Raisins bouncing in champagne
Bubbly and dried fruit
Pop goes the cork
Saber and savor
Effervesce of spirit spritz
Drop in raisins
to leap and dance in flute
music of bursting bubbles
top to bottom
Ever turning floating
down to bounce back up
and down to bubble up again
proving that the wrinkled
really do have fun.
Raisin toast
Prompt for the final day of the 2018 challenge:
Write a poem that engages with a strange and fascinating fact.
Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the Plath Poetry Project’s calendar. Simply pick a poem from the calendar, and then write a poem that responds or engages with your chosen Plath poem in some way.
White China, Black Gorse
after Plath’s “The Rabbit Catcher”
High over sea
out of wind
narrow path
into flowered shade
of waning life.
Birth and death.
white china, black gorse,
wall of light
erased as traps snap,
barren of prey.
Silence=absence
of birth-death shrieks,
or shrieks=absence of silence?
Mind-wrought wires bind tight.
Je voudrais t’écrire si simplement, si simplement, si simplement. Sans que rien jamais n’arrête l’attention, sauf la tienne uniquement,…pour que la langue surtout reste secrète à révidence, comme si elle s’inventait à chaque pas, et comme si elle brûlait aussitôt…
–Jacques Derrida, La carte postale
Jacques–
Words cannot express how much I
miss you and your simplicity. Many
eyes besides yours will see the
message on this card, so the language
will be neither secret nor reinvented
at each step, although you may burn
it if you like, or just cross it out.
Wish you were here.
She was used to walking her dog, whose
formidable appearance and wild exuberance
made it a chore, extra strength leashes and
specialty halters aside, she persisted,
walking on, even when canine enthusiasm
passing all creatures with two or four legs
made adventure In patience and training.
One day he briefly looked up at her crown
of life showing all that is good for him and
she slipped a fine morsel between his bright teeth
and continued the walk as he trotted beside,
a tamed lion, adoring of gaze, no longer needing
resistant restraint, tethered only by petals
and leaves trusting only to love.
Paris run
Just before sun
Over chilly Seine
Countless steps on quiet streets
Earbuds sound Léo Ferré
Saint Germain des Prés
Garçon de café
clanking down unbundled chairs
on hose washed terrasse
Chilly splashes pinprick
sweating calves from
cleaning trucks that flush
the streets of crottes de chien
Wait! Enveloping sniff from boulangerie
Bread is done.
And croissants, buttered flakes
delight the tongue,
strewing all with crumb
the day dawns.
Warning:
low tolerance area for small talk
contains high energy which
may not always be visible
especially while dreaming
Items on to-do list may be
negatively amortized
if swimming, velocity is
greater than it appears
Do not apply pantyhose.
Functions best in silence.
I brake for Dutch iris.
I wanna be me
Darling I’m a nightmare
dressed like a daydream,
sang Taylor swiftly.
Swiftly, as if it were easy.
I’m a femme fatale
dressed like an angel.
I’m a supermodel
dressed like a grandma.
Aspiration? I’m a blackbelt
dressed like a Barbie.
Deception? I’m a Doberman
dressed like a dachshund.
I’m an orca dressed
like a dolphin
I’m a grizzly dressed
like a panda.
I’m a rattler dressed
like an earthworm.
I’m a yellowjacket
dressed like a honeybee
But you, you should believe
in appearances.
Why I don’t take selfies
Photos, old photos show
godesss reality.
Today’s,
like the picture of Dorian Gray ,
show sunken cheeks,
sagging neck,
hooded eye,
blossom that wilts,
withers, resemblance untrue.
Aging
is captured in false outside image
not in the flower
I see
as me
from inside.
English Class and Beyond
Women drift by, invisible under water.
Some float on the surface, seeming distant
from view, dissolving,
death closer than they think,
wondering how Sylvia did it.
Students fidget with phones
no longer concealed in pockets.
Can one rise from the dead?
Outlines on the shroud of Turin
seem to enforce the belief, but miss the point.
Who needs saving anyway? Truth
from the mouths of babes doesn’t help.
Naming all the fish in the sea won’t bring them back.
Some, undaunted by dead weight,
flout convention, no hesitation
while even dogs are trained to hold their tongues
without command to speak.
Doberman Pinschers once only
for policing, learn to sniff out death
sometimes with astonishing effect
working for minimal tasty rewards
persevering for payment of soft words.
Eternal absence stretches over
the pre-winter sky, shadowing
chemical death and chemical resurrection
Unfazed by law and medicine, two men
fear little in their house with their cats
and detritus. Sudden awakening!
Not dead yet, much closer to here than you think.
Not hearing the elegiac boasting
or trying to understand the voice.
Undreaming
the role of law is now to nourish
try to turn rampage to stillness.
Better living through chemistry.
Two men had too much, buckeyes
unconscious among green hills
knowing nothing
of cannibal tendencies in Plath.
Young people want to know why.
[After Andrew Grace: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/23/not-a-mile ]
The prompt today is a fun one, which I applied to the poem linked above. The result is an interesting draft, I think.
First, find a poem in a book or magazine (ideally one you are not familiar with). Use a piece of paper to cover over everything but the last line. Now write a line of your own that completes the thought of that single line you can see, or otherwise responds to it. Now move your piece of paper up to uncover the second-to-last line of your source poem, and write the second line of your new poem to complete/respond to this second-to-last line. Keep going, uncovering and writing, until you get to the first line of your source poem, which you will complete/respond to as the last line of your new poem. It might not be a finished draft, but hopefully it at least contains the seeds of one.
Games People Play
It’s only a game
it’s all a game
take me out to the ballgame
to see a game of skill.
If you’re game for anything
put on your game face
on game day, even if it means
playing a waiting game.
Know your endgame
if you’re thinking of
gaming the system, for
a tie game is like kissing your sister.
A gamer knows
the name of the game,
whether big game hunting
for wild game or Game of Thrones.
She’s got game and knows that
many a tear has to fall but it’s all
in the game, besides, there’s no
crying in baseball.
Azimuth 
