douse

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.

occult

If you can believe it, it's day 24 of the Tupelo Press 30/30 challenge! Today's NY times word of the day is occult. I'm drawn to the less popular definition of the word, which is a verb meaning "to hide from view, conceal, or have its light extinguished." This would be the version of the word more closely related to occlude.

As I described it to a friend, this is a bit of a "therapy poem" for me. The past year has been quite a journey for me, including a lot of letting go of crap and opening myself up to the possibility that two seemingly apparent contradictions can be true at the same time. Sometimes these contradictions keep me up at night, and I have to do visualization exercises (the breathing out of smoke in the poem is what I picture in my mind as I try to go to sleep) to let go of anger, polarities, pain. It works, and continues to work. And the complexities continue to unfold and be difficult. And on and on. So poems exist.

occult

i.

it's as if you can't find me

the last year so many drifts & contradictions

(sometimes finding dark is finding light

contrast: opposite colors draw the eye

it takes a certain looking to see)

happily the stars

were almost here

ii.

we see them as squares, the days

because they accumulate 

into patterns of bigger squares

only when she slept on my floor

was I able to sleep

sometimes she is me as a child

& I need to tell her things so she can sleep

things no one ever told me

but I needed

need now to hear

her small body like kindling

cradling the light from the hallway

so perfectly slumped

she needs me

& is far gone now into dream

iii.

only in winter does breakfast

smell like heaven

& at night I breathe out

the dark past

to sleep

like a cloud of black smoke from my mouth

this letting go

this breathing towards rest & quiet

each exhale closer

to the perfect juxtaposition

finding the light

somewhere in my body dream

the future way I will speak, breathe out

patterns of light and shadow

that anyone else can hear

Incandescent

Today's word is incandescent--not a poetic stretch for me since so much of my work revolves around light and images of light, but I'm grateful for a gimme since we are still early in the game. I tried to also play with the language from the NY times usage excerpt, which I found to be full of bizarre and decontextualized references, which I love. Today, quatrains. Some capitalization. Maybe some end punctuation tomorrow!

Don't forget to donate to Tupelo in support of this experiment!

Incandescent

Idea of
you reading in the corner in the light of similar mornings
Vision of
eyes behind you always on fire

As a result of
in the red shine you come undone
Brilliance of
the forging circles, platelets, undefined carriers

Glint of
canvas you set fire to
Landscape of
color draft feeling the blowback

Painting of
the moment you're drifting you don't even know you're going away
Opening of
why a shy ray

Possibility of
glow, she says, her back blending with driftwood
Sketch of
gold, camera, a path among the wildflowers

In the foreground of
the day when you might almost collapse, but you glisten instead
Viewpoint of
the pivotal silhouette

The power of
conflagration, the way you open your spine
The stigmatism of
the spark and the shadow always behind it