Tag: Lost Kite

• Dear Holly,

  Epilogue

  A fog of days, my log of time,
  grows roots, branches into shoots,
  forms pods heavy with seeds.

  One seed holds the nights
  I swayed under the back porch light,
  one too many glasses of merlot.
  My sons slept, their faces like orbs
  glowing from the shadows of their beds.

  Another seed spoons with the afternoons
  I napped away the warm hours,
  head slung back on the couch,
  my boys sitting crisscross applesauce
  on the floor, watching
  an endless banner of cartoons.

  A third is filled with mornings –
  I toss them onto the soil,
  and they uncoil from the earth
  bearing the fruit of moments to be relived,

  But when the seedcases burst,
  the new days blend into the shaded
  dreams of the past.
  ***

  Visit Holly’s Lost Kite to read her fabulous poem about a person’s view of the present.

  ***

  Jo and I are happy to announce the inaugural issue of ouroboros! We’re proud of this magazine, and have enjoyed putting it together very much. Please visit, and revel in its awesomeness.

  ***

  If I haven’t responded to your blog posts lately it’s because I’ve been working on the magazine with Jo, and also because of the collaborative issue coming up at qarrtsiluni, edited by Dana and Nathan. So don’t kick me off your blogroll, or your googly reader, I’ll be back, promise.

  December 8, 2008

  Lost Kite, ouroboros review, qarrtsiluni

  ---

• A response poem to Holly

  Dear Holly,

  Mystic

  Stand still long enough in the present
  moment, and Border Town springs
  to life, a mirage of mirrored souls
  strolling down Main Street amid a sea
  of glass-front shops. Twenty-four hours
  a day, they say, it may appear,

  sometimes as near to you as a pear
  in a bowl, a still life given as a present
  we open by breathing, forgetting the hour-
  hand, the minutes, the seconds that spring
  to life in a primordial sea,
  a briny home, birthplace of our souls.

  Border Town, Edge City, we don’t know it by a sole
  name; a phantom place appearing
  as Atlantis, tendrils of sea
  anemone fingers waving the present
  tense in our faces, until the spring
  that winds us loosens, a slack Slinky in our

  chest that slows the hour-
  glass sands. We plant the soles
  of our feet, grow roots, soak up spring
  water until openings appear,
  inner floodgates that present
  a view to the hidden city of Eternal Spring.

  It’s a Shangri-La we thought we’d never see –
  conjured countless times at happy hours,
  downing gin and tonics to wash away the presence
  of black marks on our mortal souls.
  It’s like wind in the trees, or peering

  into a well, fed with a spring
  meandering from underground seas.
  A cavern in the ribcage, it once appeared
  to us as the cauldron of a witching hour,
  but now has become our sole
  mio, a sunny bow on a wrapped present.

  Time is an unfurling spring, a malleable hour
  in which we see the yards of our souls
  uncurling, appearing to us as our own present.

  ***

  Holly (Lost Kite) and I have been responding to each other’s poems in what has become a series. Here is her poem.

  The prompt this week at RWP was to collaborate on a prompt, and then mix up the prompts to write a poem. I’ve got to admit that although I contributed to the prompt, I chose to collaborate by responding to Holly’s poem.

  December 4, 2008

  Lost Kite, read write poem, sestina, the edge where poets meet

  ---

• A response to a poem by Holly

  Dear Holly,

  The buttons on my sweater
  strain at the thread, promise to bare
  my heart, leave me unfettered

  in a world of burly, leather-
  clad men who stare
  at the buttons on my sweater.

  I’ve never been a ‘come-hither’
  kind of woman–I’d rather
  my heart stay unfettered.

  One night of heated touch on feathered
  pillows, and my fingers close with care
  the remaining buttons on my sweater,

  now tense from coming together.
  I doubt I could ever prepare
  my heart to leave me unfettered,

  to open up its folds, consider
  taking up the dare¬
  to loosen the buttons on my sweater,
  to freely bare my heart, unfettered.

  ***

  I love playing around with forms. This one is a villanelle. Thanks, Holly, (Lost Kite) for the great image of the straining buttons, and for the idea to use the image as a metaphor for internal changes.

  November 28, 2008

  Lost Kite, villanelle

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