24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
The firefly ballerina does a grande jetë like a comet soaring across the cabin
Stained glass miniature bottles suspended by silver constantly kiss each other in a sweet symphonic synchronicity conducted by a Summer breeze
The coquette moon peaking from behind the treeline teases through the window
Heat and humidity thick as porridge hang heavy like a strange mask on the pine scented air
A night before my sister saw light
Her carrier was having
And unbearable pain
My sister was struggling
To be let out of the
Spaceless sack
Running towards my sister
And her carrier,
Were mid-wives
Dressed in white clothes.
I could only hear my mom scream
And mid-wives saying “push”
Finally the clock ticked
Into the morning
And I heard the cry
Of my baby sister
Which made me run
With tears of joy
Filling up my whole face
To my father.
Only to make the good news,
known to him.
LETHARGY (response to hour 9 prompt)
A strange lethargy overcomes me.
Welcome to the world of Zoom teaching.
The heat is making the treeline shimmer.
I can barely see the distant cottage on my laptop’s screen.
A blue surgical mask is in my back pocket.
I’ll put it on whenever I leave the office/house.
I can barely see the distant cottage on my laptop’s screen.
Welcome to the exhausting world of Zoom teaching.
We’re fireflies in expensive webcam bottles.
A blue surgical mask is in my back pocket.
A strange lethargy overcomes me.
It had waxed prosperous in 1842
what remained were Savannah brick chimney stacks
erect even now
masked by wisteria, soon kudzu
August heat bore down
the only light from lethargic fireflies
zooming their own strange code
a white boy passing by in a car from the north
noticed
Her window was lined with glass bottles, filled to the brim with the most whimsical treasures
Potions, tinctures, dead things, growing things, cultivated by the heat of the day and settled with the cool of night
Garden herbs garnish each of her dishes. Beneath the kitchen door seeps the sweet scent of incense; a mask of the steaming porridge grains
Upon her thatched cottage roof, we are lulled into lethargy by the hum of a thousand fireflies
I squint, so that between my lashes, the treeline seems ablaze
What a wonderfully strange life she leads…
How many?
Ya, how many?
How many what?
How many Bills have you collected?
How many bills?
Ya. How many Bills?
How many have you collected?
Who could remember?
Too many to count.
And why do you care?
I’m missing a Bill.
Just one?
Only one.
Extremely important.
Where do you keep them?
Keep what?
Keep Who.
Who?
Where do you keep the Bills?
I don’t keep them. I only collect them.
Where do they go after you collect them.
They get paid and go away.
I wish you’d find mine.
What bill is it?
Bill Sears
Bill Sears for what?
It’s Bill Sears.
Sorry, no Sears bills.
No, I’m missing Bill Sears.
You bill Sears?
You want me to collect them?
Collect what?
What Sears owes.
He doesn’t owe anything
Who?
Bill Sears.
But why would I want to bill Sears?
Oh, for heaven’s sake!
What have you done with Bill Sears?
I haven’t done anything with any Sears bill.
Now go away and stop bothering me.
Find my Bill and I’ll be gone
In The South
The fireflies float up the treeline.
But we call them lightning bugs here.
They glimmer as they soar high, seeking
the final warmth of the setting sun
or escaping the heat we’re making
beneath my pick-up’s tarp and brightness
of the stadium parking lot lights.
We watch them rise, little stars
in our small town lives, the only zooming
we see around here. Well, besides the cars
racing around mountain roads, wheels
picking up dust, our hair eating wind.
As they go to the sky, we wonder
what it’d be like to be them: light,
carefree, not afraid to reach new heights,
to kiss the sun or die trying.
I worried whether I would become a devil.
I worried whether I would do evil to others
I worried whether I would hurt anyone
I worried whether I would curse anyone
I worried whether I would knock anyone down
I worried I would lost my soul
I worried there will be a tilme when I would do all these and won’t regret.
I was right, I dont regret any of my devilish deeds now.
Hitting the wall of her first poetry marathon
Lethargy was setting in and her thoughts
darted around like a firefly trying to escape
from a bottle. She sensed a strange heat
at the back of her throat and believed
she saw the masked shadow of self-
doubt lace through the treeline.
Fireflies dancing on the treeline
swarming towards the cottage on the horizon.
heat permiates the forest, and they soar with its sweltering rythm
it pounds them down untill they are reduced to lethargy