For E.E. Cummings and Adrienne Rich

I found these gems lying dormant in a crowded folder marked "Poetry," as every folder should be. I wrote them in an attempt to catch up from April 5 to April 11 just before giving up to charge head first at the two book manuscripts I'm working on--you know, because if you can't pick your pony, you'd better just ride them both at once and hope for the best. This is the bumper sticker that brands and advertises my universe. 

So, here they are. Enjoy. 

E.E. Cummings

April 5: E.E. Cummings

A Writerly Mama’s Wish

for my children’s honorary literary godfather E.E. Cummings

When my children’s lives

stop like clocks ticked out from the time

they marked with their small hands.

I will hold these hopes in mine—

that they trade in toys for words,

playing for keeps with sentences

lined up like army men on laundry baskets,

that they mark new time with stanzas

syntax set for high tea with Easter hat hyperbole,

fine lace beneath each cup to counter the cacophonic world.

As they pick up desk phones,

let them feel tin cans in their fingers,

the vibration on the string.

Let them see staff paper in place

of watermarks on legal papers,

suspect invisible ink between the lines.

Let them hold everything

up to the light.

Adrienne Rich

April 6: Adrienne Rich

Speech Class

for Adrienne Rich

Behind her polite voice,

marking territory

like a thigh-high

chainlink fence

I heard barbs surface belly up,

spun into spiral metal at the top,

occasional razors around each bend,

each word

the perfect marriage:

an honest promise,

a clear threat.

April 4: Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker Fridays

 

I wear worry lines most days.

They trace the edges of my eyes

like war paint. 

On days when motherhood will not be enough,

I think of dark, short hair with waves

as unpredictable as mountain roads.

Twin backseat screams make short rides long,

force me back to long-lost days of boys and shows,

driving the wrong way down a one-way Pensacola street.

The ever-seventeen year old in me

cannot behave. She needs

a Dorothy Parker Friday

sometimes.

I dress my eyes in dark,

put the color of blood on my lips.

I vamp a little.

I polish up the skin of a self

pushed aside by another.

April 3: Amy Riddell

Like a Butterfly

for Amy Riddell

With a mouthful of bean dip,

I told you across the table covered

in my sprawling prose pretending to be poetry,

“How do you do it? You’re like a boxer.

You keep your eyes open, your arms in—

always a jab waiting in the wings.

I don’t do that.

I flail.”

My poems are tired toddlers

or drunken protestors in the rain

with blistered feet and signs too wet to be read

so they just start swearing.

You see where to hit

and how hard.

You study soft spots on repeat,

recall how fast the other falls.

You know divots in the record,

hearing skips before they happen.

You’re in the ring until the ding,

the last one standing.

I want those wings

that make you

light enough

to float.

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Read selections from Amy Riddell's Bullets in the Jewelry Box here. Then buy it. Lord have mercy, the things this poet does with words.