April Poem-A-Day Challenge

I did this challenge last year and actually wrote thirty poems in thirty days. Most of them were no good, but I got a few I really liked that I've worked on since. I am not committed to doing all thirty this year, but I'm getting the prompts and have written one so far.

Yesterday's prompt for Day 3 was to write a poem with the title "Partly ____" (fill in the blank). Here's my attempt:

Partly Risen

The sun when I wake
to a cat’s claws tangling
my hair, the whole
wheat pita bread
I tried to make from scratch,
the shoots of asparagus
in my mother’s spring
garden, my heart
this morning when I walk
in the sunlight on this day
that celebrates a savior
I used to believe in.

Neurotheology

Neurotheology

There are paths in the brain
we tread every day: time, space,
self, but there are ways to step
off the well-worn track. Wilderness
awaits, a terrifying mystery,
a disconnection, a connection.

God is present in the space
between your reality and mine.

What I Fear

One of the last PAD prompts was to write a sestina, so I did. The themes come from two places - one a very old prompt I took from Stacey, which is just to take all your fears or anxieties and write them into a poem - and one taking off on the theme of a poem I read Monday night.

What I Fear

These are the things I fear:
both success and failure, love
and never finding love, being
trapped in a house that’s burning,
cars stopped on a bridge,
growing old or dying young.

I no longer feel young
in the winter, and I fear
the ice on each bridge,
want only warmth and love,
your face above a book, fireplace burning
beside our two chairs, the simple act of being

with you. Each human being
can be happy but only the young
see it as a right. This ends with the burning
of a hand on a stove, the lessons to fear
what you do not know, that love
sometimes punishes, that not all bridges

can or should be crossed. A bridge
just outside of town where we went to be
alone, threw our bras in the creek and made love
in the car for the first time. We were young
enough to be reckless, old enough to fear
judgment. My mother told us we would burn

in hell, her knuckles white, her arms a burning
cross over her chest. She can not bridge
the gap between God and love. Her fear
is for my soul, her guilt for not being
able to avert this crisis when I was young.
There are so many kinds of love

and so many feelings that are not love:
to be trapped, to be forced, to burn
inside with shame. When I was young
I learned to fear escalators and bridges
and strange men and drugs. I learned to be
good is to be safe, and this is what I truly fear:

that I will let fear keep me from love,
that nothing will be enough to burn
away the bridges sunk deep when I was young.

Genesis

I don't think I've mentioned it before, but I am going to try to do the April Poem-A-Day Challenge. I tried awhile back to write a poem a day for a month, but I picked a really busy month, and I was attempting it on my own, with no prompts, or challengers, so I'm hoping this will work better. I am sure some of them will be truly awful, but I'll post some that are less awful. The first prompt was to write a poem about origins. My mind went straight to the creation story in Genesis because the very talented Scott Woods mentioned on Monday that he's writing a series of haiku that are like a summary of the Bible.

Genesis

I was never thrilled with the creation story.
There is no time I can not remember
knowing that God created the earth
in six short days, and I always thought:
where's the fun in that? How could He
appreciate what He'd done if the distance
between void and verdant paradise
was less than a week? I always thought
God must be like my father, a hard worker,
with no time for fun. My father builds
everything as quickly as possible, he could
miss entire phyla of creatures, never noticing
the arthropods or the nematodes until Adam,
the darling, the only boy, asked him
Why are there so many worms?

A super-rough draft of something that occurred to me while driving

My father and mother always told me
to stand up straight, to follow
the right path, when the going
got tough and the load got heavy
to square my shoulders and carry
whatever was piled upon me.

I am not lazy, father.

I can not square my shoulders.
One is higher than the other,
trapezoidal, shoulder blade to
shoulder blade, invisible line
straight down to one hip bone,
a right angle to the other hip, and back
up to the shoulder. I am not square,
nor even, I do not fit into any box.

I am not evil, mother.

I can not choose one side, one sex,
one lover. I move through life
from one right angled street corner
to another, to the streets that meet
at angles, the ones that wind
like snakes, serpents of wisdom,
the pain of the knowledge that is good
and evil, separation and truth.

The Composition of the Air I Breathe

There is no substitute for oxygen
but the warmth of your breath
makes me almost wish to suffocate
on carbon dioxide and kisses.

I don't mean to die, but to push
my lungs to their limit, to fall
into you until I am gasping
and terrified and alive.

Suicide doesn't interest me.
Living is the true challenge,
to keep running, breath after
freezing breath, icy December air

clouding in front of me, eyes
tearing, watching my feet
so snow does not get the better
of my balance. I struggle to hold

myself upright in my mother's eyes.
She prays for me every night
as I lie in your arms and she fears
we're on our way to hell. Of love

she knows nothing, claims words
from the original Hebrew or Greek
condemn me. If you wish
to understand me, you must understand

her as well. She is resigned to sorrow,
a dutiful wife, a grieving mother,
blaming herself, praying for my soul
and for His forgiveness for sins

no one has committed. I love her.
I love you. I place my heart like my feet
carefully on a slippery path, sunlight
glints off ice, off your beauty, off the tears

that come unbidden when you hold me.
It always comes down to this:
I can not change who I am,
I can not change where I came from.

on the blessings i don't believe in

on the blessings i don't believe in

i stopped believing long ago
that we are punished
or rewarded
by a willful old man in the sky

i will take my chances
with karma or luck
do good works for their own sake
accept failure as the result
of my failings

how to explain now
just how blessed i feel
by a week's worth of sun,
a vote that finally went right
the sweetest lips
against my own

the universe is smiling
on me brilliantly
and steadily
with the warmest
november this state
has ever seen

what have i done to earn
all of this? and what
must i do to keep it?

I Am Not the One She Wanted

I Am Not the One She Wanted

I am not pretty and silent,
I can not sit and wait with crossed
ankles and folded hands
for God to redeem the world.

I do not pray at night
for a man to marry, a provider,
children to raise up in the ways
they should go, the ways she raised me.

Sometimes, mother, they do depart.

I am thin and poor and alone.
I worked all day, then ran four miles.
I am self-sufficient, and I don’t believe
in that white-haired, white-light

Patriarch with his condemnations
and abominations.

I am not the one you wanted either;
I will not dictate my will like the goddess
you would make me. For every gift
you think I have, I lack the skill

or the courage to use it.

I have grown too large for one role,
remain too small for the other.

Walking the Plank

an off-the-cuff little poem today. because i don't want to work, because i like pirates, because i was thinking of maxine kumin….

Walking the Plank

Sometimes I want
To go back
To the bliss of ignorance
The pier of belief
But I am stuck
On this narrow plank
Splinters and all.

I walk a fine line
Bare toes gripping
Rough wood
Arms out for balance
Unwilling to go back
Afraid to fall.

I know
What love is -
The waves below me
Crashing into the ship,
The gentle roll
Of the far-off sea -
And faith - how it shapes
And shades
Every moment
With gratefulness
And fear.

The River That Doesn't Exist

Another new, "ink still wet", poem. Sort of a prose poem, I guess. Not sure about the title, whether I want the long version or the short version of the title, or something different entirely.

ETA: after reading this at Larry's tonight, I'm posting the edits I did before the reading. I got a good response, including a personal comment from the guy with the cool voice.


Fictional Truths About a Childhood That Never Happened and a River That Doesn’t Exist

The river in my hometown always looked muddy, even during the drought of 1988, when the thermometer on our back porch read 110 in the shade and we all ran around in our underwear, even if, at ten, I was a little too old to do so. My mother wore a bathing suit top and shorts, still skinny after four babies.

At twelve I felt so adult when I stood in church beside her, three inches taller already, and raised my hands, closed my eyes and swayed as I sang of my desire for God. “As the deer panteth for the water so my soul longeth after thee.” I knew nothing of desire and so little of longing.

The pastor’s youngest daughter jumped off the highest bridge in the county when she was fifteen, her body found miles downstream. Everyone knew why, but no one would say it.

That water travels into another river and then into the larger one that names this state, and it keeps on going. My sisters and I used to walk barefoot in the creek at the back of the property and talk about touching the ocean through that dirty water. I later learned that our shallow stream dried up long before ever reaching that river which really does, eventually, fight its way free.

A Tale With No Moral (tentative title)

i don't know that i like this title, but it's a very new poem. very new. if i'd written it by hand, the ink would still be wet.

tell me if you expect the end. i don't want it to be expected all the way through.



A Tale With No Moral

Pastor White had three beautiful daughters
And could never deny them anything.
Like the girls in a fairy tale they were
All tall and slender and long-haired
And virtuous. His wife too was sweet-
Tempered, quiet, cooked dinner and the sweet
Little snacks to which he couldn’t say no.

Aurora, Bianca, and Christina
Long skirts and long braids and long-
Suffering eyes like paintings of Jesus.
Model students, model daughters, models
Of Christ. As Christ is head
Of the Church, so the man is head
Of the family. The difference is
The church takes that power away
And makes its own rules.

A tall man, slender in spite
Of all the homemade deserts,
Dark hair graying, dark
Eyes I never could meet
Without seeing hellfire.

A slightly faded white farmhouse
All those old small rooms
So perfect for hide and seek, so
Many closets and crannies and dark
Corners and secrets to find.

Christina, bride of Christ,
Killed herself at sixteen.

Why?
You know.

Pastor White had three beautiful daughters
And could never deny them.