The Poetry Marathon

To what and to whom do you say yes?

~ with apologies to Carolyn Forché

In August, we blaze with light

corona: plasma aura for a universe

without centre, light broken free

I say yes to this uncentering

Yes to the emptiness that carried

light within it, held my life together

Yes to the wings of solar wind

that lift me out of disbelief

wings that spiral into other lives

I say yes when all around me

a dark world insists that no

is the only sane answer

I say yes to that, too

lean into the fleeing light

and wonder about darkness

Poem in 5 parts

i.

I am only one person

a door opening into mother wife daughter

sister grandmother writer  

a window broken a door unhinged

opening into madness

ii.

I am only one person

so I remind myself

in the dark hours before morning

but morning doesn’t come

and the day is full of madness

iii.

I am only one person

but sometimes I hear voices

they sing to me in whispers

beneath the murmur of the others

many voices many voices

iv.

I am only one person

and it’s all too much

I can’t breathe, the man said

death is layered over under life

and it’s all so much

v.

I am only one person

this is what they say when I reach out

hand so strong, they tell me

and aren’t we all

only one person

tomatoes redgold

the bite of licorice basil

garlic warmed in oil

this the food of summer

evanescent as cool air

They were phantom books

the ones lost when screens

became the way we called

our information to mind

The books that fell through

that unknowable space between

space where names in drawers

once told us stories

Now, the click clack tap of keys

beneath our fingertips call

what we need into being

once it was the rasp of wood

A living thing, wood. Cut and sawn

it still breathes out a forest home

even years later, when small cards

on metal spindles fill its belly

Even when I dream of cubbies

holding the world’s secrets safe

cradled within once-living heartwood

tangible   as real as ancient wisdoms

But the feathering of air whispers

it holds secrets too   floating on thermals

like dreaming birds   their wings outstretched

reaching backwards into time   like phantoms

the death of a woman I will never know

is ticking inside me      waiting to catch fire

an incendiary device of the historical kind

my mother curled into herself   shadowed

my father dribbling gruel onto his chin

this is my palimpsest   the charcoal bleeding

onto this paper     the way my mother’s past

bled into the air around her   smoke

the way my father’s magic powers unraveled

a tangle of tarnished medals in a drawer

so I call my demons to heel with bravado

spinning before them like a tamer of the wild

although my demons were never so graceful

so beautiful     never so easily subdued

no. my demons wear familiar shapes

my mother curled into herself

my father watching nothing

while I write incantations on water

nothing of significance:

a fence scarred by weather

new-mown grass brown with clippings

sometimes a sparrow dancing on a rail

a patch of Oklahoma sky soft with autumn

the home I dreamt of as a child

Saturday morning

marathon magic begins

words swarming like bees

building the hive of structure

making honey   poetry

Why would anyone but a poet spend an entire Saturday posting every hour to a blog of strangers? This says as much about who I am as anything: I’m a writer. Poetry and non-fiction.

I grew up overseas, a fact which infuses much of my writing. It was a long time before I could accept that my writing wasn’t going to sound like the writing of many of my friends & colleagues. It still doesn’t, but it does  occasionally find homes. I have three published chapbooks, and currently am jobbing a book manuscript.

In the meantime? I teach classes in creative writing to older adults (through a community outreach program at the University of Tulsa). For years I taught writing at a state university, while also directing a federal non-profit working with teachers k-university.

As I’m too old to go w/out a night’s sleep (even for poetry), I’m participating in the half-marathon. I also want to see what I produce when I crank it out. Traditionally, that’s a good way to silence the inner censor. The past couple of years I’ve been working in tanka, so I may do some of that. However, there’s always my love of the neo-sonnet. Free/ blank verse is another possibility. Overall, I just hope to come up w/ 12 new poems to work over later.

Wishing everyone good writing ~