December 24, 2010

December 24th: Poem 'Plosion

 
MY SWAGGER
  Mary Biddinger 
More like a gun than an anchor, a revolver,
the loop they played to make it sound like a diner
in the studio, the entire neighborhood, one guy’s shirt
causing chaos around the corner, debasing the sky
of its antique linens, the kind that bragged how many
once inched across then reconsidered, rolled over
the way that I don’t allow you, so flip the light off
in the birdhouse before mathematics destroy us,
pluck our rivets, and you say there’s this place on my
neck, it’s a tragedy, and the neck is not yours but
mine, not that we have territories, that’s artificial,
unsexy, and when they talk about us it’s mostly me
talking back, and so what, because I once crossed
a river that would’ve kept me forever, and I declined.
                                   one takes one’s place     in a pose
                                                   Aby Kaupang

another has vacated     one is
birthed     by lending forms
to the forces of one’s birth

one’s birth is form      filled in & died in

every beginning then requires a smudging
a giving off of the pelt      near the seem
a new glass      for the squinting of the eye

 Nothingness      wrapped us in cord      new skins & gave
a place for ritual     a body crossable      a border crossed    

{we are afraid too     of finding
astonishment unsurpassable
like joy—total and totally new}


Toss the Famous Person Cards Into the Fireplace
   Becca Klaver
the family
reenacts
its one
sublime &
one terrible
memory

they have
always
refused
the right
words for
things

hot-poke
each other
for lilting
TV voices
for trying
to fade out

into a
real world
decked in
any frock
that 
belongs


Montage Our Way through Winter
    Krystal Languell
I'll use my get out of jail free card
and my good credit. A stranger
called me a whore in the subway
I saw a rat I got lonely I bought shoes
and ate ice cream I drank all the coffee
so I made more and I slept it all off.

I didn't talk to you all day. If we
montage our way through winter,
I can wear my Little House on
the Prairie boots while we pretend
we do real work like chopping wood
or boiling pails of water, and I'll lift

my skirt to step over a puddle just
for the ceremony. There will be
moody string music, no voice-over; 
the audience will see my hair go a little gray.

Would you like to be a power couple?
Come spring, we could arrive in any new town
and between your neckties and my rhetoric,
we could run a successful mayoral campaign.



Lullaby

Dana Teen Lomax
The directive as
I remember it
was to yell epithets
at a tree
and stand back
to watch the results
keeping an eye on
limbs & leaves
the surrounding grasses
any change in light
to take in a reaction
            projections, reactivity           
            so many wars diverted



[mary is pregnant when]
  Pattie McCarthy
mary is pregnant when  the mayflower 
leaves leiden  mary gives 
birth to a stillborn son  only ten months 
after burying  an unnamed child 
   mary gives 
birth to a stillborn son  while still at anchor 
in plymouth harbor friday   22 december 
1620   mary already 
has two daughters named mary & remember 
mary dies that first winter  (her husband later 
marries mary's    daughter fear)       her daughter 
 mary  dies at 83      the last surviving 
mayflower passenger 
mary  a child   four         the product 
an adulterous relationship  is placed 
under the care of  mary  mother of love & wrestling & 
fear & patience   mary 
(a child)              dies   that first winter 
mary whose father died  in provincetown 
harbor  becomes an orphan that 
first winter  mary an orphan of fourteen 
pressure to marry  six eligible 
men for every  woman & girl   after 
   that first winter 
the only other      mary on board dies 
soon after her husband  died 


Christmas in Norway
     Sarah Sarai
Nora the door-slammer
knows every ridge of
Torvald's thumb.
A regular Sacajawea
is she, tracking
her way from out under.
 

Ahead a few steps,
a thoroughly nice woman,
thoroughly my age
calls 
watch outs for cars
and slush. 
Thank you, Sacajawea.
She laughs.  How many years
since I heard Sacajawea,
Lewis and Clark, Torvald.
I'm not well-researched.
I'm lazy.

What I know for sure is old.
Ibsen wrote a great scene.
I have a decent hold on
western culture against
much of which
I'd like to slam a door.
Little's known of
Sacajawea's life after Lewis and
Clark opened up the west,
so rich in natural assets.
Golem
  Jessica Smith

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