Three Poets, One Year

Will you guys be continuing to blog poetry even though the year's up?

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:25:40 -0500

On this blog? Maybe from time to time, when we’re lonesome.

I’m confused and unsure what just happened. I think I was hit in the head with a poetry brick...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 03:35:00 -0500

I’m confused and unsure what just happened.

I think I was hit in the head with a poetry brick on January 1st, 2011 and now I’m waking up with amnesia, a migraine, and 365 poems in a folder on my desktop.

L and R, you’re both wonderful, beautiful, and incredibly talented poets. Thanks for kicking my ass all through the year, even if I didn’t post for two months straight multiple months in a row, even if I resorted to shitty haikus and self-centered whining just to write something for the day.

Thanks also to E and A of sonnateers365.tumblr.com, two more breathtakingly brilliant poets and friends of ours. E and A will be continuing on the same website this year, and a new poet, C, is joining the fray.

Another little shout out to Kristin, who’s starting her own 366 project (it’s a leap year!) at onegirl366stories.tumblr.com. If you want to start your own 366 project, let us know so we can spoon and feed each other goldfish crackers and support each other and stuff.

My blog next year can be found at timefliesflashfiction.tumblr.com. I’m going to write a short story/flash fiction story every day for the year of 2012. No stanzas allowed. God, please no more stanzas.

Love always,

Day 365, A - New Year's Eve

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 02:08:47 -0500

I scraped my toe on the asphalt

On the way to the New Year’s Eve party.

I saw the brown smear

In the in streetlamp

And my feet were dusty.

There was reggae pounding in the park

And white flames underfoot.

Hobbling home I thought

I’d lie in the grass and make poetry.

Instead I let my mother soak my torn nail

In soapy water

And wipe the blood away with a paper towel.

Later I’ll wash my face

And sleep without a lesson.

2.98 - L

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:00:06 -0500

this year i found friends and a boy and a semblance

of love in a place that had given me nothing but

nostalgia, i spend my days in a house i had hidden

in the back pockets of my brain but in the small moments of

everyday i can’t seem to rid myself of the feeling that

sometimes, maybe i just want to go home.

——

thanks for reading. happy new year’s.

http://onegirl365days.tumblr.com/ - L

Days I've Missed

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 03:33:54 -0500

3/13/11

Now I’m writing a bunch

Of throwaway poems

For days I mysteriously missed

During the year.

1/24/11

I don’t remember what happened

On the 24^th of January.

I probably had a cold.

1/25/11

Must have had a cold

I missed today too.

I would have been watching

Gratuitous Futurama

Eating cereal and

Sitting on the bathroom floor

Which is my favorite place.

1/22/11

That was hardly a poem

What I wrote three days from now

But you can see I’ve given up.

2/10/11

So much depends upon

Postmodernism interpretation

To see these poems through.

12/30/11 - A

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 03:22:02 -0500

There’s a gray wave curling on Eve Day Eve

Like a distant mountain.

The shadow of fate

Falls heavy and helpless.

2.97 - L

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:16:05 -0500

in a little more than six months i will be

sitting in a house i can’t remember the color of.

in a little more than six months i will be

looking for you in car windows and store fronts.

in a little more than six months i will inevitably be

disappointed.

12/29/11 - A

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 01:06:43 -0500

Ms. Hudson would you have covered your face

When you were a wildflower?

I watched you shelter today

In your sweater scarf and hat

Under the sun.

I saw a closed door—

And I saw your eyes behind black plastic

And I apologize for frightening you.

2.96 - L

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:05:05 -0500

poetry is a fickle thing - intended but

never recieved, always with a destination and

without a goal i have tried to capture my essence

in words that worm, hesistating and devious out of my

fingers i have tried to tell you

how i feel through poems you’ll never read.

2.95 - L

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:06:05 -0500

let’s swing, broken from the old oak trees

by the creek - silky slithering ropes tied in bows around

our nodding knecks. let’s sit, wry smiles and

knocking knees on the back porch of your

grandma’s house. let’s go back to last

never.

December until now, A

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:25:27 -0500

12/1/11

I’m having some sort of crisis maybe.

I don’t know what I am

Suburban or asphalt and elevated trains.

I am not so nice.

I am not so brave as you say I am—

Afraid of every other face.

12/2/11

In the mirror you curl like vapor

There are ghosts between the misty shower curtain

Reflected in freckles of condensation

And your skin

And shadows of steam.

And we held our breath until it weighed heavy in our lungs

Drops on your eyelashes

We exhaled as we intertwined

Like pupils

On the cool tile.

12/3/11

He blinks

Fortysevenrapidtimes

Faint as a blue wick flame.

12/4/11

It’s almost the end of the year.

I don’t know what I did worth doing

Or if I changed.

I’m still resolving

To want something different.

12/5/11

I let days fall like coins

Between the sofa cushions.

Crumbcaked and sticky.

Now I need to go searching

For them, worthless memories.

12/6/11

She couldn’t live on a riverbank

On the back of her hand.

She worked in the dirt

Looking up.

What happened to you

In your quiet passing?

12/7/11

He was married before.

Once he got in a fight

Fingers guided his arm

Seeking contact again.

He tried to hurt

He felt nothing

To hide.

12/8/11

Pleasant face

Crushed me

By the fishpool.

He would love me

For two emergencies.

12/9/11

I want to buy that jar of bees in syrup

Or the cellophane purse.

I don’t know what I’d do with them but

Put them on the shelf

And tell them stories.

12/10/11

I maybe have money now

And pretty nails

And I thought I would be happy

But I can’t shake racism

Or curious suffering from

My mind.

12/11/11

Taking away puzzle pieces

One by one I want to

Eat away at the big picture

I want to be a mystery again.

12/12/11

I’m irreversibly middle class

I’ll never starve

Or struggle.

I have a retirement account

And permission and soon

I’ll probably have a car

Without saving quarters

And it won’t matter if it gurgles

And rusts and looks so authentically

Worked-so-hard because

Someone else is paying for repairs.

He said

You’re so brave in the hospital

But I just want to understand hardship

Through waiting rooms.

I have health insurance on my head

And service learning hours.

I don’t know what it means

To not afford I’m so

Embarrassingly three percent

Just barely ninety-nine and

I’ll always be comfortable in my

Uneasy American dream.

12/13/11

Look at that cute

Ponytail sweatpants

With her

Never read a book boy.

You can’t help but think

They’re in love.

12/14/11

I hate embarrassing myself

Exposing my wet slimy intestines

And trying to weave a decent metaphor

To carry them in.

Look at these

Line breaks

These

Aren’t

Thought

Out

Art.

Diction makes me anxious.

I can’t stitch stanzas into stories

Or evoke emotions with my

Alliteration.

I’m writing poems like jokes

With half-hearted punch lines.

Icy cheeks and thin lips

The end.

12/15/11

This poem is pool noodles

Foam and bacteria.

12/16/11

This poem also

Is a turd.

12/17/11 Upside-down

He needs you all

That’s hope in general

To be surrounded.

Soon again he’ll breathe your

Breaths and lungs and prayers but

From you he needs nothing.

12/18/11 Upside-down II

She wound grass into beads.

Would they wet still their lips and

Wash away when one soft whisper

Swung up?

They wrinkled

Her husband the button blue color

Of veins

Slumped in the neighbor’s front chair.

12/19/11

What shit Christmas carols

Anyone can sing five notes in one

And call it seasonal.

12/20/11

This is why:

If we drifted away from the ground

I wouldn’t want you writing any letters.

12/21/11

I’m not a pretty thing

I’m not dilating any pupils

I am the corner of your mouth—

I am not lace-lined

Or polka dots.

12/22/11

Pretty blonde widow

She’s twenty wearing black velvet

And white stones in the church.

Born baby with coins in his eyes

On that side of the 20^th century,

Now they’re lowering him.

Low calorie at the table

She brought out the bottle of champagne.

I saw her on the balcony with that suit.

I saw her in the bathroom

Misting her face.

I read the will and they were married, maybe,

But she’s putting on mascara

And touching up her lipstick.

12/23/11

This crew cut kid is running around

On the soccer pitch

Forming spectators with foggy breaths

12/24/11

She’s hazel

Cut her hair with scrapbook scissors

Fat lip like a purple marble.

Someone stole her car

She went out to sit on the hood

Filing her rusty nails.

12/25/11

The air tastes like fruit

And I feel verdant,

Sun-fed and wind-whipped.

12/26/11

The whole ocean heaves its shoulder

Against the coffee rocks.

It’s a blind and bitter rage

To batter against the land.

12/27/11

We’re doing better than our technicolor tongues

Tastes like red, tastes like a tummyache,

Barefoot on the road to the beach

Scratchgrass and lava gravel leathering our soles.

We’re wobbling, balancing our bellies

On the slick white boogie boards,

Prying rubber masks off our faces to spit salt

And tell gossip and congratulate one another.

12/28/11

I’m afraid of mostly everything,

Of all the eyes between the rocks

And all the energy in the water,

Of brown-skinned white boys

And carrying curses.

November, A

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:10:25 -0500

11/7/11

I see too many cigarettes in your stanzas.

That is your habit maybe but I hope

You do not think yourself smoky

Or yellow at the fingertips.

Those are the pictures they show us—

But I remember you differently.

I remember you mysterious and moon-struck,

I remember you less in ash vapor than in sunfall

And cooling grass as ripe as fruit.

I remember your correctional glasses

And a story you told about vending machines

That made me feel young and plain.

I would wish less wanderlust and womanhood upon you—

I would forbid you from speaking in tongues

When your tongue is heavy.

Sometimes I forget to wish you well but

I will write you letters

If you need the envelopes to remind you

That I’m thinking of you.

All my love,

-A

11/8/11

Friend,

This poem is for your

Poor neglected penis

Forgotten like a garage dog.

Someone needs to take it off

Your hands

And put it in a shelter.

All My Love, From Your Friend

11/9/11

Where is time

To chew, compact

And spit out on the sidewalk?

I don’t want to sit on the porch

Any longer.

11/10/11

I am very sick

For the day

Sleeping on the bath rug

Above the bubble

Rising in my belly.

11/11/11

In the rubble lot she were a concrete beauty.

You wouldn’t have known

If not tasked for finding her or falling in love.

You wouldn’t have seen her.

11/12/11

They shape the land again

For you

Build the world anew

For you

When you are reborn

You will cast around

Your unfamiliar eyes.

11/13/11

Salesgirl said to me,

“You don’t know lipstick.”

If I had such a face

Of painted armor,

I might have swept her powder

Into place.

11/14/11

I remember when we were unfolding

You could tell a girl’s hopes

From the smell of her hair.

We traded contagious corrections

Tortoiseshell breasts and

Blossoming pores.

We carried them

In broken-zipper wallets

Among crusted mouths of mini glosses

And community center cards.

11/15/11

I will give you only one sideways word

In a wish that your lungs will be deep

And your breaths drawing long again.

I hope you need nothing more.

11/16/11

A cheerleader came in

Yellow and white skirt

Emblazoned breast

Pink eyes and a

Navy sling.

Broken canary bird

Crying out

11/17/11

We began ourselves

Running

Welcoming back

Speech and sight

From the incomplete sleep.

11/18/11

She was an edge girl

Sealed in sharp lines.

Now her hands are cut

Concave by paper pulp

And pink rubber.

11/19/11

Dear Sincerely,

I hoped to find more weight

In your signature

And the coastline

On your postcard.

Cookie cutter blue and

Toothsand

Make a poor picture of me

Snapped casually

From the corner of your eye.

Write again when

You wish I were there.

Love always.

11/20/11

It snowed for you this morning—

The way I wanted it to

And wished for.

You would have been in love with me

Out the window.

11/21/11

On my bookshelf I keep

Glass Coca-Cola classic and

Strawberry soda—the ones with

The plastic cap and the marble—

Volcanic rocks,

Band merch squeeze ball, ticket stubs

And sprained elbows, arrowheads,

Bobbleheads, bottled Bahamas and

The Berlin Wall,

Hong Kong jade market,

Wind chimes, silver starfish,

Skeleton keys,

And porcelain figurines

Given to me

When I was born.

11/22/11

I let months slip by

Without cataloguing all the arrivals

In my mind.

I have a stockpile

Of unmarked anger.

11/23/11

Waves breaking white

Like a bride upon the hill.

Swallow chunks of

Concrete banquet,

Drunk guests on the shore.

11/24/11- River Styx

Floating in the dark I saw a woman

Who spoke with her jaw underwater

Bleeding all around the corners of her mouth.

She took me from the helm

And I held her hip

As she gathered up her hair

Winding the current

Around and around her head

Running down between her eyes.

She lay me in the dusty cradle.

She bade me row—

And she above me,

A white dam holding up the river.

11/25/11

This year is my

Autobiography of emotions.

It can’t possibly be true

The things I used to be.

11/26/11

So arrived five Los Angeles lemons

In a cardboard box

With a Christmas calligraphy note

In blue ink.

From my lemon tree

To you.

11/27/11

When you know

meatballs talking plaster plumbing

standing up painting nails talking back

walking in heels and some art

Multiply by

why she left married died

him her untangling your

and soon you reach the end

of the river

To find

11/28/11

I wish I was brave and alone

Like you.

I would speak to strangers

And give distance away.

11/29/11

It’s dark out

I’ll cut across the golf course

In the orange

Looking over my shoulders.

11/30/11

April in the box

Is my smoky tongue friend

With pearl teeth.

2.94 - L

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:10:05 -0500

i used to think stone couldn’t

burn but that was before i saw the

puckered white ropes lacing across your

first and third

ribs.

2.93 - L

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:00:06 -0500

i would write about christmas and whether or not

it changed my place in this family but

i’m writing this at the kitchen table on a friday morning -

making wishes on burnt out candles and a

slowly fraying sense of

self.

2.92 - L

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:00:05 -0500

i stand outside just to feel the

wind tear my hair back from my face as

my eyes water and my lips crack i am

flat on my back and i’m

ruined.

2.91 - L

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:00:06 -0500

this year is waging war on my

independence and sense of self i am

at once a child and older than you can

comprehend covered in pen marks and

lighter burns i am trying to find my

middle ground.

2.9 - L

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:05:05 -0500

i can feel her petty hatred for me radiation off of her

pale face and wide thighs. i can feel her spite

pouring out from her thick lashes and

chapped lips.

2.89 - L

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:10:05 -0500

it is a pretty thing - this bracelet you left in my

bag. it almost makes me want to take back

all of the rotting, splintering words that i sunk into

your inboxes and college ruled notebooks.

almost.

2.88 - L

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:16:06 -0500

i haven’t been properly

warm in three and a half months.

the ice caking the soles of my boots and the

burned ends of my hair speak of

my longing for a little bit of

heat.

2.87 - L

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:14:44 -0500

i am having a complex relationship via

texting in a language i claim

not to understand - is

this what fluency feels like?