Please enjoy today’s selection: “The Wider Rim” by Laura Grace Weldon, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Love Poems:

The Wider Rim

After dinner she untied her apron,
then she and my father danced
across scuffed linoleum
between table, sink, and stove.

Dressing for church meetings
and neighborhood parties my mother
wore a girdle, clip-on earrings, polyester dress.
My father wore the width of tie
and length of sideburns other men wore.

Bridge club meant sitting
at vinyl-covered card tables,
no conversation allowed during a hand.
Cups clinked against saucers, forks tapped on plates
almost as silently, afterwards.

As their days now slide
toward the funnel’s neck,
I see the wider rim.

My father tells my mother to hang on,
put your right foot here,
slide the walker,
put your other foot there.
Head hunched, she stops, her eyes
send a letter only he deciphers.

They traverse a slow path
chair to bathroom, bathroom to chair,
shuffling in sync. He says,
See, now you’re dancing Honey.

The post Poem of the Day (04-30-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Forms of Grief” by Diane Averill, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems from the Garden:

Forms of Grief

This rock wall contains no mortar.
At the bottom, a long, sedimentary
slab, darkened with soil and moss.
It was lively with tears when I first
laid it there for Lyle, who took his
own life in a little room on Castro Street
at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.
His closest friend, he told
his young daughter to call me fi rst.
Next, a row of sculpted stones to represent
the dogs who were my wordless companions.
Some are broken by the weight
of that above.
A large piece of petrified driftwood
for my memory of the boy
who died building a sand cave.
I remember when he and his
brother jumped on seaweed, popping it
and try not to think of lungs under
that weight of sand and his family’s
terrible grief. I wedge two whole
sand dollars between the driftwood,
and the magazine above it,
which is wrapped against the weather for my buddy, Joel,
the editor who died in Mexico. Broken
Mexican pottery instead of rocks for him.
He knew Spanish and his young lover’s kiss: two tongues.

Into the hardened ash from Mt. Saint Helen’s
eruption, I carve the words
mentor and ash for a poet-teacher I loved.
Little purple sedum brightens
in spring between some of the cracks
for the cousin who died young
of a birth defect. Laura could laugh,
love, and was loved, but was never
able to sit up or grow past the age of two.
Her name goes on in my daughter.
The heaviest rock of all I call Father,
who lived only to his late sixties
before suddenly collapsing
of a brain aneurism. A glass purple heart
goes next to his, one he received for
flying his glider onto French soil during the
Normandy invasion. The wounds he
would never talk about were shrapnel
in all of our lives. My little sister and I
slept in the same bed the night after he died.
Two small candy stripe flowers grow there.
Now I am past the age when my father died,
and I see signs of coming death in myself
and in those around me. In certain lights, those
in their late eighties turn into grey dust motes.
Aging is brutal, says Claire. One of my soul-sisters,
Pam, died of cancer. Too soon! Molly and I cried.
We were three, so I plant a trillium for us.
Wild sage I found slides into her river rock,
for her Portuguese hair,
green glass all around for her love of nature.

My arms are shaky, almost too old to place
my mother’s igneous rock on top.
She was a drama who loved the sea. A conch goes by her,
before a sudden force I didn’t know I had
pushes the whole wall over. Now I have a rock garden,
all the memories tangled together, whispering
among themselves. I mix ash into the soil so everything
grows well. Now there is room for poppies, spreading
vine-like flowers, foxglove, lupine, iris, tulips.

I throw delirious wildflower seeds everywhere
for new births. The ubiquitous they say I am losing
my memories, but I have so much more of them
than they could ever imagine.

The post Poem of the Day (04-29-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Leaning into the Wind” by Cynthia Linville, which appears in Poetica Erotica, Vol 1:

Leaning into the Wind

barefoot, long legs stretched beside me
you cross your toes with a sigh

a smile quirks at the corner of your mouth
eyes alight, hotter blue than the sky

expansive, your arms reach wide
your mask, a cheshire grin

your hands are birds in flight
inviting me to catch them

your three day stubble
invites my hand, my cheek

my tongue invited by
the slight gap between your teeth

my fingers itch to caress your scars
your knee, your side, your chin

flying, arms spread
I lean into you, as into a strong wind

The post Poem of the Day (04-28-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Plums” by Mariano Zaro, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon – Poems about Food:

Plums

My father wraps plums with newspapers.
I cut the pages in half. He wraps the plums.
We are in the attic. It’s summer.
We don’t talk. He rolls the fruits,
his fingers twist both ends of the paper.

It’s raining outside.

The plums look like wrapped candy.
He is meticulous, not too meticulous, just enough.
The plums have to be without nicks or cuts,
firm, not too ripe, unblemished.

The storms have been coming all afternoon.
That’s why my father is home;
he couldn’t go to the fields.

He ties the plums with a thin string,
like a necklace.
Five plums in each string, exactly five.
I don’t know why.
His hands inspect the fruit, twist the paper,
tie the knots, do the math.
I hide my hands under the newspapers.
He is on a ladder now.
He hangs the strings from a wooden beam in the ceiling.

I pass the strings to him.
One by one.
Sometimes, unintentionally,
my hand brushes his hand.
He leans his body against the ladder,
rests for a moment, cleans his sweat.

My father is old.
The strings dangle from the ceiling.
Plums in-waiting like dull,
modest Christmas ornaments.

Fruit for the winter, he says.
As if you could wrap the summer with newspapers.
As if you could wrap your father’s hands
for the future days of hunger.

The post Poem of the Day (04-27-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Creative Writing 101” by Matthew Lane Brouwer, which appears in Verse on the Vine Anthology:

Creative Writing 101

I forget I know anything about writing poetry

I forget I have written 500 poems

I forget there is a box beneath my bed
with twenty dusty journals in it

I forget the binders in my desk
where I have stockpiled poems
like ICBM’s

I forget my transcript has a line on it which reads
“Creative Writing”

I forget I know the definitions of terms like
heroic couplet and nonrestrictive clause

I forget there is an open mic

I forget there is a darkened room
where I have read 50 times

I forget that there are 50 people in it
with the candlelight of expectation in their eyes

I forget the compliments I have received
I forget that I would like to receive more

I forget the title of the book I’m writing in my head

I forget the vision of seeing it on some Barnes and Noble shelf

I pour my breaths into a glass with ice in it
and sip them slowly like vermouth
I study the whiteness of the walls

until the minutes halt their drip
I ask the poem if it thinks it knows
who I am

and it replies

I am not a birth certificate
nor the name written in the blank

I am not a bottle of formaldehyde
in which to place the heart

I am not the scalpel
nor the surgeon’s well-trained hands

I am not a magistrate
nor the stone of his decrees

I am the pavilion through which the breeze
might freely blow

I am the hardwood floor
on which the wedding parties dance

I am the mesh through which the sun
can peek its skull

I am the lattice up which the climbing vine ascends

I am the dissipation of the cloud
into tiny drops of rain

I write down the last shape
I think it takes

Put out an empty glass
wait to see what it collects

The post Poem of the Day (04-26-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “If Jimi Hadn’t Died So Young” by dan raphael which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems about Music:

If Jimi Hadn’t Died So Young

In this world Jimi Hendrix didn’t die at 27
but kept advancing his prowess on the guitar,
playing two at once, multiple strings. like Chaplin
he could do anything he did
backwards as well, and sometimes would start a song in the middle
and go 4 or 6 different ways from there,
ensphering himself and listeners
in shifting laminae of sound.

At a show in Philly most of the audience blacked out,
several suffered “stroke-like symptoms,” two disappeared.
With a lawsuit filed by a victim, the government seized Jimi’s guitars,
the Pentagon volunteering to study the evidence.
More guitars were built.
More people plugged into Hendrix
and played guitars several hours a day.
No one knew if Jimi was in jail, hiding, or if his playing
had opened new dimensions in vibratory time.

Are we still on the same world we started on?
What chords could I make with 9 strings and six fingers?
Reports of others disappearing while Hendrix played, with the feds
suppressing the total.
On March 1st
a 10 meter tall transparent creature emitting guitar-like sounds
shattered a 2 kilometer stretch of the great wall of China,
then vanished in a rancid fog.
In paranoid anticipation, guitarists cleared music store shelves
of strings.

The sun rose with ear splitting feedback surrendering
to an arpeggio of random vertebra,
nerve triggers ranging from St. Vitus to waltz, many unable to drive
coz theyre feet wouldn’t stay still. Radios were ignored, no ear buds
could keep out the panoply of music, bodies finding new limbs,
my feet trading myccorhizally while my suddenly tendriled hair
embraces the pollen filled sky, billions of microscopic notes
ready to bloom into life-expanding solos,
some neighborhoods so thick with music
you need neither amplifier or guitar, you and the air
collaborating symphonies
to take us where we never could be.

The post Poem of the Day (04-25-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Blaze” by Annie Lighthart, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems from the Garden:

Blaze

Suddenly the peonies are too much for themselves — heavy-headed,
huge and falling — not spent, but wildly spending
utter color, unfurling perfume, sure and reckless lavish.
May I come through like this someday,
come through to a vastness on my feet and running,
the old cart of thought abandoned on the road,
and love — the heat, the secret way across the border — laying me bare.

The post Poem of the Day (04-24-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Following Leonard Cohen’s Lead” by Karla Linn Merrifield, which appears in Poeming Pigeons: Poems about Birds:

Following Leonard Cohen’s Lead

                                ~ for Roger M. Weir
with a line from “Come Healing” (2012)

Hallelujah owl — the great horned who-bird
of Everglades pines, magisterial, mythical

by Equinox Eve half-moon, come
to gather up our brokenness on silent wings.

Hallelujah black-necked stilt
skating spring Equinox shallows,

score of more on skinny legs come
to gather up our brokenness, banish the hunger.

Hallelujah storks, hallelujah spoonbills —
woodies and pinkos of Parotis Pond’s

rookeries, dozens abuzz as if come
to gather up our brokenness with procreation.

Hallelujah, birds — we fly, we feed, we breed
the wild, our imagination made entire.

The post Poem of the Day (04-23-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Before I Gained All This Weight” by Molly Fisk, which appears in Verse on the Vine Anthology:

Before I Gained All This Weight

I was so self-conscious I could barely
walk into town for fear people
would stare. I thought I was hideous,
unlovable. Now I want to shake
that poor girl, even though it wasn’t
her fault, so afraid to be human —
rattle her cage of good grades, selftanning
lotion and green eye-liner,
fast-acting depilatory cream, tell her
to smile for God’s sake and kiss
the next boy she sees, life is shorter
than anyone imagines. Silver planes
plummet from clean skies, cancer gnaws
the marrow of even younger bones
than yours, wake up! There’s still time!
Everything around you is unbelievably
beautiful.

The post Poem of the Day (04-22-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Tracy Chapman” by David Jibson, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems about Music:

Tracy Chapman

Give Me One Reason presents a real challenge.
What reason, if I’m allowed only one,
would be good enough?

My granddaughter, who idolizes Ariana Grande,
asks me who is singing. I tell her.
Then she wants to know if it’s a man or a woman
because she can’t tell from the voice or the name.

I listen to Tracy strum and pick her way
through the sharps and sevenths
of her perfect blues progression.

I answer back to her,
“Give me one reason why it matters.”

The post Poem of the Day (04-21-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.