Ph'tang Yang Olé Biscuit Barrel

[5th column]

Back... Again...


1.
2.
3. Haiku
4.
5. Tiffany
6. Lost Focus
7. Milestones
8. Foreign Tongue
9. Losing It
10. Life in Sing
11. She Said They Had Doughnut Holes
12. Explain That Again

14. In the Greenhouse
15. Pandora, Pandora
16. Liminal
17. Poemectomy
18. Novella

20. Fade to Grey
21. Haiku
22. 30/30 Challenge
23. Singlish
24. Like Heaven
25.When You're on Poem Number Twenty Five and It Feels Like Poem Two Hundred and Fifty and You've Hardly Been Outside For a Month and You're Beginning to Lose the Plot.
26. Copper Line
27. Free Association
28. Kitty Ditty?
29. Cutting

[Featherless Biped]

That's some fusion cuisine! I'll order thirty.

[merelynn]

Happy NaPoMo!

[5th column]

...

[prokopton]

I am highly amused, 5th,
lured by many fine images, such as,
"the salt eye of the moon,"
and
"blood sucking thief of innocence"
intriguing start.

G.

[Arlene]

Fantastic imagery, and plus you made me hungry. I could smell what I'm guessing is the food she's making. Love "fifteen ankle bracelets," and everything that follows.

[Steven]

Very impressive start, 5th. Not sure I'm understanding it as I should, probably due to my lack of reading, but fine writing nonetheless.

[anenome]

Fascinating, strong start to the month, the unusual names certainly give this an edge as well making me giggle, good luck for the month!

[Emily Bronte]

Neil,

You always take such unadulterated pleasure in playing during napo and come up with wonderful results. Very pleased you are here, and very much looking forward to the rest.

[Acolyte]

"The Tide" snagged me and took me away to many good places, thanks. Excellent segue from the concrete to the abstract for the final two lines.

"The Safe" too is a well-crafted memory net. Great metaphor work for where we put things, how, and when.

[5th column]

Many thanks to John (especially for the detailed fluff), Emily (play is what's often missing), and Acolyte (glad it took you somewhere).

Today's came from thinking I recognised someone in the jeweller at the airport earlier this evening.



Tiffany


I recognised you through the picture window.
Not from the green eyes or the curls, not the lips,
the hands or voice, the LV bag (although I saw
you still wore leopard print), not the kitten heels
or ripped jeans, the lashes, long and effortlessly
spooned, the calves, so slim, I never understood
how they support a body, or the nails, that shade
you love, it wasn’t the breasts or the way jeans
rest on your hip, the way you hinge just there,
I recognised the way you climbed inside him
worked the machine.

[Featherless Biped]

Oh, I love the sensory details in the story about Ayun, and I love the dog named "Cunt". (My nice old neighbors in Australia had a little chihuahua named "Jizzy"--same sort of loss in translation, I suppose.)

"The Tide" is nicely simple and atmospheric--feels like sitting in a small warm room surrounded by deepening cold on all sides. "cedar" and "smoke" and "tin mug" all have lovely smell images.

I too like the spinning motions in the haiku--furn, water wheel, abstract spring unfurling.

So many lovely things in that safe. (Please give me the combination? Please please?) I thought the items on your list were all very sparkly, but I particularly enjoyed your way of phrasing the cinnamon and coffee smells, and those resurrected matches at the end. (Somehow, the little homey images always hit hardest. Homely for you Brits, but that word means ugly in the US.)

"Tiffany" is a striking portrait (mostly, interestingly enough, by clothing--things that can be applied to or removed from the body at will). She sounds like bad news. Lucky me, she wouldn't give me a second look.

[5th column]

Day six and already struggling.....Thanks to Rachel for popping in.


Lost Focus


Some bodies
can’t be
seen by line
of sight
but we infer
their presence
by the sway
of light, it
gravitates. She is
become the sum
of poses, more
than voice.
Can you see
the sunlight
dapple on the picture
of her gown, the shadow
on the rose;
just pixels. Look
here, you’ll find her
somewhere
in the bokehs.

[Bench]

There's so much to like in all of these, I love the Turkish lady, and I'm getting that N got further than the bus driver, from 'hammer beat an anvil from green shoots'; which sounds like a session to aspire to. In tide I can hear the sea's rattle and smell the wood smoke, helping this resonate with deeper meaning. I love 'a fern unfurls' like a single line fractal. The safe is an intriguing dig down the back of the sofa- this has more nuggets than most, and I think I might fancy Tiffany a bit, but wouldn't introduce her to my mum. I may be way off, because it's not overtly sentimental, but Lost Focus reminds me of the way people become miserable when they cannot visualise perfectly the face of a lost loved-one. Lovely sonics and soft-focus imagery. Looking forward to reading more.

[Emily Bronte]

Hi, Neil,

Some wonderful stuff here.

"Fade to Grey", "The Safe" "In the Green House" (glass house?) and "The one where I miss the bus" all stayed with me in particular. You have a way of writing something that seems simple at first glance, and then it hits you in the teeth.

We are on the home stretch now!

cheers,

Mari.