Day 17: Don’t make excuses, make poems…

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The prompt today is to write a poem inspired by hands. (For more details, go to POETRYisEVERYTHING.)

I am reading a novel in which the characters
recognize one another not by their faces,
not by their expressive eyes,
their noses, their lips, not even by height

or the color of their hair or the sound of their voices,
but by their hands. By their hands.
It makes me feel incompetent.
My oldest daughter, I think, knew my hands best,

would scream when anyone else
picked her up. But would I know her hands today,
I mean, if they were all I had to go by?
I’m not sure I could recognize even my own mother

by just her hands. Meanwhile, across from me,
my youngest daughter is learning chords on the guitar.
She knots her left hand over the strings,
a freckle on her index finger.

Her fingers are shorter than mine. The nails
are short, blunt. I ask her to hold up
her hand, to show me her palm,
and she has an X dangling from her lifeline.

She strums E Minor, and then G,
then she looks up and catches me watching her.
She crosses her brown eyes,
sticks out her tongue.

*

No, I am not actually reading such a novel (maybe I will write it). And I am not sure this qualifies as a poem. It could be a prose free-write. Oh, well. Don’t make excuses, make poems! Tomorrow: an acrostic.

Day 6 / Poem 6

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annie cat2So my job this month is to write a poem a day and I’m encouraging you to write, too. It doesn’t have to be good.

Today’s assignment (at POETRYisEVERYTHING) was to write about the name of a pet.

The Pet Cemetery’s First Citizen

Turtle (1998-2003)

The tortoiseshell cat, taken in as a tiny kitten, a furball
with a very loud purr, named Turtle 

(which delighted the children, themselves tiny back then,
and, in their own way, very loud).

Much beloved.

*

I don’t have a picture (on this computer) of Turtle, so I’m posting one of our current “top cat,” Annie-Cat. (Long story about her name.)

Searching for pet poems, I found Maria Popova’s website, Brain Pickings, with a post titled, “Literary Pets: the Cats, Dogs, and Birds Famous Authors Loved.” I hope you’ll enjoy it, too.

Day 4: Sort of a Momentous Day

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This morning — around 10:00 — I went to Staples and printed out my novel manuscript. I meant to take it home and give it to my beloved (he’s my final proofreader), but instead I went to Barnes & Noble and started reading. I have been reading all day! It’s good, I think it’s good. But I also finally — FINALLY — figured out my character Hannah and how she contrasts (and doesn’t merely mirror) the main character. So I had lots of little changes. And I’m almost all the way through. I’m so happy!

Luckily (in terms of my poetry goals), early this morning I spent some time with day 4’s NaPoWriMo assignment from POETRY IS EVERYTHING. I haven’t returned to it to try to make it better, and as it is almost 9 p.m. and I’m exhausted, I’m just going to post it, as is.  Shitty first draft.

I hope that you’re writing, too. Even just scribbling. It’s all good.

PROMPT for April 4th 2014: Bus Stop

Think about a bus stop. You might write about the place, or make observations about people at the Bus Stop. Does it have a specific meaning you might want to try and convey? Can you imagine a Bus Stop experience (realistic or not) that would inspire a poem? Write it.

For another prompt or challenge be sure to check out Maureen Thorsen’s NaPoWriMo site where you’ll find prompts, challenges, comments, and information on all things NaPoWriMo.

Riding the Bus

An early bottle (4 a.m.), then an hour
on the dissertation. Mornings
I left the house in the dark
before my babies woke,
drove to the bus stop and stood in line
with the other commuters. Mounted the steps,
found a seat. I liked to sit by a window,
lean my head against it, close
my eyes. I smelled of milk,
of the ammonia of the diaper pail.

At 11:30, my class taught, office hour kept, an hour (more)
of writing, I was on the bus again,
reading tomorrow’s lesson and student papers.
At the bus stop, my husband waited, babies
buckled into the back seat
of the station wagon. He took my car
and left for his teaching job. I drove our daughters home,
unbuckled, unzipped. Diapers changed,
lunch doled out, naptime beckoning.

Housework beckoned, too. Kitchen to clean,
laundry (always diapers). I could have spent
those two hours of slumber
grading papers, or writing—
the unbiddable mountain of pages calling.

It was not unlike waiting in line at the bus stop–
what does one do but what the others do?
Inspired by the closed eyes of my drowsing babies,
the little fists propped against their mouths,
I folded, too. I crawled into my bed,
curled into a ball. I smelled of milk
and ammonia. I slept.

Photo by DS stories: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-notebook-with-a-broken-pencil-on-scattered-white-papers-6991503/

Where Do You Work?

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Lately I have felt like a one-woman tutoring center, helping to write English papers — one, notably, at midnight — and Political Science papers and Northwest History papers, graphing sunspots for Physical Science (that was interesting), and running through index cards of Spanish vocabulary. But my two oldest daughters are — finally — on spring break. Which leaves Emma, whose teachers seem to have ganged up on the assignments. Out of six classes, she has homework in four of them tonight. So we have decamped to Barnes & Noble (first time since my ankle injury). Emma is drinking a Hazelnut Mocha Frappuccino (did I spell that right?) and I’m having a Chai Tea Latte (stomach wonky from taking pain meds). Annie came along, ostensibly to drive, but she’s drinking a Vanilla Bean Frappuccino (no coffee in hers either) and doing something or other on her laptop.

One would think it would be more efficient and cheaper (at the very least) to work at home. But sometime back in the years of the Annie-and-Pearl high school circus, it became apparent that I had to do something different if I was going to get my non-academic kids to actually focus on their work. It must have something to do with my own background as a waitress, that the whoosh of coffee machines and clatter of dishes, not to mention people talking at the table behind us, helps me ignore the clutter in my own head and concentrate on a bit of work. My kids do not have restaurant backgrounds, and it works for them, too. A miracle, of sorts.

Just for good measure, here’s an old poem (one of mine).

English Café

The hostess greets us with a simile, waves
her oversized thesis like a shield.
Will you have regular verbs?
My friend orders braised clause

with a side of apostrophes.
I want only articles and prepositions.
Our waitress prompts, No dative?
No genitive? She offers Shakespeare

or D. H. Lawrence for dessert.
We sip from snifters of Strunk & White,
trade adverbs as coordinating
conjunctions rise languidly to dance.

(Between parentheses, a gerund
cracks jokes.) Our repast now
past tense, we pay in participles, tip
a metaphor. As we slip

through a semicolon’s swinging door,
our waitress calls after us, You’ve forgotten
your predicate, dangling
a ring of modifiers on circle of nouns.