Laughing Dove Poetry

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Poetry Gong #1 – Day 2 – Accidents

October 14th, 2010 by Tamra
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Today’s Big Tent Poetry poem is a rewrite from something I wrote last week, but the rewrite is inspired by Marcia Popp’s Accidents. The form is haibun, a combination of prose and haiku.

Accidents

Like the river
that has jumped its banks
we are alive to new opportunities.

We – a small crowd of students, workers, and pensioners – line up in the slim edge of shade along the side of the locked bus. The driver arrives 10 minutes late and pulls the bus forward 40 feet, forcing us to shuffle, limp, and sprint to the new loading zone. This bus is old, without air conditioning and only a few benches inside. While we find our way to seats or straps or grab bars, the driver takes off, and the bus lurches and sways to its first intersection where the driver turns right instead of left.

Snags along the bank
extend like hands
to give, to receive.

The passengers are silent as the bus barrels up the wrong hill. One by one, emissaries approach the driver. The discourse escalates from polite questions to attempts to reason to yelling. Finally he pulls over to the curb and makes a phone call. He opens the doors, and the breeze cools us. We fall silent again. Outside, a woman has collapsed on the curb, and her purse and packages lie spilt at her feet. Yellow and red leaves swirl around her. Passersby try to help, but she trembles and cries and doesn’t know what to do with their concern.

Leaves, distracted
by the whims of the air,
still fall.

Our driver, having received his answer, closes the doors and merges into the traffic. We relax when he moves into the left hand lane, makes a u-turn, and heads back down the hill. We end at the beginning.

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Poetry Gong #1 – Day 1

October 13th, 2010 by Tamra
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I think I’ll join in this 7 day challenge – New to You – from the folks at Big Tent Poetry. For the daily inspirations, I’ll probably use the daily poem from The Writer’s Almanac, in the case, Paul J. Willis’ Common Ground.

Wilderness

Today I planted rosemary in the no-man’s land
between my house and my neighbor’s.
My grandmother planted sage
at the end of the back sidewalk
where it marked the boundary between her house
and The Neal Motor Company where my grandfather
and his two sons sold Studebakers and repaired cars.
My grandfather died the year before I was born,
but his sons kept the business going for a few more years,
and those I remember: the smell of gasoline and grease,
steel and rubber, the clank and grind of tools,
and the smell of sage as we went back and forth.
“It ain’t no good no how,” she used to say,
whether about the cooking, the weather, or the business
I never knew. But then the business was sold,
and the sage forgotten, except on Thanksgivings
when she would send me out to collect
a few sprigs from the wilderness.

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Persimmon Tree

September 15th, 2010 by Tamra
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Persimmon Tree , published in association with Mills College in Oakland, CA, is an online magazine of the arts by women over sixty. In the section About Us, they say:

“Persimmon Tree, an online magazine, is a showcase for the creativity and talent of women over sixty. Too often older women’s artistic work is ignored or disregarded, and only those few who are already established receive the attention they deserve. Yet many women are at the height of their creative abilities in their later decades and have a great deal to contribute. Persimmon Tree is committed to bringing this wealth of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art to a broader audience, for the benefit of all.”

I am privileged to have two poems included in the International Poetry section of Persimmon Tree‘s Fall 2010 issue. Click on over and browse through this month’s fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and art. I especially liked the Recent Prints by Elizabeth Catlett in the Arts section.

Speaking of persimmons reminds me of this poem from a few years ago .

House with Persimmons by Andreas Caranti

November

Yellow leaves
limp as rags
fall away,
000
and the disheveled fringes
of black branches
scribe swift arcs
against the shuttered house.
000
Tucked in
close to the trunk
hang persimmons
glowing like embers in ash.
000

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Old Poems Find New Homes

May 22nd, 2010 by Tamra
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Two of my poems have found new homes. Both Sides of the Tracks now resides at Duke City Fix’s Sunday Poem, and Paradise can be found in A Handful of Stones. Pay them a housewarming call!

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Sin Fronteras

April 22nd, 2010 by Tamra
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I have a poem, The Hakawati, in the latest issue of Sin Fronteras, Writers without Borders, Volume 14. Unfortunately for six of the poets included in the issue, our names are attributed to the wrong poems. The editors have done everything they can to make amends, so don’t let that stop you from ordering your copy from the website or, if you are in New Mexico, from buying it in your local bookstore. It will contain an errata so that you can find my poem.

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Pie

March 17th, 2010 by Tamra
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This is my response to two Read Write Poem prompts, #117 and #118. I began with Zachary Schomberg’s Create A Hinge prompt, but couldn’t get the poem finished. This week’s Wordle prompt helped me to edit the poem. I’m still not happy with the ending, but it’s all I’ve got.

Pie
888
Summers we drank iced tea while the pies cooled,
and winters we sipped sweet milky coffee
from turquoise cups at the modern table,
round, black and white. A fern in the corner,
a starburst clock and an overhead lamp
that rose and fell on an elastic cord.
888
We played rum, and you told family tales
full of caution and fumbled metaphors.
Of the cooling pies, there were always two,
always one with meringue, and the meringue,
whipped into shape by the cook, never fell,
although it sometimes wept. While the pies cooled,
888
I grew up and went away to college
where, one day in the bookstore among piles
of books in dark solid hues and supplies
spilling like nonpareils over counters,
I stole a twenty-five cent pencil, bright
and unblemished, as pointed as your wit.
888
But theft, it turned out, was a furtive thrill
that failed to restore our afternoons, our pie.

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The Resting Step

December 18th, 2009 by Tamra
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Read Write Poem Prompt #105 was a Wordle. I used some of the words and some synonyms for some of the words, but I didn’t use all of the words. For instance, wind shows up as breath and sigh. Meteors became falling stars, pulled became hoisting. Backs morphed onto backpackers. The only thing left of the trees is their fallen fruit. and the stars are only implied by the sky. The moon led me to minaret. You get the idea.

wordle-105b

The Resting Step

Backpackers don’t neglect the tiny rest that lies
between two steps, a rest the space of a breath.
In that moment, they gain strength from shells
that pierce and mosses that curl around stone.
They taught me that the way to climb was not
by hoisting myself up, but by setting one foot
before me and straightening my leg, moving
forward and upward with a syncopated sway.

Near the top of this hill lies, almost like a sigh,
a clearing with a view of the water, the bridges,
the minarets, where once in spring orchids flared
like falling stars, and once in autumn silent crows
feasted on the fallen fruit before lifting skyward,
and in between the two, a point of abiding rest.

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Southwest

December 10th, 2009 by Tamra
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Read Write Poem Prompt #104 was called How to Write the Sex Poem Right. That’s right. The Sex Poem. Two of my favorite sex poems are Pattiann Rogers’ The Hummingbird: A Seduction and Billy Collins’ Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes. I modeled my poem, perhaps too literally, on Pattiann Rogers’ poem. I don’t like the last line, but it is stuck in my head like a drumbeat.

Southwest
with appreciation and apologies to Pattiann Rogers

If I were a solitary alcove
in a parched sandstone cliff,
my angles worn away by age,
empty and hollowed like a drum,
my history open and faded
to pale rose and gold, tinged
with purple like an old map,
and if you were a cloud on my horizon,
a white spot in the brilliant blue sky,
gray shadows on your jowls,
*
And if I watched you pull away
from the thundering mass and sail
my way, billowing and expansive
with every scrap of moisture
you could pull into your sudden desire,
*
And if I saw the way you held true
to your intention, did not release
your rain too soon or too high,
but drove straight across the plain,
bristling and alive with electricity,
*
Then when you came to me, I would
call you my own sky, my turquoise stone,
my storm; I would touch the million prisms
caught in your nimbus, and I would
taste the sparks in each furrow; I would
give thanks for the whirling center of you,
and I would take you into any kind
of drum and dance you desired.

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Just Michal

December 4th, 2009 by Tamra
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Michal at Gran Quivira

Michal at Gran Quivira

It looks like a love of words runs in the family. My 9-year old grandson, Michal, wrote this “I am from” poem for a school assignment. Here is an interview with Michal followed by his poem.

Laughing Dove: What was your inspiration for this poem?

Michal: The poem is about who I am and where I came from.

LD: What is your favorite part of the poem?

M: I like the last stanza about who I ended up.

LD: Where do you go to school?

M: Desert Willow Family School in Albuquerque, NM.

LD: What is your favorite subject at school?

M: I love science and my science teacher Mrs Devon.

LD: Do you ever read poetry? What poems do you like?

M: Yes, my favorite poetry comes from music.  I like poems that rhyme and sound like a song.

LD: What book are you reading now?

M: I am rereading Eragon.  It is all about dragons.  I like fantasy books.

Just Michal

I am from nuts and bolts
and ratchets too.
I am from anything
that racers do.

I am from bits and bytes
and computer noise
and organized rooms
with lots of toys.

I am from strong people
with helping hands
making big changes
across the lands.

I am from orange balls
that shoot through hoops
and tennis shoes
where I can’t seem to tie loops.

I am from hope and love
that comes straight from above.
I am from dragons and fantasy
Just close your eyes and imagine me.

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Pomegranate

November 18th, 2009 by Tamra
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The prompt for Read Write Poem #101 included a whole bunch of p-words. I added some of my own.

Pomegranate

Its small prickly crown, more like a jester’s hat,
lies on the cutting board. Even now, it gives me pause,
this rough-skinned fruit that looks as if
it has been too long in the wind and sun.

Like Persephone, I split my time between two worlds.
Did she know, I wonder, the trick of opening
a pomegranate in a basin of water so that juice
doesn’t splatter the wall or pool beneath the knife?

I plunge my thumbs through the rind, and break
the fruit apart, dislodging seeds – a plethora of seeds -
each surrounded by its own ruby sheath. This is,
after all, what I want, and enough to last the winter.

Pieces of white pith float on the water, and cling
to my cold fingers, but seeds sink to the bottom
of the basin where I will retrieve four, or seven,
or eight, and place them on my ready tongue.

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