a natural history of my kitchen

  a natural history of my kitchen    this is mother’s kitchen. it was someone else’s before she bought this place on wheels, moved, left the cat behind, just what old farm people do, made it hers. it was someone else’s good idea, but then she filled it with high stacked canned goods and just [...]

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postcards home

postcards home             three feet where my mother slept.  tissues stuffed into night-time drawer (not being wasteful I suppose). where the bed is no more.  where I sit, writing this. where I sleep on the floor, right beside (despite not being japanese). this is my everything place.  eat sleep write.           fourteen feet where senna slept.  gathered inside faint scraps [...]

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Mother undone (napowrimo #11)

read write poem   napowrimo #11 prompt by Angie Werren   The thing you didn’t choose RWP member Angie Werren invites us to write about the choice we didn’t make: Everyday we make choices. Some are small: English breakfast or Lipton? the highway or back roads? Some are more significant: convertible or mini-van? farmhouse or condo? Some choices lead [...]

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Shortcut home, Cento poem #2

Shortcut home a cento poem study group, (Read Write Poem Challenge #2) from the work of poet Li-Young Lee cento poem group index Maybe this time I’ll rescue my mother each page read by the light of its own burning And the light was falling, and everything the light touched I said, “The day is [...]

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Saving mother, poem #3 (Cento group)

a cento poem study group, (Read Write Poem Challenge #3) inspired by the cento poems of Li-Young Lee cento poem group index Saving mother Maybe this time I’ll rescue my mother. Pearl Harbor will just be a sleepy port. Nobody came & nobody went. Nothing lost & no wedding bells. We’ll listen to corn in [...]

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Interview with a poet

A little play to do, even if I drop the bowl. A small step away from usual. Disclaimer. Any similarity between this poem and anyone real much less a poet is purely coincidentally amusing. Life is nothing if not associative. Interview with a poet Poets mend some words, but only fair because others they’ve broken [...]

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Plum trees

    Prompt #92 – word gems by Jessica Fox-Wilson, September 11, 2009 Just to be an obedient student, used every word of the prompt, but more than that, who knows?  Seeds for another day?  An optimism lest being shy. Plum trees   Ripe plum trees were my remedy for staying on the ground.  As [...]

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Five days

For my mother, Virginia 1911-2005   Five days     Climbing high in memory’s eye, this raptor’s peak nine decades and one, woven nest of gathered thread.   Five days, one doctor said. Only his single voice on the telephone. And I understand how reason arrives. She’s coming home.   Like valley snow, plum blossom [...]

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Burnished

Burnished   I am my mother’s eyes. I am my father’s hair.   Borne of cold maple and sweet hot humid southern stone.   My grandmother’s gingham, a cat beside the kitchen sink. A jar of nails unbent in my great uncle’s backyard shed.   Smooth old paint, three layers deep  upon a farm bred [...]

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