Word Garden Word List--Sula

 

Hello my little wanderers! This week's Word List is taken from a marvelous novel I recently read entitled Sula  by Toni Morrison. She is also the author of Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Tar Baby, and many more.

Sula  centers on a pair of childhood friends; Nel, who grows up along the expected lines, marrying, having children, not making waves, and Sula, who is a wild spirit who does exactly as she pleases, and then lives with the consequences, as do many others in her wake. I loved this book. It moved me and I find myself still thinking about all the characters. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others, and then read some Morrison! This prompt remains active all week. 

And now, your List:

bird

bizarre

cook

gossip

grace

grave

joke

kissed

mask

paints

pony

quilts

robins

screen

soap

songs

story

touched

true

voice

Travel Stories For Girls

 

Someone messed with my story when I was still young,

trying to bend it like a bonsai tree

and so I wrapped it in paper and hid it away

in the throat of a bird, clandestinely. 

I was obliged to call my assaulter "mother"

and expected to pretend devotion.

Her mask was on her face so long

that her true face had become the illusion.

Grown, I went where the robins gathered

and found the cardinal who carried my loss.

It was in a grave, wrapped with quilts, 

but had marked its place with two twigs crossed.

I put it back in my body and felt its ice,

then its beat and its fine red heat.

There is nothing I love more than the thing

I smuggled past the killer-- the best of me.

That is not to say that all survived--

those who say they love are heard as fakes,

assassins or fools; give this hungry woman jewels

and see what a pretty figure my turned back makes.

______________

for Word Garden Word List--Sula 

Music: Damien Jurado Orphans in the Key of E

Freezing Rain On A February Evening

inside, the pages, outside, the ice

outside, the night, here sweet delight

inside the tale, outside rages

a frozen fall of rattling white

playing out on facing stages

outside, the ice, inside, the pages.

_______

a sparrowlet

with a nod to William Blake's

Auguries of Innocence

for Dverse MTB

hosted by Laura Bloomsbury

Music: The Doors

End of the Night

 

Lady Poet

 

Writing poetry is a fine thing,

to laze in one's garden wearing a sun hat

as a lady may do of a June afternoon.

Poetry is the Boston Marriage of the arts--

termed by some a higher devotion

and by others a harmless quirk.

The lady poet must avoid unpleasantness

and lift her literary skirts

above the puddle in the road.

Upon discovery of my desire to be a lady poet,

my father entombed me with his own manuscripts

mummified by papier-mache and shellac.

My mother tried to can me with her tomatoes

to debut at some later date

in a more malleable and acceptable guise.

Writing poetry is a fine thing,

to jump in the blood and guts wearing suspenders

and getting arrested after midnight.

Drunk on gin, turns of phrase, and love of fire

to dwell in the house of the falling crossbeams

for seven years give or take

And then to sleep with men, sleep with women,

sleep with marvels and nightmares

such as no one ever speaks of, and then to scream it.

After all of this, it will be a fine thing

to laze in the garden wearing my scars and hip-hoorahs

as a lady may do of an October afternoon

My father dead in his grave, my mother careful in hers,

and my many selves rolling over in theirs,

all for this higher devotion, this quaint quirk, this thing that I live for.

______________

For Dverse Poetics: Reimagining the Familiar hosted by Dora

and What's Going On--"Morn of Restoration" hosted by Mary

Music: Chantel Chamberland Temptation (written by Tom Waits)

Imagine My Surprise

 

Imagine my surprise

when I noticed that your body beside me

was a cello

and when you snored,

the sound was the most beautiful thing

I had ever heard.

Hush now,

do not speak

or get up, standing stiffly on your one leg.

There is no ceremonial dance to be done.

Our people have all fluttered

away, a cloud of crows

or treble clefs

dotting the air like ellipsis points.

They seed the sky and make it rain

golden notes

glittering dreams

wild and giddy

like experimental harmonics.

You have my ear, darling.

Speak and be 

the instrument of my glorious undoing.

___________

for Word Garden Word List Chouette

Music: Sunny & the Sunliners Talk To Me

Word Garden Word List--Chouette

 

Hello my little life rafts! I have been drowning lately in a sea of disappointing--dare I say disgusting--books. Did I say a "sea"? It was just two, but allow me my dramatic moment. To begin: horror isn't a genre I read a lot of, and when I do it is almost always either Stephen King or Clay McLeod Chapman, author of the much beloved (by me) "Ghost Eaters." So, imagine my happiness when his new novel "Wake Up and Open Your Eyes" came out and I got my copy! It's about people who watch "Fax" News and turn into demented zombies. Sounds great, right? Well it wasn't. It was just gore, body horror, weird sexual situations, and did I mention body horror? right from page one. I got half way through and DNF'ed it when the family dog met a horrible end. Really, Clay? I'll never read you again. 

Claire Oshetsky. Stay away from me, Claire.

So I wanted to read something lighter and my eye came upon this 2021 novel called "Chouette" by Claire Oshetsky. The dust jacket features a wonderful woodcut of an owl sitting in some foliage. It's about a woman having an owl-baby and the problems that causes. It sounded like a charming little fable or fairy story involving birds--what could go wrong? Lots, as it turned out. This book was just as gory and disturbing--and even had a dog come to a horrible end!--as the one I just threw in the trash. 

This book shelf ain't safe!

Not wanting to DNF two books in a row, I hate-read this one all the way to the bitter end. Most reviews hail it as being some sort of genius statement on motherhood and feminism. My review differed. I saw it as the delusions of a mentally ill woman living in a fantasy world and exercising a destructive obsession regarding her owl-baby, who may or may not have actually been an owl or done any of the violent things the narrator claims. Don't read it, it's awful, a sort of cross between "The Bad Seed" and "Helter Skelter," but I do still like that woodcut. I may read "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" next, just to be safe!

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others, and be kind to doggos. This prompt remains active until next Sunday.

And now, your List:

absent

cello

ceremonial

dream

flutter

gaze

giddy

golden

grit

miracle

napping

ominous

owl

shrieking

slippery

speak

stiffly

swoop

wild

yabber-yabber (talking without saying anything.)

Evening Out, Recalled

 

It was a delicious meal.

My heart pumped all through the time I was eating it

as it had before and has continued to do every moment since.

As it was in the beginning, 

It was snowing outside

but the restaurant had a fireplace and was softly lit.

You were there, and as I ate, I loved you and felt happy.

is now

On my plate, the gone moments

of a breeze and the scent of new grass; the rhythm 

of a place and season. The ability to move and exist.

and ever shall be

I remember that evening

even as it has vanished, as you have vanished,

as the meal and place and I myself have vanished

world without end

The gold of the brandy

in your glass, the smoothness of the skin of my hands,

all appears and vanishes in my memory as it, too, vanishes.

Amen, my love. Amen.

__________________

Music: Vivaldi Gloria