Sans Patronymic

I love an ekphrastic and this is proof that poetic forms we might think of as nothing but wordplay or for children (e.g., abecedarians or acrostics) can be very sophisticated and serious.

Leaving the Psychologist: An Abecedarian Ekphrastic by Grisel Y. Acosta

after Remedios Varo’s Mujer saliendo del psicoanalista

another face has sprouted in my chest
beastly, that’s me, a super freak
cavorting with your skull in my grasp
displaced personalities cannot be cloaked
ever, they will grow like a haunted
fever of wispy hair
gathered in a basket, along with time, a
half-filled vial of poison &
illusions of tick-tock-clocking syringe
just let me explain:
killing myself is not an option
let me try to live with my
multiple personas and their infinite masks, why
not weave them into a poncho
of chartreuse green, grow them,
pouch them, wear them like horns
question my memories, befriend
radical thoughts and nightmares
solemn my specters behind
tenuous doors with intimidating bells
understand the unexplainable, develop
venom as Tilda Swinton couture
when dreams become a snail shell planted
X, marks the spot of this treasure I shall reveal,
yell on a mountain, YES, this is mine, I will
zap my fears—I can face all the faces, darling, of course I can

--

This is the work of art which inspired the piece:

Title: Gandhi
Fandom: Original
Poetic form: kyrielle (a variation on)
No. of Lines: 28
Prompt: Ambitious
Rating: Gen
Summary: a variation on a kyrielle about the life of Gandhi

( Read more... )

Last year I did an Easter blue collage, too. This is using the last of my egg nest stickers and the booklet that came with my chocolate bunny!

Title: Choice Piece of Heart
Fandom: Original
Rating: Gen
No. of Lines: 28
Prompt: Compassionate
Notes: a poetry remix of a gen-rated animal AU fic of mine in the BBC Sherlock fandom where Sherlock is a raven and John is a wolf: The Wolf Bird. Also a fill for fffc: Little Special 216: Found Poetry
Summary: a raven shows compassion to an injured wolf

( Read more... )

What I am appreciating most about the poem-a-day is the little blurb after the poem about the poem. The first poem was inspired by the second.

alameda point by David Maduli

—after lucille clifton

the estuary opens to the bay
and the bay stretches into the pacific and so on
therefore and such-and-such,
none of them empty or full
in the way no frame can minimize nor contain horizon—
yet the ocean can be it, even when sky
and sea are the same late summer gray
they blend together erasing, making
each other. the humpback whale
breaching the slate screen is the only
one who knows the tension between.
here arrive two children winding bikes
on the path to the point passing succulents
and ground squirrels, and three pelicans
follow in spinning dives to slash
down on this estuary guarded
by gurgling sea lions. the children
collecting rocks and examining mussel shells,
millennia in their hands, nod to each other and laugh
racing childhood to the pier’s edge.

the mississippi river empties into the gulf by Lucille Clifton

and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,
none of them emptying anything,
all of them carrying yesterday
forever on their white tipped backs,
all of them dragging forward tomorrow
. it is the great circulation
of the earth's body, like the blood
of the gods, this river in which the past
is always flowing. every water
is the same water coming round.
everyday someone is standing on the edge
of this river, staring into time,
whispering mistakenly:
only here. only now.

1. It's Spring Break! The boys go back Tuesday.

2. The boys' father traveled yesterday to Seattle for meetings with the Gates Foundation. He is supposed to be back on Thursday.

3. Today was a day of running errands. As the last step of Minisculus' calorie reduction is to get 60 minutes of movement a day. So this morning I took the boys to the YMCA so he could get that.

Then we went to a store for Minor to get a new hoodie and a gift for a birthday party Minisculus was invited to new week. We used up the last of the gift card my sister gave me for Xmas.

I also stopped by Michaels and picked up 1 package of stickers. I fell in love with these Easter eggs in nests and if you buy the stickers online and pick up at the store, you get a 30% discount. They were the only Easter stickers I've seen that I liked, and I really liked them.

Then we went to the library. Then we went to Wal-Mart and I got Minor a new phone. This is going to be a source of controversy because the boys' father was against an upgrade for Minor. But what Minor had was an old-school flip phone and this is a proper phone (not on our plan). I will have to deal with the fallout from that with his father. It's a mess because I snapped on Sunday about Minor rotting his brain with his phone (and yelled at him harshly) and he proceeded to get 2 PRs (Personal Records) at the track meet and to clean my nasty, years-encrusted tea kettle with steel wool (without being asked) just to show me that his brain isn't rotted. Point to Minor.

Then we went the Mall and Minor went to the barber. Minor got a low taper fade. Whatever that is. It's not as shorn as the last time.

Then we were starving and got McDonald's and went home. Tomorrow is shopping and I have to get my state emissions test on the car and Minor has track practice. Soccer practices were cancelled but track is still going through spring break.

4. I finished Seafire last night, the girls' own Mad Max Fury at sea fantasy. It was good. I also finished Ada Limon's book of poetry The Hurting Kind, also good.

5. I wrote two poems, then lost my groove. I need to get back. Spring renewal is going well.

ASMR of the WEEK: This channel is building miniature rooms from kits.

"The Adventure of the Gloria Scott" is one of my favorite stories. This is the one where Holmes tells Watson about his first case and his friendship with Victor Trevor.

Trevor's dog bites Holmes on the ankle at university. And Trevor checks on him and they become pals.  

Apparently, there is a lot of scholarly debate on topics which don't interest me. One is where Holmes went to uni: Cambridge or Oxford. And some scholars say that Trevor Senior's account of his past is so riddled with implausibilities and inaccuracies as to be not believable.



It's a very important story because we get Holmes' origin story as a detective. Holmes gets invited to the Trevors for the holiday and he does a decent deduction of Trevor Senior and the pater familias says,

I don't know how you manage this, Mr Holmes, but it seems to me that all the detectives of fact and of fancy would be children in your hands. That's your line of life, sir, and you may take the word of a man who has seen something of the world.

'And that recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby.

And say what you will about Johns and Jameses and milk-drinking snakes with ears, but when ACD wanted to turn a phrase, he could bloody well turn it.

Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

I did a drabble of it. I've done many before. It's just a great line.

Title: Ghosts
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Rating: Gen
Length: 100
Summary: Holmes visits Trevor in Terai after the Fall.

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And I love the last like about Trevor: "The good fellow was heartbroken at it, and went out to the Terai tea planting, where I hear he is doing well.

And I would like to visit the Broads one day.

I was trying a pattern but I ran out of steam before I finished the fourth. Showing off some of my new haul: peach paper, red & pink gingham washi tape & hearts washi tape, Pooh hunny jar and bees and hive, and using up some of my whales. These are all in unused daily pages of my planner.

Below, in the cut, I am including Section I of Louise Glück’s October which inspired this poem.

The Owl by Gia Anansi-Shakur

after Louise Glück’s “October”

Violence has changed
me something beautiful
worldly, not comfortable
living in a mouth
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