During my brief summer interlude between spring and summer semesters, I finished several poetry books in my swollen stack of "current reading", which was a relief considering I have been stubbornly reading some of them since Phoenix was an an infant (4.5 yrs ago). Reading poetry creates a wellspring and I want to make homes for the chipped and tattered sentences, to make poems from the bits I have been toting like so much mind flutter over the years. Subject headings and cataloging codes also spurn writing energies for me, but that's another story.
Wait, let me back up. I am usually engaging with poetry in some way even when I am ass-deep in creating PowerPoint presentations or writing research papers. It's not something I can ever turn off. Which is why I try to write down the bits (even when they piss me off, even when I am pushing my son's trike up a hill)because that's when it comes, that's when I need to write it or lose it.
So, I have bits. And fragments. And effluvia. And cloying word yuck clutter. Notebooks full. I'm tired of it. So, I'm shifting again. I called out to poets on Facebook to engage in a poem/prose swap and received a handful of responses. As people's availability shifts, poets are starting/leaving/rejoining the project. We have just begun, and it is currently just one other poet and I. This one on one exchange has been a unique experience as it differs so completely from a group MFA crit with all its requisite politics. We are exchanging poems via virtual means on an (almost) daily basis. This instantaneity has been an interesting form to work with. I am excited to continue the conversation and see how far it can go. We're open if you want to join in.
this is yesterday's poem:
The ardor a suture a wake
We shook the bones we carried your leaves
The song an insect choir a homicidal chanting, algae stirred
Even the grass of a brushstroke developed a hankering
After sex we washed the parts, we parted
Rubbing alcohol handshake, my shower curtain.
Later your remains on the freeway, disco fries and milkshakes.
Later your phone booth residue, habitual larvae jumping.
We shook the bones we carried your leaves
The song an insect choir a homicidal chanting, algae stirred
Even the grass of a brushstroke developed a hankering
After sex we washed the parts, we parted
Rubbing alcohol handshake, my shower curtain.
Later your remains on the freeway, disco fries and milkshakes.
Later your phone booth residue, habitual larvae jumping.
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