I spent the month of November watching Survivor and all things Grey Gardens, trying to recall what it means to cook and eat meals, beginning home projects and making messes, writing first thing most mornings with the Morning Writing Club (I hit 13,004 words which was less than my goal, but still), and trying to convince myself to go outside even though it’s cold and dark and the world is a mess.
But now it’s a new month! What is your December dream? What poetry will you live?
Behold five poems I found in the wild, i.e. the things that stopped me in my tracks and made me feeeeeel.
1. Little Edie
Everything this woman says, wears, and does is a poem and I am not exaggerating.
“The sun and the moon and all the things go on, in spite of man. He crumbles.”
“I can’t get the thumbtack in the wall. I think I have the saddest life.”
2. Millpictures.com
Jim Miller is a man who loves mills and taking photos of them and sharing them on the internet. He is also in a barbershop chorus. I am terribly happy for Jim and his mills.
3. Tornados
For me, reading and writing poetry involves willing away all of my emotional boundaries—the ones that exist to avoid overwhelm and allow daily function—in order to tap into the feelings and sensations that saturated an experience, whether mine or someone else’s.
That is how I feel reading this post about watching a tornado form—desperately trying to imagine emotions I probably haven’t felt.
4. Weather update from mom
Many moms, including mine, are dedicated amateur meteorologists. But not all updates read like the middle of haiku.
5. Poems in a field
We heard there’d be a poetry reading in a field. Directions led us to a wealthy suburb, then a No Trespassing sign and the shadow of a man behind it. “Turn right at the spidery tree,” he said. A cluster of people sitting on blankets in the dark. An industrial twinkle below us, faces lost beyond the glow of a single propane heater illuminating a halo of grass. I saw the silhouette of cigarettes lifted and lowered, lifted and lowered. Crouching in the cold, the poets read from the light of their phones and although I could not hear them I caught the heart of it anyway. Half of us went home and wrote about it in our notebooks.
I. There is no fire. There is no light. Just a flame, one single flame in a propane cup. It does nothing to our faces, shadows in a field, faces straining in the dark. None one of us has minded signs that say we can’t. And it’s not to be rude, it’s just that free will means everything and we’ve always been desperate for it.
II. I can’t stand being serious anymore. Please see this as fun and games, and know that when I’m laughing it’s not at you. I just find it funny I could drive anywhere I want.
III. In the dark, four cherries burn like asteroids. We’re afloat above the city and nothing else has ever existed. In heaven, you live in moonlight and listen forever to poems you can barely hear.