Protected: Dolphin Standard, Resurrection

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Hell yes I’ve been published again!

I know I’ve been absent for a while. I expect I’ll write here again, get my mojo workin’. I’m not going to try to do it though, at least that’s not a plan for now. When I think of things to write, or more rarely, when I draft something, it seems inconsequential to me.

This is a happy occasion. I submitted some poems in 2013 and heard from the editor of Literary Mama in August 2014. Usually, one gets a response much sooner, so I had forgotten I’d even submitted to the journal. I am thrilled that they accepted my poem.

It’s good to have an excuse to post. I’m here. I’m still here.

http://www.literarymama.com/poetry/archives/2014/10/miscarriage.html

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save the date

if you write poems about pomegranates, don’t bother submitting to us*

I’ll be a featured reader next month at Unbuttoned, Thursday, September 12, 7-8:30 pm. There are usually 6 open mic slots followed by one or two featured readers. I know I’ll be reading alongside another poet.

Luthier’s, Cottage Street, Easthampton

*roughly quoted from a literary journal on their submissions page. Why do I bother with fucks like these? Where are my people?

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Protected: in progress

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published again!

My second publishing credit in an online arts journal, up today at qarrtsiluni.com

http://qarrtsiluni.com/2013/05/24/recognizable-trappings/

XO, twinkly

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Yup, it’s that time again when I write a poem

It’s been a while since I’ve put up a poem. As usual, it’s pretty rough. I like a lot about it and I think I can make it work.

I’m almost done with my manuscript, but struggling to make a couple of poems tighter. AND I HATE writing cover letters. Oh, help!

Vinegar and Sugar
(the German word for please is bitte)

In my mother’s brain,
the area responsible for taste
has interchanged
with the area responsible
for memory

She does not ask me for “Vinegar sugar soup, bitte”

But when I make lentils
for dinner,
she slyly opens the pantry door
(as if her desire to have a secret makes her invisible),
takes out the bottle of white vinegar,
and pours it into the soup

Mom, it already has vinegar in it

I like a lot, she says

She moves on to sneak the sugar bowl from the cupboard
and dances teaspoon after teaspoon
into her vinegar soup

All my Oma really wanted to eat
when she reached her 90s
was Schokolade

She stashed it in drawers
and behind books,
wrapped it in cloth and kerchiefs
in her little room
where they put her
with her little window
high up on the hill
at the top of the small
German town where she lived
most of her life
and died her only death

Now my mother
wants only sweet and sour
around her

She forgets
that she hates soup
and soup with beans
and that all they had to eat during the war
was soup
and beans
and her father’s rabbits and rooster

So,
sour or sweet,

who am I to stop her, bitte?

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estrogen anyone?

I know a lot of families who have only daughters, my household included.

Was a time we had two female cats, one female dog.

We got a a fish, one of those Siamese fighting fish, a betta. I would joke with Hubby that that was the only male companion in the house for him. Not much personality or ability to interact, that betta. Still, one needs allies.

Not much today, my usual mental musings. Is this a poem? It’s a bit silly, I know. I now see all of my repetitions, the words and images I love to use over and over. Not gonna censor myself right now. Not yet.

Just as I strongly dislike blogs and websites with white words on a black background (only forgivable on erotic content sites or sites run by folks under 21), I also HATE censorship. If I apply this to my writing, it backfires a bit because changing habits requires saying no to them. It’s not censorship, but discipline I need. Like I said before not yet. Let me be as free as a betta.

All We Have; What We Are To You

The estrogen pulses through us,
through the house

We ring with progesterone
the house rings with us

Later,
oxytocin
softens the ligaments
loosens the ishia, ilia, pubis

Milk concentrates and pours

My man is surrounded

Resistance is futile

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here is the poem now

Breath of Snow

each flake is
a message

dreams numbered and ordered
until they fall into chaos

if the facts wouldn’t melt away
and I could hold proof
of the year that passed
in my waiting hand

the biding of time
the unbidden rhythms
that rise and fall like breath

I am trying to make
a rhythm like the snow
sixes
or sixes split into 2s and 3s

I can’t

because I have fallen outside the laws of
science and nature

I fall
and fail
and seek
a crystal from another galaxy
where the numbers shift into different forms
and I find the one
that was made for me

where I belong
unfallen

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selfish

Happy 79th Birthday to my mom!

As her memory goes, I wonder what I am responsible for. Am I the holder and keeper of her memories and secrets? When can I tell them? What does my brother know? What does she remember? Is what I know true?

I do wish my mother happiness, but it seems an elusive wish. She says she has always been lucky, lucky to have come to the United States and to have found the life she did. But her childhood tells a story, not of luck, but of trauma. I wonder how this fits into her definition of luck; but I will never ask her.

I titled this selfish because I am not using my post today only for a birthday wish for my mother. I don’t really think I’m selfish, because it’s my blog and I want to use it just for that—for myself. But I do feel guilty a tiny bit. I think being a mother, a daughter, a wife, means I always have a tiny lingering guilt. I am sure not all women are like this. I wish I could shake it, but apparently I am not yet evolved to that point. Perhaps this could be my Christmas wish for myself or my New Year’s resolution.

I have snippets of writing lately, nothing coming out whole cloth like I used to have. I know, honestly, most of that needed heavy editing anyway.

What do I wish for? Better poems, more poems, dream poems, publishable poems, poems that will make you swoon, will make you weep, make you laugh, make you buy my books (what books, twinkly? oh, right), fruit poems, frozen bud poems, bloody blue poems, pink poems, feather poems, leaf-and-snow poems, mom poems, wife poems, marriage poems, sex poems, fuck poems, love poems, fucking poems, magical poems, clear poems, anatomical parts poems, important poems, a-political poems, no-more-guns poems, deep poems, no-murky-bits poems. Enough! This kind of thinking is so anti-Alexander Technique that I can hardly continue to allow myself its luxurious indulgence.

Here are 2 recent poem snippets:

(SNIPPET ONE)

When Shall I Be Delivered

I begged for more from the world

It started inside
a pinprick
where I was once attached

You have not delivered me

With each bout
of bleeding
my density increases
alongside my insatiable hunger

My marrow
pumping erythrocytes
for every drop
that falls

Not much
they always say
a few tablespoons

If men bled
they would find
a more poetic measure
than cups and spoons
(a woman’s place is in the kitchen)

But I know the feeling
of the soldier
draining into the muddy earth
the sand with its greed
taking more than its share
pints and quarts and gallons for drenching

I am ready for the firing squad
or operating theater

I am ready for my uterus
to be yanked out by
its mooring ligaments

No scars
only
a virginal torso
left

I didn’t need you any more
anyway

But thanks
for the ride

(SNIPPET 2)

December 17

My mother is a husk
a Christmas walnut
cracked open

The meat of her
gone

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