NaPoWriMo Day 7.4 (Day 18 for Everyone Else)

Northern Harrier. Photo credit: National Wildlife Federation

Today, the fourth of my poems is published in the online journal Cascadia Review. All four poems (titled “Went Hiking,” “Strange Bird,” “One Way,” and ”Day After Thanksgiving”) are now presented on the home page, along with my “Statement of Place” in the Cascadia bioregion.

These four poems are also included in my chapbook, Impossible Lessons, which will be ready to meet the world in about four more weeks.

(Coming some time soon: NaPoWriMo, Day 8! I think!)

NaPoWriMo, Day 7 (Day 16 for Everybody Else)

Ever since encountering this piece of statue over two years ago, its story has disturbed and fascinated me. It’s a fragment of the intricate statuary ornamenting the exterior of Chartres Cathedral–yes, the big famous one, in France–that somehow ended up in the tiny but spectacular Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, Arizona. This life-size, haunting visage is displayed in the chapel foyer, exactly at eye level. Most tourists visiting the chapel want to know about the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired architecture or whether they can book a wedding there. What I want to know is how this chunk of Medieval Gothic found its way to the desert Southwest! None of the clergy or docents I approached knew the history of this piece; one nun I contacted later was able to tell me that it had been knocked from the cathedral’s exterior by shelling during World War I or II, and that the chapel’s founding donor had aquired it through an art dealer in L.A. (I can only imagine the other details of this story that will never be divulged.)

“Head of Christ in granite from Cathedral in Chartres, France” (now in Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, Arizona, USA). Photo by Mark Kummer.

I’ve been trying to write a poem about this statue for the past two years. We visited it again this February, and Mark photographed it for me. Its physical disembodiedness, and its historical and geological dislocation, continue to haunt me. Today, still distressed by yesterday’s explosions and amputations, I attemped the poem again using the persona of the statue. I dedicate it to all who experienced a loss, physical or otherwise, of some piece of themselves yesterday.

***

PRAYER OF THE HEAD OF CHRIST IN GRANITE FROM CATHEDRAL IN CHARTRES, FRANCE AT CHAPEL OF THE HOLY CROSS IN SEDONA, ARIZONA

My Father, whose art is on display
all through this Verde Valley as red-rock buttes
of Coconino Sandstone, into which this chapel

is chiseled, how did I come to this place?
I sense Your Spirit spinning in every crumb
of Sedona dust and in every limestone layer

dyed blood-red by volcanic iron oxides–
but I remember little of the World-War violence
that severed my granite head from my granite body

and, via L.A. art dealer, delivered it, suffering, here.
I hear the nuns and docents point tourists
toward the rain-carved Madonna and Child

You shaped from the viscera of the mountain
above this chapel. They exclaim the likeness
is unmistakable. But I cannot look upward

to see those Permian other selves, my neck
unhinged and my Precambrian countenance
downcast as it is, in my decapitated extremis.

Does Your will erode here though it be done
in Heaven? This day, unblast me; lead me back
to the Cathédrale and give me whatever is left

of my body. From there I will journey to my original
kingdom in the quarry at Berchères-l’Evêque,
to deliver myself to the womb of the earth.

NaPoWriMo, Day … oh, dear.

Moving right along.

Today’s poem is prompted by Danielle Mitchell at Litnivorous (motto: “You Are What You Read”). In addition to offering brief prompts this month, she also has a full menu of very detailed writing exercises (see the menu bar at the top of the Home page) that fascinate me. My poem below responds to Prompt #7, Exercise #1. Thank you, Danielle, for this enjoyable workout of my “brain’s weirdness muscles.” And also, for the word “vodka.”

***

TO ONE WHO ESCAPED

This was the last time you would tell them
the water of their core aquarium did not meet
your requirement for prismatic frequencies.
Though they wooed you in Catalán, in Cantonese,
and Klingon, you inflected them back to themselves
in images of fizz and fenestration.

For a while, you tried your weirdest
to parlay their assertions into factual acres.
Your curiosity percolated like verdure.
Fluffed, it met with temporary merit.
But—peekaboo!—you found it impossible
to combobulate the spacious into something capable.

They wanted you to believe belief was everything
(the u-turns in the hairpins, the whirl of repentance).
At length, tremblingly, they offered you
a majestic ceramic and its liquid aphrodisiac.
But they weren’t prepared for the convergence
of your fineries. Or for the way you shouldered
that stoneware—so demure, so periodic.

When their methods uncornered the dribble
of their trial, you triumphed by splintering
the vodka of their maroon. Shhh… They want
you to believe your professed beliefs
are really true. Just because you’re pronoid
doesn’t mean they’re not favoring you.

NaPoWriMo, Day 5 (Whoa! Day 12 for everyone else)

A week late, but still in the game.

***

STILL LIFE WITH KUMQUAT

The French call it
nature morte, tartly
not living. Sordid, maybe,
but worthy of the eye’s
marveling at the last
glimmer of loveliness,
captured. The ovoid
kumquat, a curve
of driftwood, fished
from the tide, a billow
of yellow dillweed flowers:
a flight stilled, still live
enough.

NaPoWriMo Day 4 (Day 9 for Everyone Else)

Inspired by Maureen Thorson’s Day 9 prompt: “Noir” (but with a sort of non-urban twist) and by Doug’s flashback to clip-on earrings.

**

WINTER NOIR

The next one waits, polishing its incisors.
What willing thing would venture near, barefoot?
Some days, it doesn’t know itself
whether it preys or punishes. Or both.

Meanwhile, another clips earrings to her lobes.
She uses the pain to remind herself
of her worthiness. Please watch,
her ministrations seem to say.

Lifted to the level of her smile, each pearl ignites.
She draws the fur onto her shoulders
and against her neck. Outside, the moon
shows paw prints circling in the snow.

NaPoWriMo, Day 3 (Day 8 in other time zones)

Just to keep things confusing, I’m using Maureen Thorson’s Day 4 prompt–spaceship names from Iain M. Banks–as inspiration for this poem.

**

THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE DOMESTIC IMPULSES ENGAGE
IN A FRANK EXCHANGE OF VIEWS

Ordinarily, I suffer from an onslaught of abundance.

We need milk. We need postage stamps.

We need sandwich bread, bananas, and jam.

I refuse to fall victim to ambient distraction.

We need more frozen burritos,
the ones with not too much rice and just
the right amount of cheese.

Principally, each interruption is an apocalypse
of meaning.

Will you put your laundry in the basket?

Will you pick up those Legos from the floor, please?

Fortunately, some conflicts of interest
are grist for good thought.

We need sliced turkey and more applesauce.

Tissues. Peanut butter.

Did Tiresias have a family?
Would his wife have been a prophet, too,
or is one oracle per generation enough?

We need yogurt and a little more culture.

We could use beer and a little less fizz.

Maybe the Rosemary

Reblogged from Marilyn Cavicchia, Editor and Poet:

Time to write about religion now,
after buying bananas and escarole,
after passing up a rosemary plant
that was blooming, which I have
never seen, which sent me on a
whole series of associations
(gardens, my mother, whose name
was Rosemary; she was a pilgrim
in the garden, always a transplant
and always seeking something—
blooming vigor, a pleasant surprise…

Read more… 286 more words

Even though I've been negligent about posting lately, I have been catching up on my blog reading. During this week of holy days, one poem I keep going back to is my Chicago poet-friend Marilyn Cavicchia's "Maybe the Rosemary." In this piece, she sneaks up on the sacred in the shoes of her young children. She used that quietly brilliant stealth last week, too, in her magnificent poem "In the Beginning, There Was"--so please click back to her home page to enjoy that one, as well (I'm looking at *you*, Mr. Abu). Happy Passover, Happy Easter, peace to you, peace to all, "cage free."

NaPoWriMo, Day 15 (Day 22 for Everyone Else)

Today’s poem is in response to a hugely fun prompt by Rachel McKibbens. Her detailed exercise yields the sort of non-sequiturs that stretch even the associative logic of poetry:

CONVERSATION WITH  MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD

Why do you think your feet aren’t listening to you?
Playing shuffleboard on the deck of the Great Beyond.
Why was that forest not enough for me?
Spider, mistress, aesthetic missteps.
How come the President didn’t uncause that fire?
A brain the size of Texas, like Anne Carson’s.
What language of restaurant will this be?
The Beegees, Peter and the Wolf, The Chipmunks’ Disney Classics.
Mommy, do I have a backpack? Why does this Lowes have five signs? What’s “pressure”?
The smile of Julia Roberts.
Why is Grandpa unhappy at me?
Trail of breadcrumbs, what big teeth, magic beans.
Silly Mommy, if you’re sad Zonker’s going to die,
why don’t you just get another kitty that’s orange and white?
Bendy straws, rainbow pipe cleaners, torn trampoline leaning against the wall. 

* * * * * * * *

Yes, he’s a weird (and extremely observant) kid. This poem makes his mom sound even weirder! Thanks, dear Readers, for reading.

NaPoWriMo, Day 15 or So: A Little Poem Inspired by the Word “Sonnet”

UPDATED:  Now with fewer typos!

Hello! Before we get to my poem for today, I want to tell you about another netizen-poet I’ve met while participating in NaPoWriMo.  He’s DadPoet, and his project for this month is not to write and post his own poems, but to record videos of his marvelous readings of others’ poems, both classic and contemporary. So far, some of my favorites are his readings of William Stafford’s “When I Met My Muse,” Billy Collins’s “Picnic, Lightning,” and Kenneth Koch’s “You Were Wearing.” His introductions, comments, and backdrops are by turns goofy and enlightening. Do click over to DadPoet’s blog and enjoy.

And now, to atone for the smart-assery of my Jesus poem from yesterday, here’s a little something quiet and meditative:

SMALL SONG FOR SLOWING DOWN

As dusk dims, dew
starts to pearl
on the grass.

L. brushes her brown hair
back from her shoulder and turns
a page in the book
she is reading to us.

The child sets down
his sticker book to listen
and peels small remnants of stickers
from his fingertips.

M. sips a calm tea.

Out the window, clouds
lap a slow tongue at Jupiter
and miss.

No music, a little music–
perhaps a few notes,
lucid and serene.

NaPoWriMo Day 7 (Day 12 for Everybody Else), or, Why I’m Suddenly Glad I Don’t Speak Norwegian

Today’s prompt is to make a homophonic “translation” of a poem from a different language. Having enjoyed a similar exercise at a recent workshop with Christopher Howell, I went straight to the Poetry International website, as Maureen Thorson suggests, and browsed around there for a nicely baffling poem. I chose Norwegian poet Oyvind Rimbereid’s poem titled “Kamuflasje” because I had no glimmer what any of the words, other than the title, might mean.

Working with just the first 17 lines of Rimbereid’s poem, I came up with bizarre, nonsensical lines like, “Can Leftist Week have its corn back in a fuselage flash?” and “or therefore algaes can fly if they will.” What I revised this happy mess into is still bizarre and nonsensical, but perhaps slightly  more coherent:

SOMNIA

How to pay for my rest without night
saying “sin” or “Kawasaki”?

Swerve next door to find the heroine
who neighbored in a varying sleep.

Back home, I dream a nasty knife performer
camouflages me; I tell him my eyes

must blink ten serrations before
the sky will forgive him.

Another sunset, I dream Medean cats
that so endrunken the eyes, I am gloomed

totally. Their cryings infiltrate
like soldiers in a short minute.

I counsel half myself to eat corn
while in the other half, I witness blades

punishing flesh. Poor truthteller.
Amnesia drifts me, drops me whole.

Sleep slashes and winds. For any eyes upended,
closing, droning, I will them to rev.

* * * * * * * *

Righto. See you next time, then. Thanks for reading!