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 |  my entries for the Construct Cup |
It's that time again. Time when I lose all sense of proportion and sanity and agree to write a poem a day following prompts exactly as given by our fearless leaders (aka Ren the Klutz!  and fyn  . I may not survive. But I will do it anyway, mostly because I can't imagine anyone having this much agony fun without me. Come join us! We have cookies. And possibly, straitjackets.
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| when the year is almost spent her winter fingers fail, then west wind is quickly sent and takes her hand, his one intent to dance and warm her so the scent of spring will soon prevail. they dance, unseen, a simple form, but each step gives her strength. and as they move the wind breathes warm the north wind calms his last great storm and colors burgeon, now reborn they peek from melting banks. the snow recedes, green grasses shine the trees restore their green. her steps make myriad seeds align and follow, leaf and bloom and vine their blossoming by her design a renaissance all see. and songbirds carry out the tune she echoes through the earth. I follow ‘neath the vernal moon, and through the sunlit April noons, I smell her, now, as springtime blooms, and hope for my rebirth. line count: 24 Prompt for: April 21, 2016 ▼ |
| east of Memphis, the Wolf’s current stops, breaks into the placid explosion of life that is the Ghost River. I found it, one summer day. paddled in a canoe through unchartable channels lined by river reeds. cypress stands loomed tall, their bases pale where floods have worn their bark away. I reached to touch them, felt their scars, marveled at the juxtaposition between smooth and rough. reeds and pond scum dyed the river in shades of moss, hiding fish and snakes that shared my road. there was no stillness, no silence there. shrieks of birds and buzzing insects sang a constant melody that washed at my mind, freed me from the stress for an hour or three. sometimes, when I’m home, and the sounds of the highway jar me awake, I remember the song of the swamp. I dream the Ghost River. line count: 33 Prompt for: April 20, 2016 ▼ |
| blink. between one moment and the next spring ends the death of winter with willow fronds, catching on every tree until they are painted greens. elevate your face. the first warm rain soaks the air, warming the world into whites and pinks and blues and yellows until blossoms burst forth on every fruit tree, on every azalea bush, between the long thin hope of daffodils. breathe deep. the air is thick. tiny white petals float on every breeze and pollen is visible. it coats every surface in green, wafts up with every footstep. Prompt for: April 19, 2016 ▼ |
| I sit in the window watching your taillights disappear on the wings of the storm. you left me. the ice creeps within, surrounding me with its frozen protection. through dry eyes I see them, tiny lilac flowers clustered at the end of each branch as though huddling together against the ice. they shine. each hapless blossom covered as though dipped in wax, the layer of ice beautiful, even as its brittle cold kills. we are doomed. no icepick can free us, thaw our tender petals, free the scent of spring with its warm, healing presence. an owl glides through the night, lands on the branch, its talons cruel. it stares at me through the window in cruel judgment. the owl floats away. the bush shakes. the lilac shatters. line count: 30 Prompt for: April 18, 2016 ▼ |
| it’s a mug filled with the rotten choler of obligation choking me, coating my tongue with its putrid stench until my every word tastes of it. it’s a tower fortress the moat clogged with a hill of vegetable slime and rotting fish until there’s no escaping the stealthy figures worming their way in. it’s being buried in an avalanche of little odors—rotting eggs and tar and fetid breath—accumulating in a miasma that surrounds me until my every deed is owed. it’s lending my heart into careless, indifferent hands and receiving a shoe full of dung in return. it’s hurting. it’s falling for you, again and again and expecting you to be different this time around. line count: 21 Prompt for: April 17, 2016 ▼ |
| she lingers on antique pages between archaic sentences and simple words that illuminate the patterns of her days. her troubles. her joys. the day she lost her gloves in the garden because she wanted to feel the soil pass between her fingers and the sun in her hair. her mother scolded the sun baked freckles that appeared and treated her skin with a mash of asparagus and lemon juice that tinted her cheeks pale green. she was in the last echoes of childhood, her hair still caught in a braid straight down her back, in that cusp before she would become a woman, ready to tie it up. she refused to let the boy, the one who sat behind her in Sunday school, know how often his name graced her pen, but she was certain she was meant for him when he became a man. day by day her life unfolds, her dreams winging through the years until April twenty-third, eighteen-thirty-eight when she disappears, her voice muzzled, and blank lines cover the unfinished journal with questions answered only by an angel in the churchyard and a story of a storm and a swollen stream told to her sister’s great-great grandchildren. line count: 34 Prompt for April 16, 2016 ▼ |
| since that day, I spend my every April contemplating might-have-beens. you would have been four this year. you would have snuggled under my heart for long moments before abandoning me to play cars to watch cartoons to slip unseen into the kitchen and pour dishwashing liquid across the floor. you would have sat there, looked up with gleeful eyes because you knew it was forbidden, and I would try not to laugh as I cleaned up you and the floor. you would have picked your favorite book, pretending to read to me with your little finger tracking memorized lines, and I would smell the soap in your hair and wonder how your feet had caught so much dirt already. you would have chosen friends and opened gifts and the house would have rang with the sounds of little children. instead, I blow out four candles with thirty-nine year lungs, and sing for you, hoping the echoes reach where you have gone. Prompt: 15 April 2016 ▼ |
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