Scrapbook

 

Two parents, tidy as mints on a pillow,

produce three children who float into the world

like bewildered but bright confetti. 

The first lives inside a camera,

clothed in instructions and operating

the mechanism from within.

The second lives in the courtyard,

raised remotely from an upstairs window

by the detached shadow of the first.

The third grows inside a smoker

and can barely see. It is assumed she will be

a servant or a sparrow, but she is a fissure.

The second hates the first

and hides inside the family car,

finally using it to elope with an accident.

The first is made of mirrors,

the second of fists. The third grows

eyes on her palms and holds them up.

The first is successful and becomes a living myth.

The second is successful and has a skin of diamonds.

The third is on fire, shifting in the wind.

This is the story of the farmer's wife

she cut out their hearts with a carving knife

have you ever seen such a sight in your life

as this family, so proper and nice?  

________

for Word Garden Word List--The Silent Patient. 

Greta and Ted, A Love Story

 

image by Corinne Geersten

Ghosts don't normally send fire through the mail, but they tend

to be a little bit muzzy-headed, the dead.

Water stamps temper these communications slightly

but flame is a Gypsy and wanders brightly,

making suggestions of passion on the carpets where they end.

Greta, not knowing she is dead, not knowing she's a shade,

sends these immolations postage-paid

and if such silly wooden houses go up, if roofs collapse,

then their occupants' lives, like hers, will lapse

and you can't fight infernos with a lemonade glass.

Poor Greta, sharing hell with the taciturn Unabomber,

who wishes all kinds of ill upon her,

who stinks and mumbles and never changes clothes or shaves

so that when one letter is returned to sender

she will blow and burn so that none can mend her.

Lonely Greta, sullen Ted

with a packed pipe and a black rose on their summer-dry graves.

_______

for Sunday Muse #214.

Michigan Vacation, 1967

 

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong in the broken places." --Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms

"Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling." --Ernest Hemingway, Big Two-Hearted River part one.

_______

Michigan Vacation 1967

When I turned twelve, Michigan blessed me

with a love of lake water.

Rain on wood rails. Cold green waves. White sails.

Goodbye in the eyes of my father.

Solitude in a red paddle boat

watching the sea-weed swaying.

White sails. Cold green waves. Rain on wood rails.

A time cut short. We won't be staying.

That summer, Detroit and drift wood burned.

My paperback left behind.

Rain on wood rails. Cold green waves. White sails.

Something born or dying. Something fine.

When I turned twelve, Michigan blessed me

with a week that never leaves.

White sails. Cold green waves. Rain on wood rails.

How to love well and then, how to grieve.

________

Process note: My father had a particular fondness for Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. I can't read them without thinking of him.

For Dverse Poetics "One True Sentence." This form is called a ZaniLa Rhyme, invented by Laura Lamarca.