007 Challenge

[Angeline]

EJ Korvette's has one
wall stacked black vinyl
45s and dirt cheap.
I can get three, four
at a clip, load them home
like plates and spin, don't
even need no adapter

just pop the needle down
automatic as the Sun droops
in the afternoon nothing
doing but drums and bassline
bleeding to the fire escape
my feet slipping on the floor,
dip and dog it, slop pull back up
tight everything is outtasite:
I don't even know how
to groove yet!

Out where it's 33, Dame Joan,
Brahms and Shostakovitch vie
with the clocks and checkers
squares play Perry Como Patti
Paige, crissakes even I'm not
that white.

The spin is all that matters,
not the axis. I'm a cool jerk,
just a roadrunner baby don't know
much geography, barely feel
my biology just finger pop
and hand clap hips up and
foot pat lord but I'm twisted
halfway somewhere doin Mickey's
Monkey to it, a hitchhiker
goin to au go go.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Tz, your poems mean something the first read, become more layered with successive reads. This is what discerns talent from mastery.

And Ange is in! "Automatic as the sun droops . . . " mmmmm.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Every thirty three seconds "beep"

in the hallway? Upstairs? Put on

my robe and tie it, walking like they do
in the movies toward the ever
lowering camera that blurs the hem

"beep"

open the door and gawk
into three a.m.

"beep" never softer
never louder always the same
uniform perfectly jarring
announcement of some
mysterious happening.

A fire? No. Apathy
seeping down the pipes maybe
that is what it is screaming

every thirty three seconds but a scream
from Hoo-ville. Spike

in the temple tacks the note to your
brain that says "Wake up!" then nothing
until your pulse slugs then "Wake up!"

 

[Tzara]

Tz, your poems mean something the first read, become more layered with successive reads. This is what discerns talent from mastery.

Dora, there is so much sugar in that comment that I'm like to turn into a Hershey bar.

Thanks, though.

And Ange is in! "Automatic as the sun droops . . . " mmmmm.

Good to see Ms. A writing again. That poem makes me want to spin some LPs, too. (My last 45s disappeared ages ago.)

 

[Tzara]

1

Monumentum aere, redux

To keep grass
Over your own grave

Will not be easy on this sodden, sinking islet
And I doubt even your assumption
Whatever the color of its robe

Will prevail
Against the long suck of the tide

 

[Tzara]

2

Western Tiger Swallowtail
They hurt me. I grow older.
—Rihaku (tr. by Ezra Pound)

I am pleased with our modest house,
the small garden

of flowers and herbs
you so carefully tended while I was gone.

The clumped red and green foliage
soothes, the flush of white and yellow blooms

cheer me on my return.
If only I had not seen butterflies

when I traveled down the coast—
foreign species that dulled my memory

of how you, laughing, captured flowers, insects,
and released them one by one.

I see your frown as I open the tequila,
but turn away to look for ice.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

The women of my family
have never warred. Perhaps
they have sworn, worn blue
on black days or pretended
not to speak the language
just to smirk at the unguarded
German of a student
not bothering to whisper
what she thinks of Lehrer.

The women of my family
have never warred, but saved
scrap metal and riveted
underbellies at Boeing. They
have honked when the police
man checked under the hood
and batted eyelashes in false
innocence. They have chased
wifebeaters off with rifle fire.
They have grown pot and
shooed off horses. But

They were never Hatfields
or McCoys. Just gardeners,
teachers, mothers. And always
they were sisters.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

The patch of grey
feels no different
to my cheek as I slide
over your body lit
only by last night's
wish for morning.
She isn't yet here
to sing us awake so
I rise over you
instead and then
sink against you
to kiss the borders
of your forests
and climb that one
ancient root.

 

[Tzara]

3

.....

 

[Angeline]

Thanks for the kind words Dora and T-Zed, but that poem still needs some editing, specially the last strophe. You both continue to inspire me to write. Been rather hectic at the Ange/EE homestead of late, but I'll see if can come up with more.

I don't have anymore of my 45s either, and the record player I wore them out on is long, long gone. But I still love that music. Now I realize a lot of that stuff I listened to as a youngin had the seeds of my love for jazz in them.

 

[Tzara]

4

cast

in the open meadow, in the rain,
the drenched purple

of your cotton top molded
your torso like wax

and I longed to bury you in sand,
run myself liquid bronze and sheath you

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Dora, there is so much sugar in that comment that I'm like to turn into a Hershey bar.

Thanks, though.
Good to see Ms. A writing again. That poem makes me want to spin some LPs, too. (My last 45s disappeared ages ago.)

It was not sugar, Tzara, but earnest. If it tasted sweet to you, so be it. I could say the same of other writers here. Love reading Ange's work again, too. Ange, I really like what you posted and am not sure I agree that it needs much in the way of editing but may have another opinion when I read it again.

Hope everyone is having wonderful weather today. I will try to finish this run tonight after going out for a bit to enjoy the autumn sun.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Thanks for the kind words Dora and T-Zed, but that poem still needs some editing, specially the last strophe. You both continue to inspire me to write. Been rather hectic at the Ange/EE homestead of late, but I'll see if can come up with more.

I don't have anymore of my 45s either, and the record player I wore them out on is long, long gone. But I still love that music. Now I realize a lot of that stuff I listened to as a youngin had the seeds of my love for jazz in them.

Seeds of my love. What a wonderful thing.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Seven (noting I did extra one last run)

mostly trust
as a mathematical formula is sensitive
to situation for example
how many knives were in the drawer
any given morning vs how many
are in the sink or how much
money is in the life insurance policy
vs how much is coming in
paycheck packets

but rarely
trust can be the biological
certainty that this puzzle
has one piece missing and even
pounding won't put another piece in
to fill the specific
requirements of color, shape
and tone

so I hone the edges
of myself to fill the hole
as precisely as I can
but I am not there yet

 

[Tzara]

5

Childless

No quarter million
floated out the door
on our baby’s bottom—

some snotty, unconceived brat.
We could park all that
in ETFs and index funds

and celebrate our barrenness
with trips to France,
retire early, drink

better wines and dance,
as if it meant anything,
alone as we were left, at ending.

 

[Tzara]

6

Enumeration

I would sit on a needle for you,
if that made sense,
but it does not.

I would draw in the sand,
but there is no sand
anywhere other than your recalcitrant bark,

which is kind of raspy, you’ll admit—
prison guard rant, command, and shout.
I lie on the cell’s cot, stretched out.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Interesting use of "bark," Tzara. First I thought tree. See? I was being earnest in that comment, earlier, and not just sucking up.

Ange where are you? I want more of your gorgeous music, Girl! I saw this awesome play about Bessie Smith recently. You would've liked it, I think.

Look forward to your 7th, Tzara.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

1 Cherry Bomb

printed on the box lid
just for you
italics never lie

exaggeration is no crime
and you is true if you read
if someone stuffs his hand
into a pocket deep enough
to hold five bucks

love is cheap
when it is printed
just for you just for you

but it is more
expensive and certainly
more true

discovered at the mailbox
this time
a bomb inside

just for you

 

[PandoraGlitters]

2 Linda Rondstadt, 1984, backwards from track 12

oops tried to change title and double posted.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

2 Mermaid remembers Linda Rondstadt

it was a lush life
but I swam kicking up
bubbles swam up
to where I saw

looking but not at me
the narcissist I wanted
enough to cut off my tail
to sing no more

to walk on swords
on rocky shore
always crushing
rock under these two
human heels

 

[Tzara]

7

Blood-red Kisses!

I could hope she shows up
like Cloris Leachman, barefoot,

naked under some basic raincoat,
running away into night

from an incredible evil
that will toast the entire coast.

But I would rather she ran
however forlornly

into my ordinary arms,
where the only nuclear ambition

is family, our own owned house
and living close in to a bus line.

A long car with fender skirts, though—
boy, that would be something.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

3. Raised on Robbery

Smooth finish, Tz, like fine wine.


still feel like her shadow
swinging open the door but not
too wide so as to slip

like a shark through the room
razor wearing no waves just
nude as tight denim and silk
blouse will let me

eyes steady on target
hands steady to carry
two glasses to the corner table

where you confess
opening everything and I confess
nothing until my fumbling
fingers do it for me

nothing like my mother
after all

 

[Tzara]

Smooth finish, Tz, like fine wine.

Hey, PG, that poem is, at best, some kind of Mickey Spillane drift--pulp, if not poem, it's at least fiction. It's at best more a shot and a beer, of bar whiskey and a 50s draw, which would not in any way in our universe be a microbrew.

Just knock it back, darlin', cough, spit, and move on.

I see I have positioned myself poorly to comment on your latest poem. Is it too Plebeian to say I liked it?

 

[butters]

always, always this thread draws me

come read it whispers
conspiratorially

and always
always
the double-taste

so much talent
leaves me deliciously delighted
embarrassed into quiet

 

[PandoraGlitters]

4. Made Me Love You

The wine comment was supposed to go with the Blood Red Kisses bit, but I suppose it could be Sangria.

For R.S.

Anxiety weaves my dreams
with book basket nightmares

soothed, gently spread
in the surf of his slow-changing

morning embrace. Spokes
loosen to waving reeds

which swell against his tongue--
reeds soaking.