Rose
Rose that cover my heart.
With the softness of a petal.
No matter how soft the rose petal is.
Will never uncover the heart.
That can’t be mended by the.
Petal of a rose
forty acres
forty acres
“Forty acres” – he said it like it was a million, million dollars…or stars. Finally, my father owned a plot or two of land like his father and his father and his father did so far back, no one knows how to get the sweat stains and dirt out of our DNA.
Our forty acres, Northern Alberta – sentinel stands of poplar and birch, flooded every spring by beaver and frozen every winter by the coldest winds I have never been prouder to survive. Forty acres of trees and tough grasses so sharp as to cut through skin bared to summer sun in cut offs or bathing suit bottoms from the Sears catalogue – never quite getting what you thought you ordered.
Those forty acres were my proving ground – they took my femaleness and my virginity –
proved to me I could be anything I wanted to be – I could be the son my father wanted, high a top the bales of hay I helped throw with the men in my family. I could be a poet, gazing at the rippling Northern Lights on clear, February nights. Wishing by crisp, moonlit December darkness beside my Sheltie Lobo; perched on the pile of fence posts, wishing I could be just pretty enough for that boy in school – for anyone…the nameless, faceless hoards of possible young lovers I thought I wanted. I could be broken hearted and torn apart from all I thought I needed and come back together in splendid fashion when someone else needed the tears I so wanted to spill for myself.
Those forty acres rooted me – the only stability I had in a nomadic existence driven by the boom and bust ebb and flow of the construction business. Maybe that’s why he said “Forty Acres” the way he did. Maybe it meant the same to him as it does to me. Maybe he felt the roots, smelled the sweat, and knew there was something in this black earth that made us grow, too. Maybe it was his proving ground, too – that he could manage a farm, too…like his father and his father and his father so far back no one knows how to get the love of sun-burning skin and the smell of wet soil out of our DNA. Maybe for him, too it was solitude and peace and the comfort of feeling your body firm and full against the strain of work and weather and the will to be more than the city made us be: soft and weak and lonely.
Forty acres, hoe in hand, mucking stalls, greeting sun rises from barn yards with the reverence of a priest; learning the value of life, death, and sacrifice at harvest and butchering time. Honouring all beast and plant sacrificed to our bodies. I became strong and proud. Sun kissed and frostbitten on those forty acres. I became the best man for the job when none were around. And I learned that I was more than my femaleness; my wicked body that betrayed me to those who would harm me. I became a poet. A lover. A warrior – plugged into the Earth so deep as to feel the centre of it on my toes.
“Forty Acres.” The song of freedom in every shaking leaf or clattering, ice covered, frozen branch. Forty acres of me and my dog by moonlight where I learned who I am – where roots ran deeper than memory and sunshine or wet earth or dust taught me the songs of my ancestors so far back, no one knows the language of the dirt and sweat stains in our DNA.
R.L. Elke
© Aug 5/17 prompt 5
Confronting
The dragon fears what it cannot see, but I will not allow such things to hold me back.
I will see into the future, see how my actions influence others, see how I am a ripple
in a larger body of water than I can ever imagine. I will not be afraid to confront
myself and others. It is the only way to grow.
goober
rescued from a Brooklyn street
a bum leg
scared heart
scooped up
in every way
sleeping in the closet
crying to no one
but I hear him
i will hear him
always
my reason for climbing
out of bed
every day
twelve years later
fluffy paws coated
leftover chicken
from second breakfast
green eyes full
untold stories
his very own universe
Prompt for Hour Seven
“Write a poem from the inside out.”
This prompt was submitted by Jo Eckler and is as she phrased it “Purposefully vague”
Visit
Hand snaking through
the wind flowing through the car window
Traffic has been light
Moving @75 up 75
The semis keeping to their lane
Heading to another dr's visit in Atlanta. The local quack scared Crissee with his
stoned eyes, trembling hands
So on the road to Dr Schmidt
To get my bones to behave
I'm 12, what do I know?
The new Super Mario Bros game looks good. Whistles.
The cast will come off. The pins will come out. The cast gets put back on.
Good it was starting to stink.
So heavy.
Back on the road home
Every
Bump
Shake
Brake
Speed up
Slow down hits my knee with the same level of Ihatedoctors
Weeks pass and it's time to hit 75 again
Hand in the flowing wind, truckers wave to me.
This time
The cast comes off
For good
I don't recognize my own
leg.
It's still attached to me, I feel it but it's alien.
Purple bruises, black stitched half absorbed, streaks of gooey yellow iodine, two long red lines marking my flesh.
The pin holes
marked now with two stitches each mark the skin where they erupted my skin.
That Todd Rundgren Moment
For days
I woke up with
the same song in my head
I thought it was
Todd Rundgren,
but wasn’t sure.
I searched the snatch of lyric
in Youtube
and was flummoxed
to see the song
was by America,
a band I
didn’t think
I could name a song by
if you tied me to
a stockade.
Now
the song
never
occurs to me.
Dominion (poem 6)
I have no map
save paths I’ve walked across your skin,
etched bright with ink,
pressed pink and raw
by slender braids.
I’ve measured up
the contours of your land,
laid carefully my line
like a surveyor.
The bite of the rope
on the tender flesh of your throat,
wound round the rising
watershed of your breasts
like topographic lines
or trails of footsore pilgrims
wandering their paths
toward Jerusalem.
Breakfast: A Cultural Appropriation
8 a.m. Tom Kah Thai Coconut soup
A breakfast pleasure I feel guilty over
Because I’m a white American
I swallow
Warmth descends, waking me from the inside
Between spoonfuls, I remove chunks of galangal and lemongrass from the hot liquid
Remembering the first time when
I chopped the lemongrass as fine as a chive garnish
I didn’t know lemongrass was like bay leaves
A plant that gives its essence freely, but shouldn’t be consumed
That time, I’d tried to save the soup
Painstakingly fishing out tiny bits of sharp stem
But they were still there, invisible to me
Until I swallowed and they stabbed
Making their presence known from the inside
Now I know better
I leave the lemongrass in easily identifiable chunks
And I still make and eat the soup
Me: A white American
I listen to the news while I slurp, thinking
Do I want to be woke?
Confessional Prayer
With apologies to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
I shrink from commitment when called upon.
Rather than answering, “Lord, here am I”, I hesitate.
Lacking for confidence, I instead suggest a mate.
For surely doing “that” isn’t what You had in mind?
Thank God, You patiently guide, stern but kind).
You answer our prayers (or so the gospels say),
But for most neon signs don’t blaze “this is the way”.
Yet giving thanks upon rising and just before bed
As well as before breaking with blessings daily bread,
And around the Table, asking for intercession and aid
Prayer functions to voice inner-most thoughts unsaid.