Tag: free verse

Lunch Break Poem

.Reading time 1 minute.

Kids from the suburbs | on a field trip | to the Park Blocks | parade farmers’ market | bunches of dahlias | strawflowers, | and the lance-shaped ones | that symbolize grief. 

Read More

The Sky is Falling

.Reading time 2 minutes.

When the Old Man fell,
it interrupted all scheduled programming,
including Britney’s tenth birthday party,
where I was one minute
feeling

to pin the tail on the donkey,
and the next listening
for the sound
of a pin
falling.

Falling
like ashes,
ashes from the sky
in Oregon.
Fifteen years later,
Read More

Ground Cherry

.Reading time 1 minute.

Outside, a July sky | above the weedy meadow | amid stalks of golden rye | I bow to you. “Hello, | from what cold, clear bottle did you pop

Read More

This Land is Our Land

.Reading time 1 minute.

How many watches had it been,
when I first caught sight of Paradise?

Seven – or is that the first digit
to come to mind?

Regardless, I would have kept kissing the dry land,
until it soaked in my sins,
had you not been
standing at my bower,
with tape
and parrot flowers.

The ship was splintered,
worse that any storm
or winter could do;
my lips, too.

Yet, I was fixed

on the mountains in the distance,
skirted in Doug Fir forest,
and decked with heavy fruits
(pear, apple, persimmon,
perpetually in season),
suspended in mist.

Never had I encountered a landscape,
as hard as it was soft,
particularly at the edges,
where rocky bluffs
terminate to sand,
and primrose grows
in mats that prick,
rather than provide respite
for the sick.

Yet, I was fixed

of the pain I had long-held,
from believing myself unhomeable
outside of childhood.

Or, perhaps, restored

to original condition:
an only daughter of an only parent,
(for which the treatment is
undivided affection
and absolute understanding).

How many men had it been,
when I first washed up on Paradise?

Seven – or is that the first digit
to come to mind?

Regardless, I would have kept gripping the shore,
until I was born into safety,
and then trained out of it again,
had you not offered more:

Your hand, a surrogate for my father.
Your land, for my Fatherland.

 

Kelsey

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

For Kelsey Hoffman
DSC01558
meaning
“from the ship’s island,”
which is the one, let’s say,
that draws people in,
like the eyes of a lady,
with their fine lines
and fine-tuned vision,
which some people call
experience; that tames
wanderlust, in women,
especially, by just asking:
“Would you like to moor?”
straightforward and sure,
so unlike their main men
from the mainlaind,
who take perpetual availability
for permission to go
…radio silent…
She is tiller of victory gardens,
where grow autonomy
for her people,
who are all people,
and also vegetables
like: red peppers,
white corn,
blue hubbard squash,
or whatever color,
they ask
to be
drawn in.