This is it! The final day of the 30/30 Tupelo Press poetry challenge. I'm delighted to say that I made it to the end without missing a day, and it was a challenging pleasure. Thanks to those of you who have been reading; I'm astonished to talk to friends and family who say they have been consistently reading the poems daily; there is no greater compliment. Thank you!
What didn't occur to me until about halfway through my version of the project (using the word of the day as a jumping-off point) is that I couldn't really cheat even if I wanted to because I've been attached to something--a word--that is released daily. I can't even work ahead and write, say, three poems on a particularly creative day. I really trapped (???) myself inside of the project, and the process really has been exquisite.
If you haven't already contributed, please consider giving something, anything please, to Tupelo Press in this final day of the challenge. I'm still pretty far from my goal, and every $5, $10, or $20 gift would help a ton at this point.
Today's NY Times word of the day is douse. It's not a articulately "poetic" word, but then again, what is? I think of douse from the perspective that it defines a change, a transformation, usually one of excess. I'm horrified by what is going on in Indiana, so this poem is written as a gesture against this injustice. The poem is not entirely political, but it has leanings and works towards images that welcome all kinds of love, regardless. I can't imagine having any kinds of leanings otherwise.
douse
against Indiana's Religious Freedom Act
what you know of gratitude
knows you too. it is with swollen
experience that I tell you this.
your body has a place or
maybe it's folded and walking
on its way to pray, half-covered
in snow and the relative weight of endings.
another self is drafted
and fought against in passive voice.
what a blue moon you cling to.
what a risk of being on the wrong side
of what we know
to be tenderness. rhetoric, birds.
the feathers up to my ankles.
I will swim in the green space
that holds the mitochondria.
to believe it starts there,
where we manufacture cellular energy,
where we begin to be drawn
to another body like the navigation
through a maze and over and over
arriving at the same place,
the same and other body that fits
& becomes someday utterance, love.
the child draws a flip book, images
moving down the page like gliding
towards you. catch her. it's your chance
to hold something that floats. so did the
white and effortless line
on the white and effortless paper.
3 comments:
It takes grit to stand up for something and is done well here:)!!
High, girl!
While I realize my penname is quite morbid, yet,
you shall find in our 24 blogs a lottagobba (subliminal) moxie
which has taken this mortal sinner yeeers to compile:
I lay it ALL out for you, dear - neet, packaged, concise.
Nevertheless, wouldn’t ya love an endless eternity
of aplomBombs falling on thy indelible cranium?
An XtraXcitinXpose with no
zooillogical-expiration-date,
with an IQ much higher than K2,
and an extraordinarily, sawcy, rowdy victory??
Here’s what the exquisite, prolific GODy sed:
“Faith, hope, and love,
the greatest of these is love -
jump into faith...
and you'll see with love”
Doesn’t matter if you don’t believe
(what I write);
God believes in you.
God. Blessa. Youse -Fr. Sarducci, ol SNL
Meet me Upstairs, girly, where the Son never goes down
from a passionate, prolific iconoclasm where we get
astronomically prodigious,
immeasurably extensive,
monumentally tremendous,
stupendously substantial,
infinitely irresistible
(XnonillionsXnonillionsXnonillions…
of titanic opportunities for excitement BTW).
Do it. Do the deed, dude. Sign into the Big House.
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