Pop Quiz

This test is compulsory.
It is a timed test.
We started without you.

The first and last questions count the most.
What is your name?
Please put it at the top of your test.
Hint: this may be a trick question.

Let's try a story problem:
If Jane has three apples,
and gives one to Billy,
why would she do that?

Suppose that Billy takes another of Jane's apples,
and gives it to Mary;
now deal with each one's pride, happiness, anger.
You may not leave the problem blank.

Extra credit:
Why Jane?
Why apples?

Section three.
Do you play a musical instrument?
Have you ever wanted to play a musical instrument?
Which one?
Here is a different one.
Start playing.

Does it bother you if people watch, say things, judge?
While you're doing that,
here is one other person,
two,
several.
All of them want something from you.
Keep playing.

What is your best subject?
Please complete all the other subjects first.

Now, answer the following questions "YES" or "NO".
What is the best approach to doing well on this test?
How have previous experiences affected your answers?
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
What do you remember most about your parents?
How do you feel about your spouse?
What have you kept from them?
What things are truly "yours"?
What will you do when you leave here today?
Will it be today?

Final section.
Remember that the first and last questions count the most.
Do you feel that the test was unclear,
or even impossible?
Did you feel that you were given enough time to decide your answers?
Were you doing the whole thing for someone else,
or for yourself only?
While taking this test, did you experience
rage?
gratitude?
exhaustion?
wonder?
love?
amusement?
despair?
indifference?
Did you want to quit before the test was finished?
Did you quit?
Would you recommend this test to others?
Do you trust the examiner(s)?
Do you feel that the test contained an ultimate "point"?

Do you care that the test will continue on without you?
Did you find the whole thing overwhelming and unfair?

Final question:
Do you think that makes you unique?
_______

for Poetry Jam, "yes or no"

image found on weheartit.com.

 

A Simple Thing

it's a simple thing
to put away
half a white onion, a leftover ripe tomato,
and a half-gone jar of grated parmesan.

it's an easy motion
to pull the sleeves of my favorite long cardigan over my hands
as i hug myself
and stand staring out of the little window
above my kitchen sink.

the old refrigerator kicks on behind me,
and i wonder whether to read,
or go for a walk,
or if i should simply stand here quietly
while the dishes dry.

it's a simple thing
to miss someone.
is there a place for putting that away?
some easy compartment of the heart
that i can't find or imagine?

it's a simple thing,
but not easy,
to feel so uncertain and empty.
is something wrong with me, to feel this way?
and i wonder
does it ever stop?
_____

for the Get Listed challenge at Real Toads. I used just one word: "simple".

 

The Fable Of The Matryoshkas

When I met you, you already had
almost everything.

You spoke, and from a halved lime,
a golden-eyed tiger stepped.
From the tiger's mouth, came vermillion birds,
and in the birds' beaks,
silver rings to please you.

If I had told you I loved you then,
I could not have borne the weather of your face--
a clear sky of indifference,
or your smile, constant as any equator.

I knew,
that to win you, I would have to get beneath your heart--
I would have to fold my yellow wings,
with their India ink edges;
become vermiform
and as light as a ghost's fingers on a cotton ball.

There I slept.

After six Novembers and a single Spring,
I opened my eyes--
a solitary traveler when I arrived, I had become four.
You felt the North, South, East and West of me
within yourself, nesting your heart,
as if you were a Russian hat, and I, Medusa's vanity: her hair.

Now, we are together forever,
like bone and limb
or
the closed and golden gates of your almond eyes.

I am more than content to be your courtesan,
your slave,
your palm leaf, arched over you like Desire's own angel--
but if you dismiss me,
all the matryoshkas of our union will break.

You will see me, at last, as I really am,
a constellation of spilled confectioner's sugar
anointing these shattered nesting dolls
with their linseed smiles,
drug store red lipstick on every jagged edge.
_______

Matryoshka dolls, also known as Russian nesting dolls, or babushka dolls, consist of a series of similarly painted dolls, each one revealing a smaller doll inside it, down to the last and smallest doll, which is typically a baby.

Both images were found on Weheartit.com. 

Chickamauga Sharon

Chickamauga Sharon was a licensed mortician--
she could rock a back-tied smock
and cook the books, too.
Her lips left long enough to the ear of a stiff
would have them up off the stainless steel and gone to the liquor store,
picking her up a snort
to get her through the afternoon.

Sweet little me and Chickamauga Sharon--
what a hot mess that was,
both of us all over the place and warm to the touch.
No telling where one began or the other left off--
just us
setting the drapes on fire,
filling the flaming heart of the best June on record.

Chickamauga Sharon stayed sweet until July--
that's how I learned that what starts out hot
doesn't last very long.
She got cooler, and came back to herself
like a candle burning backwards,
gathering its wax skin and going out,
down Lee-Gordon Mill Road
to a meeting.

Every night at 8,
she sat at a table in a church basement--
straight and cold as an unlit taper,
with only the tip of her tongue to play
the innocent wick;
not telling who she really was,
or where she'd been--
just a jasmine-scented girl
waiting for the right red-head to smile and be
her next struck match.
_______

Heads

Heads in
relay boxes
wait for postmen to come
to place them softly in their bags
by night.

By night,
bright-keyed angels
gather the weary ones,
and, graceful as birds, home in and
head in.

By night,
the blue-trousered
messengers soothe their cargo
as if kisses were a postmark
from God.

From God,
by carrier,
the rescued heads are sent
to outward points by hand, by day,
by night.

Heads from
relay boxes
will change the world under
aegis of the eagle and its
glory.
_____

This is a crown cinquain for Marian's mini-challenge at Real Toads. The top photograph is hers, and is used with permission. It shows what look to me to be postal relay boxes. Collection boxes are the familiar marked blue boxes, but relay boxes are unmarked dark green boxes which are used for temporary storage of items to be picked up and delivered later the same day.

A Liar's Prophecy

"You will never be anything,"
my mother told me often,
"Least of all beautiful.
Least of all loved."

She also told me that I never listen,
though I do.
I listen, but I keep my own counsel as to what I think about the things I hear.

Years later, I slipped into sleep
like bare feet off a smooth shoreside stone,
and slowly sank.
My hair was long, so long,
that it trailed in the currents
around the coasts of South America,
and I held starfish in my hands
which sang, impossibly and in languages beyond interpreting.

I stretched myself naked on the backs of orcas,
and across the arms of pink anemones,
but it wasn't until near dawn
when true beauty found me and settled itself in my humble flesh.

Still drifting, I stretched my legs out together,
long and sleek like a mermaid's tail;
I felt the rise and fall of the waters I belong to,
and those currents
those warm, containing currents
were just your arms
circling in sleep, around me.
______

for A Word With Laurie at Real Toads. We were to write something "phantasmagoric." 

A Progression Of Responses Upon Receiving A Love Poem From Shay

• Wow! Can I read it right now?
• Wow. Can I read it later?
• Wow. In a minute. I want to watch this commercial.
• Wow, I can't stop yawning!
• Wow. Maybe some time next week.
• Nice sentence structure.
• Wow. It has sentences.
• I read the first sentence.
• I must have lost it.
• Get lost, Shay.
• Zzzzz.

__________

a 55 for the G Man.