napowrimo #17

born as fire
born into fire.
Hot as a piece of burning newspaper
in the family fireplace;
unforgiving and unforgetting as boiling water
fallen onto a human hand.
twisting and swirling like panicked tornadoes,
the fire within me attacks my mood
and feeds me

napowrimo #16

Like a pile of rose crumbs, water becomes perfume,
the scent of a woman playing in petals of peace lilies;
lavender oil, fresh and clean as vanilla beans,
drips into the creases of her palm like candle wax.

Becoming stirred inside this pile of what it feels
like to rest away, to sleep like a rose bud,
is to mold me into the mix of the day the woman, the mother,
played. Days before she eternally rest like rose crumbs.

napowrimo #15

This kind of followed the prompt, but not completely. It's titled "Changes" for now.

You didn't promise a floating place
for us. All you did was teach me the pain
of missing. Pain as unflavored as gum
chewed for hours. I became broken, off-center,
like a tire hung from a branch:
a wooden skeleton of before and after.

napowrimo #14

This prompt was definitely a challenge, and as I have a lot of homework to do for my creative writing class tomorrow, I don't think I'm going to try the cleave. Instead, I decided to write a haiku. I haven't written a haiku since 5th grade. I plan to attempt the cleave in the future though.

Love in the Winter

Like milk on a spoon,
you touch me gently with chills:
two hearts pour sweet salt.

Poem Starting with a Line from Norman Dubie

A kiss is like a dress falling off a tall building,
slipped into your bones
like a love letter in the mailbox.
It is loose as the wind from the drop
of your dress; your body is disconnected
from flesh: it's a newborn feather, light
and hard to find, easy to lift
like sprinkles of sand
that are poured
and emptied
between soft fingers.

S.E.C.R.E.T.

let's put it together, Saying it separately:
the cows inside us laugh at our Extreme attempts,
because we're afraid to Cast off what drinks from our hearts.
Rest awhile like dogs in the sun of summer,
Except stick in your tongues, and fight out each thought like gristle;
in Time this process, this reminder, won't be needed.

Dirty Unchosens

Genetics and blood, sister and sister,
we did not choose one another,
I chose to open my mother's bedroom drawer
with hands as young as the birth of puberty;
and there I found it: you on the paper,
you in bold letters like chocolate stains,
sweet and dirty, I didn't know, nor did I choose,
the dirty side.

My mother's maiden name on the form
fondled my bones: I shook like the chill before sleep.
Picking up the phone like lifting a drying, dying
caterpillar off our sidewalk,
I dialed my mother, asking if I should know her,
the name on yellowed paper that I stroked with my thumb.
I did not know, nor did I choose, the thumbing between us,
it's like transparent wax on us both,
we only feel what's there,
we don't feel what's real.

And what is real?
Your punishment plan on my mother,
how you blame me for being born thirteen
years later and one day earlier?
I did not choose that, nor do I sometimes want to know
or choose
you.