I love teaching poetry. I especially love teaching it to students who think they hate poetry and can’t understand it and think poetry is full of “hidden meanings.”

“You don’t have to love poetry, but I can help you appreciate it,” I reassure them.

“If you can read, you can understand poetry,” I promise them.

“Scout’s honor, there are no ‘hidden meanings’ in poetry,” I confide to them.

Then I break the news that poems require closer reading than a text message like, “want 2 hang out sat nite?”

The sonnet is one of the best forms for teaching my students that the mysteries of poetry are out in the open, free for the taking.

As with all things word-related, it helps to start with definitions. A sonnet, one of the most rigid of the fixed poetic forms, is defined by its many rules. I tell my students that knowing the rules of the sonnet helps in understanding it in the same way that knowing the rules of football helps in following the game. Many of them smile.

Most of the students in my introductory courses remember something about the sonnet from high school, so I build from there: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, a set rhyme scheme that reflects the stanza structure (here we get into the English versus the Italian form), with a turn in thought or emphasis at the end, usually focusing on a serious subject such as love, sex, art, life, death, or taxes. (I’m kidding about the last one, of course. But that always gets the students to laugh, which is important when trying to warm them up to something they approach the way my dogs approach a snakeskin on the woodpile.)

Then I ask them why anyone would choose to write according to so many rules, all the way down to the number and beat of the syllables. Someone usually answers, “For the challenge.” And that’s not a bad answer. A few others will give it a good college try, trying to figure out why someone would go to all that trouble, although I can tell they think people who write sonnets probably just have trouble getting dates on Saturday night.

So after a few answers, I give them my own: “For the freedom.”

The students look at me as though I must not have had a Saturday night out in long, long time.

“Imagine,” I tell them, while they squint at me quizzically, “if I gave you ten minutes and asked you all to write about love, anyway you want, no rules at all. How original do you think might be in what you say?” Not very, I assure them. A couple of heads slowly nod.

“Now let’s say I ask you to write about love in a certain number of syllables, arranged in a certain meter with a certain number of lines, according to a set rhyme scheme. I bet that in following these rules, you would likely discover an idea, a nuance, an image, a comparison, a slant, something fresh and new.” A few more heads nod.

Then I tell them about a famous playground study—one where the children playing in an unenclosed playground, unsure of the boundaries, tended to huddle together toward the middle, not daring to venture out from the group. But children in a fenced playground ranged confidently all over the yard, some even climbing the fences.

The rules of a sonnet, it turns out, set us free to explore. And what better way to spend a Saturday night?

Post by Karen Swallow Prior.
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Further Resources, for Teachers or Writer’s Groups:

How to Write a Sonnet
How to Write a Sonnet: Podcast
Subscribe to Every Day Poems— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In August we’ll be exploring sonnets.

There were so many great conversations, visual and verbal, offered up for this month’s collaborative prompt between The High Calling’s PhotoPlay and Random Acts of Poetry. We had a hard time choosing what to feature! But we finally settled on a poem-photo combination for The High Calling, one here, and one to come (actually in October) at Every Day Poems.

I loved Roseanne’s sestina, and I asked her about Siler, “Is he an actual cultural reference, or just your sweet fiction?”

Turns out the character in the poem is just that: a fiction. Roseanne said she is fascinated by the possibilities of using sestinas to play with fiction, and she even started a new blog where she can post her explorations. Roseanne’s featured poem today is more a conversation between the poet and culture, but, to my mind, it’s a conversation nonetheless.

Sestina for Fishers of Men

The village watched as Jonathan Siler
cared for his mother, nursed her day and night.
They saw him drop out of school, stop seeing
May Johnson, the girl of his teenage dreams.
While the village loved Mamie Siler, they
began to wish that Jonathan be freed

from responsibility, a fish freed
from the hook in its tender mouth. Siler
neither knew nor cared what others thought, they
were as remote from him as the stars at night.
For the first time, he could see his dreams
fleshed out in meaningful tasks, he could see

what others couldn’t, and in truth he saw
a life of ministry where he was freed
to give of himself. Meanwhile, the town dreamed
of other goals for their young man Siler.
They looked for the stars and saw a dark night
when the fish wouldn’t bite the bated hooks they

dangled. He couldn’t avoid his fate, they
reasoned, and there was no way he could see
what they could see. They determined that night
that they would take matters in their hands, free
him from the curse of the only Siler
child. They thought and thought and finally dreamed

up a scheme. While the stars blinked, the fish dreamt
of bigger seas, Oprah was contacted. They
convinced her of the sacrifice Siler
was making, and she immediately saw
ratings rise as she provided relief, freed
this young man giving him several nights

to see Chicago, be on her show. Night
fell over this city but starlit dreams
masked the truth. Well-meaning villagers freed
him from responsibility, but they
couldn’t prevent his mother’s death or see
what effect that death would have on Siler.

The stars in the night watched the fish as they
swam in and out his tortured dreams. They saw
that freedom for Siler would never be.

All Random Acts of Poetry participants

Anna’s Truth vs. Lies
Charity’s Home Grown
Claire’s Sestina
Glynn's The Last Conversation
Jessica’s Conversation
Kate’s For Terry (Not a sestina)
Maureen’s The Interview
Monica's What Poetry Can Do
Rosanne's Sestina for Fishers of Men
Violet’s Declaration

“So I Says to Her, Sweetheart” photo by Peter Rice. PhotoPlay entry, via Flickr. Visit The High Calling, to see other PhotoPlay entries. Thanks to Editors Sam Van Eman and Claire Burge, for working with Tweetspeak for this prompt.

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Post by L.L. Barkat. Visit L.L. at Seedlings in Stone, for more on writing, poetry, art and life.

Subscribe to Every Day Poems— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In July we’re exploring sestinas.

I love these little notes I get behind the scenes, about Every Day Poems. It is like a fine, sweet secret that makes me smile.

Sometimes people want to tell me about how a poem made them laugh, or gave them strength, or surprised them. I delight to read these correspondences. Maybe it’s that people have taken the extra effort to write, when they could just have well moved into their day with a poem in their pocket— end of story.

Today, I got a wonderful chuckle when I opened an email that must have been sent yesterday— an off day for the Every Day. (We don’t deliver on weekends. It gives people a chance to catch up on their poems from the week. And it’s just… nice to have two days off.)

Anyway, this note was from NanceMarie. She subscribed on Friday, after our day’s delivery, and by Sunday she’d sent this…

llb

nr

There is something about Nance’s way with words that always makes me smile, even laugh out loud. So I asked her, “Can I run these words at Tweetspeak?” And she kindly said…

what ever you want. you have my (as camel would say) “permish.”
got my first everyday today :-) yea!

Now that is the kind of poetry-love that makes me want to keep doing the Every Day. It’s a yea that makes my day. :)
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Post by L.L. Barkat. Visit L.L. at Seedlings in Stone, for more on writing, poetry, art and life.

Subscribe to Every Day Poems— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In July we’re exploring sestinas.

The sestina is a perfect form for conversation. I learned this from reading a lot of sestinas by James Cummins. I’d never read sestinas like his before, but the use of dialog made sense. The back and forth, the coming ’round of the sestina form, is much like conversation, so it’s a terrific form for actually including dialog.

When Claire Burge suggested conversation as a collaborative prompt between us and The High Calling’s latest PhotoPlay challenge, I was amazed and delighted. Yes! She had dreamed up the perfect pairing between our sestina efforts and her new challenge.

When her prompt went up, I realized something more. We poets could learn from her photography tips. Here’s her challenge:

1. Capture a conversation
2. Use background, angle or distance (or all three) to establish the context of the image

If you check out Claire’s post, you can see examples of how photographers used setting, angle and distance to establish a sense of place, debate, or intimacy.

How does a poet establish setting? How does a poet establish an angle? How does a poet establish a close-up versus distance?

Of course all of these will have to do with images, including sounds. If, for instance, our poem characters are whispering and we can hear it, then we are privy to an intimate moment. If the same whispers sound like leaves tumbling down the street, we are outside of the intimacy, perhaps overhearing it, shut out by literal distance or time.

Would you like to join the challenge? To capture a conversation? If you want to use the sestina form, you can. Or if the challenge of capturing a conversation by using setting, angle and distance is challenge enough, feel free to use a different form.

Post your offering by Wednesday, July 27 and add your link here in the comment box, for links and possible feature at Tweetspeak, The High Calling, or in Every Day Poems. You can join in the PhotoPlay challenge too. Just stop by The High Calling for details.

Okay, let’s get talking. :)
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Post by L.L. Barkat. Visit L.L. at Seedlings in Stone, for more on writing, poetry, art and life.

Subscribe to Every Day Poems— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In July we’re exploring sestinas.

We now have an additional seven poems from our recent Twitter poetry party. All the prompts were taken from Harvesting Fog: Poems by Luci Shaw, including the title of one of the poems below, “The Body Curled, Like a Comma.”

The Cinnamon Beetle 3 

By @memoriaarts, @mdgoodyear, @llbarkat, @EricSwalberg, @luci_shaw, @gyoung9751, @RuminateMag, @mrsmetaphor, @doallas, @LoveLifeLitGod, @nmdr_, @KathleenOverby, @Sand_RAD, @mxings, @mmerubies, @charsingleton, @CherylSmith999, @lauraboggess, and @VinaMist. Cameo appearances by @LuvStomp, @poemblaze and @annkroeker. Edited by @gyoung9751. 

When You Turn Away

When you turn away
what blue anger heats the air.
The air heats, melts
Venetian glass, beetle blue.
The glass I got in Venice
is a mirror,
is the iris in your eye,
is the color of bruises.
I am always hungry for cinnamon
and air thick with desire.
I desire stars and raspberries
and the softness of you
when waking and
for water wending,
for the turn of your back
down which a gentle hand
might slide and find
its way to love.
I turn you in a glass, darkly,
smoky with desire,
renting space on charcoal skin,
smoke disguised as desire.

Seasonal Fruit

The raspberry concentrates summer
in each tiny drupe, surrounding
seed with sugar sunlight. Desire is
Christmas in July, raspberries rather
than hollies, summer’s scorch rather
than quenching snow.
Send July heat please,
melt me like butter; my tomatoes
ache for angry red.

The Letter “W”

The letter ‘W’ turned round
becomes the ‘M’
for mine own eyes
might see you
sweet beside me.
The letter W is like me and you,
double dose, melded into one,
wending our way
conjoined
like twins;
one heart,
many limbs.

The Curse of Language

Words are the curse of language.
Words are walls between us.
I will not partake of verse,
this curse of words.
Pour the curse out,
turn it into care.
Give me cities of walls,
stack word on word into towers.
Poems know games
prose cannot imagine;
this is why prose
keeps poems around.
I’m the blue in the glass,
I am the questions.
I am the poem
you could not write.
But poems are such stains
as only death can bleach;
there are questions no poem
can answer. Speak only in prose.

The Final Pouring

At the moment of the final pouring
the glass melts; furnace heat destroys
use, introduces possibility.
Melting glass, bubbling,
waiting to be formed
and twisted, like waves
of words spilling like juice.
In the final pouring,
see such shape as
may be made and quick
as smoke rise.

The Spilled Poem

During the party the host
writes a poem on his coaster,
then spills his wine to hide it.
It bleeds onto the rug, spilled wine,
but the deep pile white shag
reminded me of the sea.
I meant to choose berber
because the stain wouldn’t show.

“The Body Curled, like a Comma”

The body curled like a comma
takes its pause as light grows dim,
for feet like a question mark,
the curve of toes that say, “When?”
The body curled like a comma
offers a pause in the muddle of chaos,
smoke clouding my memory, my body
curled in arms, in hope, a comma,
a paisley comma, upside down tear
with a curl. Breathe between
thoughts, balancing
on the comma,
resting on hope.
Periods are like gunshots
through the heart.
Colons twist in the belly.
This is my punctuation,
pause and eat,
and remember me.

I met him by email, and before I knew what was happening, James Cummins had challenged me to a game of six. Six words he chose, which I was charged to use as end-words in a sestina. I will never know why those six, except that he is a terrifically fun and mischievous person.

“I have an article due today,” I told him, “and I’m targeting to finish a book in the next few weeks, but I’m sure I’ll have time to look up Delft and avoirdupois sometime before then.”

These were words he apparently carried around in his pocket, along with four others: tea caddy, Betjeman and Barton (my fault, I gave him that in the email that preceded his challenge), rosewood, and porcelain.

I closed the email and tried to work on my article. I fiddled around with thoughts of my book. But the six words and the challenge wouldn’t go away. So I forfeited a Friday morning to answer him. A few hours later I told him, “Now you know something about me. I can never pass up a challenge.” Which isn’t exactly true, but it’s true enough when something strikes my fancy.

You can see my answer to his proposal here, at The Best American Poetry.

When you get to The Best American Poetry, you’ll see that I could not resist a counter-challenge. What’s good for the goose, as they say. Without telling James about my source material, I chose six words from Anne Doe Overstreet’s poem “Compass Rose,” and he wrote a poem that made me smile. Yes, I had to torture (um, tease) him by including the word Puye in his six. :)

Here is Anne’s poem, which he secretly worked from. And, btw, he thanked me later for my kindness in choosing Puye. You’ll see why in a moment…

Jim’s poem What Remains
LL’s poem Proposal

Post by L.L. Barkat. Visit L.L. at Seedlings in Stone, for more on writing, poetry, art and life.
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Subscribe to Every Day Poems— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In July we’ll be exploring sestinas.

My favorite poetic form, the sestina, gives me space to explore implication. Most often what happens is that inspiration visits for a moment. The one in which I decide I’ve stayed up too late talking. The one on the lawn of an old school dorm in winter. The one with a sidelong glance on sunny beach. When that moment of inspiration strikes, I can be lucky to cull a few well-formed lines before the muse whirls elsewhere.

Left to craft what I’ve been granted, I hone the February buds of insight—most often, for me, statements of an internal tension: I’ve been asking myself the same question, or Tell me everything you remember, or I still remember just how you look / naked. I work them until they’ve coalesced into a brief set of lines – and, then, I stop. Drop the matter. Sometimes it’s only a couple sentences, probably more fragments than anything else.

And it’s when I come back to those lines – an hour, a month or four later – that I count lines or adjust for rhythm, tailoring so those moments reveal as six changeable lines – because six is the sestina’s magic number. Think of your first stanza as a six-shooter, a revolver, and you start asking yourself how you will load it. Settle on a variety of words to end lines in ways that offer versatility in meaning and syntax. My favorite are often infinitive verb forms, because they double well as nouns. Example: question. It works well as an action, and equally well as an almost tangible thing.

Next comes the retrogradatio cruciata. If it sounds like J. K. Rowling magic, you can be sure it has a similar power. Each of those end words from the first stanza are rearranged in a very specific pattern. If we begin with end words 1 through 6, stanzas two and following look like this:

6 1 5 2 4 3 / 3 6 4 1 2 5 / 5 3 2 6 1 4 / 4 5 1 3 6 2 / 2 4 6 5 3 1

The final stanza pairs end words into a tercet – a three line stanza, where one word is embedded within the line and its partner ends the line, like this: 6 and 2 / 1 and 4 / 5 and 3

Seem complicated? I hope not. Once the words are in the order described above, you’re job is more than done for you. All you have to do is fill in the blanks, flesh out the lines with as much creativity and mischief you can conceive.

Is a word not working the way you want it to? Suppose you ended a line with the word there, and you’re already getting tired of it. Split it to reveal an embedded word. Maybe a line could read “She arrived to Bath ere / she knew…” Now you’ve got a real, specific place to work with, without breaking form. And don’t forget homophones! You have at least two more built-in possibilities to there. (Their, they’re :))

Okay, nuts and bolts aside, if I feel a strong emotional charge in that first stanza, I can be tempted to go on and on, dwelling wherever the muse met me, without going further – or just leave it there – without offering much depth. I’ve found the sestina often draws something deeper from me in its mathematical process. It prompts me to elaborate, without explaining, as the original concept shifts like a Rubik’s cube over its course.

What I mean when I say the sestina allows space for implication is that the versatility of language is explored more readily in this form, the nuances of a very special split-second are offered the opportunity to stand in relief. All poetry should call attention to the importance of the moment, pausing the speed of life to discover the degrees of joy and sorrow in each second of the day. I’ve found, for me, the sestina reminds me to practice poetry as so much mindfulness.

Post by David K. Wheeler. For more on books, book-selling, and poetry, visit him at Dave Writes Right.

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Further Resources, for Teachers or Writer’s Groups:

Poetic Form: Sestina
Write Your First Sestina: It’s a Matter of Pride
Subscribe to Every Day Poems— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In July we’ll be exploring sestinas.

One of the things I love about doing Every Day Poems is the way it brings various parts of my life together.

This morning, Claire Burge wrote to thank me for running her photo with today’s poem, and I wrote back, “Thank YOU for letting me use it.”

Claire is our photo editor for The High Calling, but she was first a friend. And now I feel like we are creative collaborators, simply by virtue of her willingness to let me say, “I’ve got this poem. I wonder, have you got a photo?”

Since Claire is originally from South Africa, and I had a poem set there, of course I had to ask, “Claire, do you happen to…” She did. I had a hard time choosing from the selections she sent. Somehow this one seemed perfect for a poem called “The Looking.” Don’t you think?

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Post by L.L. Barkat. Visit L.L. at Seedlings in Stone, for more on writing, poetry, art and life.

Subscribe to Every Day Poems— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In July we’ll be exploring sestinas.

Below are an additional five poems from our recent Twitter poetry party. All of the prompts came from Harvesting Fog: Poems by Luci Shaw. And there are more to come.

The Cinnamon Beetle 2

By @memoriaarts, @mdgoodyear, @llbarkat, @EricSwalberg, @luci_shaw, @gyoung9751, @RuminateMag, @mrsmetaphor, @doallas, @LoveLifeLitGod, @nmdr_, @KathleenOverby, @Sand_RAD, @mxings, @mmerubies, @charsingleton, @CherylSmith999, @lauraboggess, and @VinaMist. Cameo appearances by @LuvStomp, @poemblaze and @annkroeker. Edited by @gyoung9751. 

I open every window

I open every window to entice air,
draw in the scent of orange and lemon;
air flows in, wafted on beetle wings.
I open windows, cracked and splintered
like paltry words that can’t remember.
Air flows, a summertime breeze
cleansing a past of pain, the air hot
on skin, the spice of clove and cinnamon
pregnant with wishing, a fragrant peel,
bitter pith, promised sweetness
midst green leaves.
And when the window opened,
the winged bug flew out and up
through the scented air, pulling
the scented air after him,
through the window
into night.

Tattoo my soul

Tattoo my soul
with a love that never fades,
with a mark that never grays,
with an ink that forever prays.
The tattoo burns for but a moment,
while the artist speaks of Christ’s blood.
Tissue paper skin the tattoo won’t tolerate
no matter how thick the resolve.

I desire a coaster
to hold the glass
to hold the blue tattoo;
the blue tattoo
I had of you
has turned an angry red.
No tattoo can hide
the hand print bruise,
the cinnamon stroke,
the bloodstream broke.
I desire beetles tatooed
emerald against the glass.

My lover’s name

Lemon, orange, paprika,
my lover’s name is every spice.
They say cats hate the smell
of oranges so I line my garden
with them, damn cats. they circle
my porch, shifty eyes, soft paws,
strays as if I am the interloper;
perhaps I am.

We sit by the open window
and speak of oranges and
the scent of black tea,
of jasmine rice and the exhaust
of tired cars. Carve me angels
and bull dogs and my lover’s name.
The talk turns to food because
it always does.

Christmas in July heat

Christmas in July heat,
Santas stuffed in plastic,
attics full of tissue and
tolerance and mangers
without stars. Who can
remember stars when
cinnamon distracts
at every open window?
In time, in time, when
the children arrive
coming on a Christmas morn
hungry, hungry
for cinnamon buns,
cinnamon buns
cinnamon buns
when will I bake my
cinnamon buns?
Cloves and cinnamon
cinnamon and cloves
Christmas in warm fragrance.

The Word in the stars

The Word was the stars
the stars our desire
constellation of life lived.
Desire itself is a constellation,
low in the sky on winter mornings.
Stars entice, invite my soul
to wonder, and speaking of stars,
what fortune do they hold
this morning, rent as I
from long sleep rise.
I heard the stars tasted
of raspberry sweet, lips
enfolding Word made universe.
The word desire itself is written
on a beetle’s back, so small.

This morning, Megan Willome wrote to me about today’s Every Day Poems selection.

“An ode to fly fishing, perhaps?” she asked, and finished by saying she knew there was more to the poem but these were the lines that drew her.

I have been thinking about this all morning. I began by writing back to Megan, to say that somehow I had focused on the fishing when I first read the poem, but today, receiving it in my inbox, I had seen the sleep instead. I also said that I was compelled by “the thought that maybe it was Mare who was fishing, or the poet herself.”

This did not come on the first reading, or the second, or the third… and so on. I think I must have read the poem ten times before saying this to Megan.

Now, writing this, I am struck by the word “lines” in the poem and in fact am more convinced than ever that the piece is about poets as much as it is about Mare’s lover.

Or maybe the poem is about the reader. After all, who does the poet catch with her line, but you and me, while we are unsuspecting? And who does the poet draw, but us, sleeping? When we finally wake, we become the trout, caught and compelled.

Megan wrote back to me and said, “A good poem does that—offers multiple gifts upon multiple readings.” Yes.

Poem by Anne M. Doe Overstreet. From her new collection, Delicate Machinery Suspended.
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Subscribe to Every Day Poems? Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In July we’re exploring sestinas. Upcoming months’ themes include resolutions, the color red, and roses. But in August we’re exploring sonnets!

We had a Twitter poetry party last Thursday, and the prompts were taken from Harvesting Fog: Poems by poet and writer Luci Shaw. And – a special treat – Luci Shaw herself joined in the jam.

Somehow, Legos, cinnamon beetles, tattoos and open windows became the focus of the early part of the session. And if for no other reason than we like the name “cinnamon beetle” to say out loud (not to eat), here are the first three poems from the session.

The Cinnamon Beetle
By @memoriaarts, @mdgoodyear, @llbarkat, @EricSwalberg, @luci_shaw, @gyoung9751, @RuminateMag, @mrsmetaphor, @doallas, @LoveLifeLitGod, @nmdr_, @KathleenOverby, @Sand_RAD, @mxings, @mmerubies, @charsingleton, @CherylSmith999, @lauraboggess, and @VinaMist. Cameo appearances by @LuvStomp, @poemblaze and @annkroeker. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Prism light on a beetle’s wing

Prism light on a beetle’s wing:
beetle, shiny as the lego coaster car
my son is yelling at me to help him build.
Build the car; build it with wings
coast to Byzantium.

Beetles eat rainbows, memories
of you and me.
beetles yawn at days
as ours spin by
building fragile lego lives

Prism light on a beetle’s wing:
colors caress the curve,
climbing with secrets to share
But the ladybugs are shy,
reticent and lonely.

Who can be lonely
in Byzantium? Only near
the ruins where the beetles
pick their way. I watch the beetle
slouching to Byzantium.

Prism light on a beetle’s wing:
That is no place for old cars
with tired wings and weary drivers
puttering to Byzantium. They smell
the rotting flesh of centuries.

In a noisy lego world
with too many bricks and
not enough plans, old cars will fold
their wings like beetles,
spidering their way to sleep.

Prism light on a beetle’s wing:
the rays bisect my shoulder,
refracting rainbows of muscle
and bone. Beetles will always be
strangers to bone, sinew, bloodflow.

Carapace shimmers, splits dark mist;
wings sputter to life,carrying off
the rainbow. Expose a bone to the wind
and the beetle’s eye appears, a Sphinx
dressed in purple and pink stripes.

Prism light on a beetle’s wing:
On forgotten streets
I creep along in your maze
of memories found, hiding beneath
iridescent skin wet with tears.

I dreamed I was a tattoo

We yawn and turn to take our tea
a carapace split of memory,
a tattoo of love, mysterious to read
a carapace of forgotten dreams,
dreaded burden, rainbow hope shards.

I dreamed I was a tattoo,
sinking beneath the skin
In what dark alleys will
you find the right tattoo
that speaks of love?

Like spiderswho wish only to fly
we turn and yawn into our tea,
leaves too mysterious to read.
Lift the curtain too and
the skirted cloth at the table.

You drove under my skin
labyrinth tattoos from heart,
mind, longing, soul, tattoos
of love, stained blue, stained red
always red/stained emerald and azure.

We forget we bleed when the needle
hits the skin. I dreamed my skin
was tattered writhing under a tattoo,
burning through to my soul;
a paltry thing.

Tattoo coda

Ask not for whom the tat-toos
It tat-toos for three
But even tattoos cannot survive
unless they have wings.
To tat or not to tat?
The question had to be asked.
Next question:
to tweet or not to tweet.

Below are the final five poems from the recent Twitter poetry party. The prompts for the jam were all taken from Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems by Maureen Doallas.

By @llbarkat, @Dancinbutterfly, @mmerubies, @doallas, @jejpoet, @lschontos, @lauraboggess, @SandraHeskaKing, @amykiane and @LoveLifeLitGod. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Celestial Seizures

I seize the moon;
will the moon seize me?
God bless the moon,
God seize me.
The stars sprinkle the sky with light,
sending brilliant flashes into the night.
The moon seizes the mermaid
on her voyage to the stars.
Splashes of moonbeams on silvery tides
chase fallen stars into the night,
moonbeams that beg to be unwoven
just to reach the silver lining.
“Seize the day,” urged the ancient bard
to the boy. “Sees the day,” muttered
the moon about the sun.

Words on a Summer Night

Before you drink the red night,
before you are washed away
into the endless night,
thread your words carefully
on silken thread, praying
all the while they bring grace.
My own words did I recognize
early on but thought to hold
my tongue; regret
and bitterness ate them,
bitterness on a night
pitch black but woven.
with light from a thousand fireflies,
There is so much I would say,
could but never should say.
I’ll hold the thread
till the hills stop singing
those dreams of children
on summer nights.

In my dreams

In my dreams a blue Chinese jar
and a silver fish and mermaids
dancing with the moon
make perfect sense without
my consciousness being in the way.
I want to splash in this water,
spray the earth with silver drops
under the moon and weave together
earth and sky with drops of gold,
moonbeams melting on fins
and little silvered things.
My morning coat is blue
and white; I open it,
reveal a fin.

The White Rabbit

White rabbit it is
who took the jar
that held the elixir
that made the silver fish
shine.

Follow him down the rabbit hole;
a land filled with talking cards
and mad hatters awaits.
Why make sense
when rabbits race
and jars ting
and the hills now ring
graced with silver fish?

The elixir’s spent. What game
might then be played
to while the hours
before a rabbit dressed
in morning coat arrives.
Hahahaha laughs
the Cheshire cat, vanishing
(or avoiding).

And the queen sipped tea
and Alice longed for home
and the rabbit oh so late.
The screams of teapots
just too steamed started
a fight, a battle, white
against red that caused
poor Alice terrible dreams.

The battle nobody wins until
grief and pride and self thins.
Alice sidles to the takeout
Window, asks for fries and coke
to ease the battle but
the counter window is closed,
shut tight. Poor Alice grumped;
she’d take her lumps.

A spot of tea:
(elixir’s better)
rabbit would know
why not to snicker.
Twas our pleasure,
said the Queen,
to be re-enchanted, to listen
to the rabbit coming up for air,
no room to spare,
to take a breath between.

Fast Food Reading

Reading Goodnight Moon
is not like stopping
at McDonald’s.
Goodnight reading is
more filling than
goodnight eating.
Red balloons on burgers
float sesame seeds on buns
galumphing to the clouds.
Enjoy the meal of ketchup packets;
such kisses as Red Queen
might favor on her lips
unsullied by a coke and chips.
Who needs cents
when McDonald’s loves your lines,
will take you for 99 and
fly away on french fry wings?

You live a life, or perhaps you’ve lived half your life, according to the mortality statistics. To understand the second half, you must first understand the first. To do that, you turn to a variety of tools: memory, questioning, affection and gratitude, love and faith, consideration of jobs held and work done, playfulness and keen, honest, detailed observation.

If you’re poet Anne Overstreet, you do these things and you create Delicate Machinery Suspended: Poems, poetry about a life observed, but also about the life to come. And it is a beautiful collection indeed.

Consider the sorting of a deceased relative’s household, from “Day of the Dead:”

I leave my husband there in Maricopa at one with its bank,
one diner, one gas station, to sort through the almost empty
house that I can’t bear to face. We’ll take what we can use

and forsake the hollow egg collection, a leather glove that
needed a running stitch to close a rent. There’s a lacquered box
one of her nieces made, quite ugly, mouth framed by stiffened

Sargent series brushes (No. 8). A mobile of red-crested cranes
eddies and tinks like a quartet of tuneless pianos. Soon we’ll be
six states away from where we last broke bread with her…

Is this what life comes down to, the poet seems to ask: an almost empty house, a hollow egg collection, an ugly lacquered box and a mobile? In the second part of the poem, the poet escapes into nature but doesn’t find the needed contrast:

Down the road a few miles I pull off and pace the trickle
they call a river around here, fading into the ground
in posts like train song. In the language of leaving

there is no returning migration of snow geese,
the peregrination of a red hawk turns
only clockwise, and marigolds come into their own

only on the day of the dead; there is no other color like theirs.
My eye thinks chromium yellow. But, perhaps not.
In the grebe’s nest among the river-reed bower, in the shroud

of the snake skin tossed to the side like a T-short at bedtime,
the abandoned speak their half-shaped language,
the life gone out of them as it always does.

The scene shifts, but the reality, in all of its intricate detail, remains startlingly similar. The empty house with its remnants of a life lived, and the “trickle they call a river around here” both suggest much about our mortality. Overstreet observes with the camera’s eye, capturing detail and nuance like filmmaking close-ups, a technique she uses in poems like “If It Doesn’t Rain Soon” as well, where her eye shifts from a man walking along a street to traffic passing a lounge and a video store, a woman sitting in a lawn chair, a snapshot of activity at a fire station, and a neighbor sitting at a kitchen table, and through each scene the suggestion of heat, humidity and needed rain. It’s an arresting approach, this camera eye moving quickly, capturing the sense of what this moment is like, assimilating and understanding.

This close and careful observation can be seen throughout the volume’s poems. Here is the description of a “Rental,” (which took me back almost four decades to my first apartment in an old building):

Dust sifts through the floorboard
gaps, settles along a lintel
that has begun to pull back
from the doorway. Everything
that could be done on the cheap,
by hand, is letting go,
having done enough and more.
Old glass warps and blurs the street
into a torrent of chrome. We’ve learned
to listen to what the stairs say,
for water in the walls, for mice.
This house eases and groans
under a roof that keeps the two of us,
the cat, and a view of the cedar
flexing and stretching in the wind
for as long as its roots hold.
We can afford agreement
of nail and plaster and wood
to hold, for now, together.

This is a home in an old building, of course, but it is also more –it is a life, a family and relationships, holding together by agreement and observation. Here, as in many of Overstreet’s poems, one also finds a subtle affection and even gratitude for the people who have helped create this life the poet knows.

The poems can be simultaneously playful and serious, as when they do a slight retelling of the “Little Red Riding Hood” fairy tale, in “Sleeping in Grandmother Wolfe’s House” and “Red #9.” You smile as you read them, and then the smile gives way to serious consideration. Overstreet is not simply retelling a fairy tale; she is considering what fairy tales mean in dream-like renderings.

This same playful-yet-serious sense of life is seen in one of the most beautiful poems of the collection, “Soufflé,” which begins as a description of the preparation of a soufflé but becomes an incredible love poem.

This collection, Overstreet’s first, displays a command of language, style and content that is deeply affecting. You are watching a series of scenes filmed with the eye of an artist. And what she paints in Delicate Machinery Suspended of her life observed is a beautiful and wondrous thing.
___

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Here are five additional poems from our recent Twitter poetry party, with prompts taken from Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems by Maureen Doallas. Something unusual happened with this group during the Twitter stream of lines; you’ll see it in the last two poems.

Alice and the Chinese Jar 4

By @doallas, @llbarkat, @jejpoet, @mmerubies, @lschontos, @lauraboggess, @LoveLifeLitGod, @amykiane, @SandraHeskaKing, @Dancinbutterfly and @bibledude. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Song of the Mermaid

My hopes and dreams seem
too big for this world;
I’m limited, cut off, yet
every song wants,
which is why I sing,
my lock of hair, wearing thin,
becoming a memory.
Didn’t you want me to hold you?
Wasn’t I cast for this very moment?
Anchor! Anchor? Why do you hold
me so tight? she cried.
And the mermaids laughed
and the fish swam
past and I wanted them,
I wanted them.
I dip my finger in the moon,
in the hair of the blue mermaid
in shadow tales, in tales of woe
The sea swallows them up in mystery.

Silver Fish

I dip my finger in the ocean
to make it rise; however
imperceptibly, I alter
the surface of the earth.
Unseen, unknown
that which is thrown returns
on the backs of silver fish.

Their tears run upon their scales
on silver backs of light, a flash
of light, a turn of tail, tales told
of depths we long to plumb.

The fish are just now swimming
up the silver creek, their silver backs
waving you on, soft flashing.
Silver fish dim, their light
beneath a moon grown heavy
The sky breathes light,
shadows dance alone.

Fireflies ride the fish,
brilliant lantern cowboys
with wings. I will catch you;
I don’t need a reel or a thread
or the dead of night
just a simple jar and
a song.

What would you hear,
in the splash of a silvery tide?

The Eye of the Moon

The falling night
brings stars unseen,
what would you see
in the eye of the moon?

I ‘d see that the eye of the moon
would see the eye of me.
I am Stella, I am star,
I am the only light
that you could ever be .

Is she fighting for me?
Is she hoping I’ll be
the one to kill our devilry?
Stella, do you fight for me?

Stars whisper songs of want,
crying out to their creator
who holds them high
to the dark night sky.
Stella Luna, your eyes are white.

White eyes
like a chalice tipped,
the moon dips out his light.
Stella catches it
in her silver chalice,

wanting what she denied, that love,
its magic might she work on one not left.
And how long before this moment
becomes yesterday and I’m forced
to catch another?

Grandma, you can have my wings
By @mmerubies

In my past, two great grandmothers, married men and birthed children. One was a midwife and chose the life/of a healer. The other woman killed the life inside herself/coat-hanger abortion/shrinking outhouse walls. Grandma, you can have my wings. These yin and yang women gave life to Stella and Willie and they birthed Frank and Frank emptied himself into me. And now I have those warring women in my mind, birthing and killing with every violent raping breath. The waiting and waiting never seems to end. You only think you have a boundary-line that keeps you from making that mistake, the one others made before you.

Heather, child, you are haunted and you know it. Stop fighting her. And just let go.

I kiss your pearly throat, when you gulp, and I whisper there are pills, pills that I can get for you. You throw these words back at me, shattering glass as they fall. But I keep whispering, and sometimes, you almost seem to listen. You wrote about the fireflies in the Mason jar, but you forgot to tell how you are trapped there with them, with their pretty lights. I have changed you, with my fingers on your skin. I have changed everything about, exactly who you are, and no one cares but me.

Grandma, are you laughing at me, knowing I am no match for the curse your Jehovah came to be?

Off meds,
obsessive brain,
perverse images stuck
and cannot be dislodged.
I trace the lines of your unscarred wrist,
and I consider slicing it. Open like a fish.
Gutted.
I won’t win though. I know I won’t win.
Even as I stroke your golden hair
and nurse at your healing breast,
I know I will lose.

I sing my song
By @Dancinbutterfly

I sing my song
of wanting to hear
little feet , a child’s
laughter.
I sing my song
of wanting to God,
wanting a house
to call my own
wanting to give
my grandparents back
all they have given to me.