O-ho the NaPoWriMo Wagon is a-comin' down the street, Oh please let it be for Julie!

[5th column]

There is something touching in the depiction of the cat but it doesn't wander off into over sentimentality. I love the use of 'chirrups' which is perfect and a perfect contrast to the sound a cat should make. For me the close needs a little more to do justice to the balance but I'm sure others will love it just as it is.

Keep jogging on..

[Julie]

Thank you, Andrea and 5th column. I had a bad couple o fdays in there, but am now reinvigorated! RAARR!

[Rik Roots]

Sorry for not commenting on this thread earlier. Have been enjoying the poems on the blog thing. Gonna do a shout out for Walking To Work and Dogs in Photo Booths - but all of it brings stuff to the table and demands to be read.

Also: will there be a chicken poem this year?

[PClem]

Dog in Photo Booths - funny and endearing and so true.
Exhaust - love the play on words.
Flutter - one of the best break-up poems. The ambivalence comes through so well and the ending is fabulous.

[Julie]

Rachmaninoff

I remember holding my hand up
to his hand. A photograph or drawing,
or perhaps some Hollywood display
deep in cement. My hand is big,
no delicacy to its wide, square palm
like Mjolnir at the end of my wrist.

But his dwarfed mine, oh not like
Smilodon's teeth my teeth but like
Einstein's thoughts my thoughts.
Which, on further reckoning are more
Smilodon that I was admitting.

[Julie]

Wheelbarrow

I never had the strength, my hands deep
in the tough and tickling grass. Something
in my elbows always gave way and dropped

me on my face. I lost a tooth that way, the swift
collapse of arms and then my open mouth
jammed into the ground. Some grass went up

my nose. That's how I remember it, again
that attempt to race along upside down
bipedal, someone nameless gripping my feet

like loppers in a gardener's sweating hands.
But there were too many other crashes, too many
other teeth dangling bloody from a doorknob's string

or smacked on the monkey bars. And the ones
so patiently worked loose, twist, shove, the grip
of flesh finally letting go. Oh, I had dozens,

all of them right in the middle, in the front,
and each a dramatic tale of failure, of triumph,
of tripping and falling, of losing my balance,
and finding strange new spaces in my memory.

[Julie]

Frog and Beetle

I stalk around confidently smart, sapiens sapiens smug,
but every pre-Whoed Horton thinks he is alone.

[Julie]

Taurus

Each April wheels around, and I am shorter.
My head sits lower on my neck, my boat
a little lower in the colder water.

[Julie]

Hunting

You see it in a picture, stand on your head,
imagine how the walls might meet at that angle

though it's obviously impossible. Impossible,
too, that someone deliberately chose that color

for the wall, somehow both green and orange,
so strangely furred, and didn't think to make

the bed or tuck the litter box away. But you can't see
the dozens of beer bottles smashed in the back yard,

the sound of bigrigs on that hilly corner braking,
the weird smell of that weird plant someone homed

in the garden's many weeds, or the way
the neighbor's deck puts him at crotch level

to your kitchen window, so you're doing dishes
and hoping he only has clean, clean thoughts.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Rachmaninoff

I remember holding my hand up
to his hand. A photograph or drawing,
or perhaps some Hollywood display
deep in cement. My hand is big,
no delicacy to its wide, square palm
like Mjolnir at the end of my wrist.

But his dwarfed mine, oh not like
Smilodon's teeth my teeth but like
Einstein's thoughts my thoughts.
Which, on further reckoning are more
Smilodon that I was admitting.

Here we have Rachmaninoff, Mjolnir, Smilodon and Einstein all in one poem. And a clever poem to boot.

BrianIs AtYou

[Julie]

Thanks, Brian! Esoteric works when you're flailing.

I missed thanking Rik and PClem upthread. Sorry! Thank you so much for coming by!

Tennis

The exercise was always in the chase.
I think the yellow fuzz hid eyes and legs

that helped the balls skip underneath the fence
and skitter down the street. My mother sighed

and listed on her racquet, rarely used
for anything but sending us to fetch

and shook her head and watched us scurry too
where mothers now might fear a car. But there

was nothing there but silent tar and sun
and dogs that were too smart to chase along.

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Hi Julie,

I'm in the mopping up stage of my fluffing, catching up on the threads I've yet to visit before it's too late. Seems like I've been saving the best for last. I've thoroughly enjoyed reading your poems. So much good stuff here.

If I didn't own boots, I wouldn't need feet. I really enjoy the way you work the repetition here. Love the metabolism metaphors: exchange and transformation.A very original love poem.

In response to Geoff's "First Tree of Spring" Simply written but I found it affecting. I've yet to read Geoff's poem, but this one speaks to me of loss and impermanence, and their impact on the plans we make. Also liked the consonance of the 't' line-endings wait/flit/light; rereading I notice also branch/birds and twice/outside.

On Hearing an Acquaintance Received an Organ Donation on Easter: Death and resurrection. Perfect for Easter!

Double Dacyl. I do love 'em, but the culture gap got in the way I'm afraid.

Astronomer is a lovely sonnet, and sweet. "I chose him as my telescope" is a wonderful line, and makes the poem for me.

Letters of . I like this one a lot, but can't find much intelligent to say about it. I like the way it seems to switch from optimistic to pessimistic from one line to the next. It reads a bit like a cut-up poem.

Exhaust: Love that line-break, "that the exhaust / should". And your ending: "pushes my brain / deeper into something that has no scents"

Rachmaninoff Loved imagery of the first stanza. The second too, for it's comparisons, and the more after a bit of Googling when allowed the ending made me smile, N with her saber-toothed thoughts.

Wheelbarrow, is another one I found myself re-reading. I want to read the teeth as a metaphor for life's disasters. Some losses accidental, some with some nameless someone gripping of ankles, some teeth "patiently worked loose".

Not that many left to go now. The finish line is in sight.

best,

-Matt

[shadygrove]

Letters of! What Dunc said -- let's all unionize and print it out on leaflets. And Astronomer -- a friend of ours who wrote a starwatching book came out this summer to visit one night. We live in the booniest boonies, on a lake -- the skies are great, but Greek to me. I prayed for clear skies, got them, and we sat out all night with him and his laser pointer looking at everything. There's nothing better. Thanks for the memory.

[Julie]

Thanks so much, Matt and Shady. Oof, I'm falling behind again. The fluffing helps!

[Julie]

Curling

Then you get your feet set right push and glide
and the ice rolls out behind you like a satin ribbon

and you don't stop sliding past every line
past the walls go clear past the ice and the man

renting skates looks up from his magazine in surprise
and puts down his banana flip and stares and you go

past him and into the parking lot and your car and past
every driver on the street with a mochachino

and the street is cold and slick and you are silent
as a ballerina posed waiting for the music to stop or begin

and no one told you how to slow down or how
to stand so you stay crouched lunging

slide across the county across the state
you've stayed down for hours and days

your toe perfectly pointed and your hand
light as a feather on the stone but you will confess

your left thigh is twitching tired and your right
knee is inching farther down and then you look

up at the instructor and find you've gone three feet
and then the stone is gone and your ass is on the ice.