"and your phoenix tongue" -- Hannah's NaPo 2013

goal 1 - post a worked and an unworked poem each day
goal 2 - comment in every other napo thread of the year

April 1st unworked: before the alarm wakes you up

do you think
she loads her shopping cart so high
because the next pack of biscuits
will really really make her happier?

do you think
she ever calculates
while she is asleep and far away
how many minutes -- down to the second --
she spent speaking to him yesterday?

yesterday
there was a minute in the car,
the minute as they drove home from work,
the minute deciding what to eat,
and the twenty seconds deciding who would cook
(her) (her and always her) (and her)

there were forty seconds of saying goodnight
and he heard her talking in her sleep --
"remember the one who promised me he'd be waiting
and i was just too late?"
and he doesn't know what she is saying
so it is not a conversation and
he doesn't count
it.

who can build muscle
or subsist
or cross a desert of a year overseas
with only four minutes of moving lips
and the rest spent listening



to the computer's dirty fan
to the women who speak loud as they pass by
beneath her window.

April 1st worked: cometeor

my eyelashes have sprouted and turned
a deep navy stew -- squid ink and stardust.
my eyes are stellar but inadequate.
my eyes run down my face.

my dog lays in a curve of
delicate white -- each piece of him
is a wire fleas tightrope walk
and close to death -- baby hair of my grandfather.

i am reaching as though
my arms could brush a star and knock it out of place
but all that skims across my fingers
are mosquito wings
and campfire ash
and a whisper from a forgotten autumn night

(i haven't forgotten: you stood by the edge
of the river and tucked your socks
all the way into the toes of your shoes
and with grass between your toes
you lay me down. i watched the night sky --
my eyes forgot they had lids
and wouldn't want to cover themselves again
even if i had asked them to --
and slowly slowly stars exploded
one by one -- the fallout like fireworks.
now i know the inspiration
for gunpowder and war.)

my eyes are inadequate
my eyes are stellar but inadequate but
i have stared at the blue roots of flame
and swung my face fast upward
then, i am blind enough to feel
the warmth of gas that conjures up salty sheens
lifetimes more than all my family has known
away
away
away

April 2nd unworked: river tidepools

this spring i met pussy willows
on the bank of a sludge-stream
and stopped for minutes to describe
the fuzzgray base, the slickblack stems,
the never opening flowers that crested:
yellow in quarters, sliced by a black line
i could have sworn would open to bloom
but never did -- and you wasted away
in front of me, behind me, beside me.

April 2nd worked: my grandmother and grandfather are dead

i.
my grandfather had intimidation on his face:
mutton chops that held the mustard from his sausages
long after he'd changed into a new white undershirt.

every time we left, my mother would beg me
to hug him goodbye
and i would huddle next to the curio cabinet
until she cried.
i rushed forward and touched my cheek to his belly
as quickly
as quickly as possible, and fled,
unused to rolling hills in a flat flat land --
two and a half hours on a flat flat road home
from grandma and grandpa's house.

ii.
he was in a hospital bed
with a plastic hole in his throat
and a tube he had to take out to speak.
i went with my mother regularly
as if i owed something to him.
and i always leaned over the hospital bed rails
to hug him goodbye.

one day, when the skies were sunny
and he smiled with his intubator out,
and he laughed at jokes my mom made,
i had tears in my eyes while i made him promise
he would fish out the sunnies from under the dock
with me again
at the cabin again
in the summer again.

but for no reason he died
and i sobbed huddled in the back room of the coffee shop
with friends out front -- oblivious.

they left one by one and didn't say goodbye.
my mother would beg me to hug him goodbye.

iii.
for my grandmother, there were always small-bodied hugs.
i did not run. i maybe lingered.
she died first and i remember less.
just that she wore floral housecoats,
sat on the end of the table next to the curio cabinets,
made stuffing my mom sobs over
and stops christmas and thanksgiving over
because she can't recreate

and that i drew a card for her at school
to tell her that angels cured cancer.
i thought it was naive even before
i had finished coloring it in.
and i never sent it to her.

somewhere in my heart it is still screaming at me:
if you had only sent it.
if you had only sent it.

the universe knows.

April 3rd unworked: amiss


my sisters are fingers
half-burnt on the plastic of microwave dinners
that we brought in bags slung
over the handlebars of bikes
swaying off balance three blocks home:
that petrified grooved peach.

i think of them
gone since they were elementary
and i think of them having sex
with boys i've never heard or seen
and pull out

a warped black plastic tray.
i just want to see chip dust
under their fingernails again.

April 3rd worked: interior

oil-painted fin(ger)stains on the curtains.
i cannot see beyond the brocade tinder-driftwood --
deep brown thread sewn back and forth obsessed
until the rest of the fabric's so thin
it's clear through like water.

my mother was and is
ashamed of her body and her mind
while her parents had their legs under their table
and their arms above it,
but still she cried when they were gone,
because the world was vertical above her
with no one pushing her down,
and she felt like she was leagues beneath a sea of air.
she choked and halfdrowned on the living room floor
while i watched and cried that my mother was a fish
and i was a fishchild.

a fishchild sees curtains like brocaded bubbles
and wonders how the needle got through,
but bleeds soft kelp into the dinnerpot.

So much content and not just quantity either! How are you doing this?

Your first is like... I really want some cookies and hugs now.
:c

1.5 has so many delicious wordpairings; deep navy stew, blue roots of flame, so many gems!

2 is neat! It has an experimental quality. The word pairings here are also really unique and vivid, but doesn't have that same effortless/organic vibe that 1 & 1.5 have.

2.5 omggg that first stanza 8D

they left one by one and didn't say goodbye.
my mother would beg me to hug him godbye.

Typo? Or intentional? Ooooh the meanings.

There's so much in this I wanna pick at and marvel and say, but will save for another time, or when I can hit you up on chat. The last line hits like an anvil, and the repeated curio cabinets make me smile.

3 What a fabulous break there between the 2nd and last stanza.

3.5 ooh, I'd like to see what the worked version of this will look like. I feel the ideas are interesting and they pull me in, but not quite as clear/focused. That last line ooomg <3

Such a pleasure going through this! I shall be eagerly anticipating the next 27 days C:

Thanks, Audy.

April 4th unworked: famous thin walls

pastactions imprinted
in the wallpaper and in the wooden floors
and in the gaping doorways between rooms.
i can hear through the floor.
i can hear through the wall.

i can hear you breathing when i am in the backyard
looking up at the maple tree we planted
when you were born and we got tired of holding you,
so we left the hospital and planted more seeds.

i can hear your heart skip when you are in the bathroom
and the lights turn the mirror into a small-faced sun
that tells you where to curl the catseye eye liner
for the first time, for the first time.

i hear i hear his voice
through the doorway
and on the day bed in the breakfast room
i can hear through the walls
the stutter of dropping water
that had gathered in the crook of his arm
and then fell -- my feet have touched the same porcelain.

but you are far beyond me.
i watch your headlights curl away with him inside
and i am left with the ghosts of actions
imprinted and embedded in the floors i walk,
hung up on walls we've played in
like underdeveloped pictures of mirrors.

POETRY GODDESS

April 4th worked: incandes

toasted and honeyed and
prescribed zinc pills
to get the cold out but
walking under a thousand
miles of blankets,
time is still dense.
you will always die before me.

April 4th for Cadi:

i.
What do
you do when
you're just too scared?
When your wrists aren't held by ropes
but by tangles of neurons
crossed like stars?
to whom do you give the reins
that don't exist?

ii.
Do you trust me?
Do you know the wrinkles that mark my knuckles?
Do you know how long each scar took to heal
and why and which ones I picked at and which scabs fell?
Do you know enough of the land that is all of me?

iii.
This is the day
the gates close forever
because there is no flood left
to hold back.

April 5th unworked: scrap

pick and peel scabs
from the tips of your toes
from the tips of your fingers
from the tip of your nose

your skin is a rose

he loves me - he loves me not - he loves me -
me not - me - me me - he me - loves - not not not

your dress lays around your feet
as you peer into the dusk for the thorns.

April 5th worked: see: "Death of an American Citizen abroad"

the monorail's concrete is draped in dark water
and rainy days bar up my doors.
i forage for cans in the cupboard under the stovetop
and find only spilled rice in piles of five, scattered.

they don't ask me every day, "are you safe?"
because american snow bars up their doors
and all fall and all winter international phone cards
were like mosquitos -- impossible to catch
when you're standing still until they bite you.

if they bite, will my body fly with a eulogy
of cargo-shipped cats and dogs and rushing air
or will you grab my hand and bury me in a mound
and on a hill, like the rain on the concrete promised?