NB: (again)
March 17, 2011 § Leave a comment
Another thing to avoid in poetry: taking yourself too seriously. Ezra Pound did and look how he ended up.
guns on Sunday
March 3, 2011 § Leave a comment
Six rifles, six shotguns: I grew up with them. They remained unremembered until a year ago when the pond by the house was drained. The bottom of the pond was lined with a couple of inches of lead shot.
Six rifles and six shotguns in the den, not far from the TV and the fireplace. Their stocks were of the same wood that lined the walls and the floor. All the wood shined.
I touched one once, proving to my father at thirteen that I would never be able to shoot skeet one winter Sunday at the skeet range that he and my uncle had built around the pond. The clay pigeons whizzed past faster than I could aim the gun and I emptied two shells’ worth of shot in the direction of the water. The rest of my Sundays were spent inside.
The house is gone and the pond drained, the layer of lead shot and a few empty shotgun shells there for everyone to see, And now it has been a year, and the lead shot hauled away and contained. And now I remember the Sundays and the guns and my father who has been gone one more year.
And then I will confess
February 9, 2011 § 2 Comments
And then I will confess everything with a pencil in my hand and a scrap of cheap paper on the table in front of me. This is how you do it, the books tell me. Beg all the words out onto a page.
The cheap paper has thin blue lines on it to show me where to put the words. The mechanical pencil in my hand, almost forgotten, is chewed, even though Sister Michaella promised a real eraser to any girl who didn’t chew the end of her pencil shut.
I beg myself and the words come, sometimes. They come so slowly that I am not sure if they are mine or someone else’s, those of a brighter girl who had her hand up before mine.
And this writing of words that comes with thinking about what I have or have not done is peaceful, more peaceful than the day I lost myself all the way into the words and tapped the rhythms of them out onto my desk until the whole room watched.
sun in cold
February 2, 2011 § Leave a comment
even the sun not enough
to thaw my skin
still I love it
a night kitchen 