks,
frowning in the sun,
watching
my every move.

Day 22 NaPoWriMo

Last week was school vacation and I kind of took a blogging and writing vacation, too. Oh, I checked in every day and even wrote a poem or two but I just needed a break.

As far as NaPoWriMo, I wrote way more than 30 poems this month but I didn't write every single day. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have my kids write poems during Journal Writing and I write with them so that was 6 poems per week just for that, never mind the ones I wrote for all the blog prompts.

I wrote this one on Thursday April 17 during Block 3. The prompt was to write about a purchase.
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I have gold
in my purse.
Every time
I open it,
I can see it
glowing.

Sometimes I take
that Borders
Gift Card out
of it’s little
red envelope
and run my fingers
over its smooth
surface.

Then when I replace
it, my whole
pocketbook shines.

I’ll use it to purchase
escape,
dreams,
healing.

When I stand
at the register,
the salesperson
will have to wear
sunglasses.

Novel

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

for Totally Optional Prompts March 27, 2008
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This novel is a fictionalized account of a Columbine-like incident in a school in New Hampshire. What’s interesting is that the author doesn’t take sides. She presents the good guys and the bad guys equally so that the line between the two sometimes gets blurry. It shows, to a terrifying degree, the consequences of bullying.

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The first thing I do
is rub my fingers
over the raised letters
of the author’s name.

She’s a friend by now.
We’ve shared many pajama parties
with me eating the popcorn
of her words.

Then I hold the book
in my right hand
and rifle the pages
with my left

letting the scent
of the paper, like
freshly laundered sheets,
fly into my imagination.

I open the book
and read the first sentence,
“By the time you read this,
I hope to be dead”
and I’m hooked
on metaphors that burst
like fireworks
(the tunnel of communication
between them slowly
bricked shut)

and characters I already know.
(transforming herself into the person
she needed to be before leaving
the house)

and
(when he touched her,
Josie imagined herself
vanishing in a puff of steam)

I become the novel;
each sentence I swallow
enters me
and changes me.

By the time I finish,
I’ve been a murderer,
a mother,
a teacher,

a detective,
a bully,
a rapist
a puff of steam.

I close the book
and resist hugging it.
Instead, I feel
the embossed letters

again like a blind
person caressing
Braille, like a child
reading the weather

of her mother’s face.