30 Poems in 30 Days, by Andrew

Poem 41: Sputter

2012-01-28T23:33:00.000-08:00

At least I know
how
to pile kindling
how to twist newsprint
to strike sulphur
At 63 degrees and wakeful
At wondering
about regrets, about real estate
The wind runs up the mountain
Often, he reckons
Coals, ash, embers
What is the job of a father
to fold expertly a diaper
to wake up bleary
to know what lonely sounds
the night makes
Among my special skills
pause, restart
crouch and watch
the flickering flame
All the other things, I forget
what I'm doing
how to keep
What's important is the draft
oxygen and fuel
But always, there is interrupt

Poem 40: Fourteen Lines

2012-01-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

You were waiting for me, pink
Silk and black dye in my dream
Though it was bitter, bitter cold and the baby
Though the other night, the water

We waited in the sunlight for the baseline
In the room, the phone never rang
And the nurse brought us juice
The numbers on the monitor were all over

And the student with the broken finger
Despite all the pillows and the coughing
In my dream you reminded me

In the kitchen I remembered
The turning over and the 2 a.m.
I'm glad he was not born on caucus day

Poem 39: Fall Sunset

2011-11-20T18:45:00.001-08:00

Whether there is wisdom
in noticing, while raking damp,
curled leaves in the back yard,
by the broken fence and under
a dead bough still hanging
from the neighbor's tree,
that even a sunset that cuts
the day short at 4 p.m.
can make the horizon blush,
I don't know. Gray is softened,
our bungalow looks warm,
and our daughter is playing
on the stairs. Nine years ago,
there was fog on the day
of a November full moon
and it lifted. We sprung
into this.

Poem 38: Fragment of Other People

2011-11-15T10:13:00.001-08:00

I find myself looking into the back yard,
at the plastic wagon with the leaves,
and thinking this is my adventure now,
in the house, around the block,
little stanzas of ordinary, and me
trying to sift through them for glints.
I'm happier that you are here.
There is no less discovery in a smile,
but still, the rain, the peeling paint,
the dog that needs to be walked --
next to our photos, our windows,
our escapes...

Poem 37: Rail Trail Over the Connecticut River

2011-11-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

I was comforted, watching the leaves
from the railroad bridge, while they
bobbed and drifted in the wind, flocking
above the river, mirrored in the water.
Eventually, they would splash down
at the same spot as their shadow.

All day, I'd been singing "Mona Lisas
and Mad Hatters" in my head,
or out loud, thinking of my own brushes
with bohemia. I can't decide
about Bryant Park, or standing
on a stoop in Park Slope
in a Greek fisherman's cap.
Heck, I can't decide about the ghostly
photograph of the water tower at night
at the university in Orlando.

My daughter held a branch with leaves
over her head. Her flowers, she said.
I tried to explain to her what
a confluence was, but the sidewinding
ripples didn't seem to matter to her,
nor the kaleidoscope of leaves.
She wanted to walk the dog by herself
down the bridge, and left me
by the first girter, contemplating a year
stamped in rust.

Poem 36: Oh, the Sun

2011-11-07T12:43:00.000-08:00

I remember standing in a window-lined hallway in Bartlett Hall. Maybe even leaning my head in against the cool glass, staring out across the parking lots and athletic fields at the light cast from the falling sun. Oh, the sun. Nothing made me feel like a Floridian so much as being in Massachusetts at four o'clock in November. The gold orb we took for granted would set so early, before the workday was done, so you were always going home in darkness. Mine wasn't the only shadow cast in that hallway, I wasn't the only one leaning like a flower. I remember that clearly now.

Poem 35: Coffee

2011-11-06T19:18:00.000-08:00

My days were filled with coffee;
when my daughter was born, I bought
a thermos. The other day, she asked
if G-G was having fun with all the other
people who have died. We were driving
on Wisdom Way, by the fairgrounds
and the transfer station. Downstairs,
there is a pile of tools. I have a vague
idea where any particular wrench
or replacement stem valve I bought
18 months ago might be. There should
be notes, telling us where all the pipes
lead, which lights the circuit breakers
turn off. A limb dropped from the tree
next door, and fell on our fence.
Today, I sawed it into pieces
and dragged them to the wood pile.
The decaf I'm drinking now comes
from a mug with a life preserver
on it, it reads, "first mate."

Poem 34: Airplane Spied in the Night Sky

2011-11-05T19:33:00.000-07:00

Compost crock pot in hand, I turn
to the house, look up over the garage
and see lights blinking, passing
through the constellations of stars above.
Up there, people are changing locations,
moving through time zones, looking
out their window and maybe seeing
the glint of snow on the hilltops,
the dark flat creep of rivers.
Maybe they have briefcases, laptops,
cell phones. Maybe they rest or order
a drink. I wonder about hotel bars,
about how once, at such a bar
in Washington D.C., a boss offered
me a drink, described me to his friend
as "one of his expenses." Or another,
on Beacon Hill, where I bought a Manhattan
for a Senator who told me about
counting votes and working the floor
for gay marriage. Maybe they turn away
from the window. Maybe there's nothing
out here to see. I'm headed back
to the kitchen, a dish towel
over my shoulder.

Poem 33: Cider Day

2011-11-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Crispins are mutsus, says the poster.
The tractor pulls us up the hill
to a view of the orchard, with pointed
ladders sticking up from the rows
of trees below. The bees have a great union
says the man who owns the orchard.
The rain came right after the Macs
bloomed. Other varieties fared better.
Some of the Jamaicans in the crew
below us, picking leftover apples
in the Pick-Your-Own block
have been picking here for 34 years.
It snowed here last weekend
more than two feet, but it was light.
Talk in the wagon is of Somerville,
Powderhouse Square, a cafe where
a husband proposed to his now-wife.
Then of cider, gallons fermenting,
bottles in the cellar, they accumulate.
We pick stray apples off of old trees
I am called upon to reach for the higher
ones. My daughter poses with an apple.
Later, at another orchard, we watch
mash being loaded into a brand new press,
juice squeezed out the slits on the sides.
At home, I pitch a 75-cent packet of yeast
into my carboy, hoping for a quicker start.

Poem 32: Imagine Play

2011-11-02T19:40:00.000-07:00

This town looks dingy after a snow
the tennis court nets are still up
the gate is locked, but it is the playground
we're worried about
in the second floor of a pink house
talking about a wine dinner
pour me another proseco
imagine play, I keep thinking
neon words in a night picture
or maybe chalk on a chalk board
you can see the tower in the background
and the rusty fence

Poem 31: Candles Don't

2011-11-01T19:20:00.000-07:00

Candles don't brighten the room
we keep burning things
I don't mean to be obtuse
but there are large chunks
of a tree lying on our fence
our picnic table our snowy
back yard -- this all started
in a shoe store when the lights
went out -- it kept snowing
and snowing and the leaves
in the trees were still green
I haven't raked I said, I haven't
All over town the snow stuck
to everything the clock stuck
at 1:10 in the morning
the morning stuck to the shovel
in clumps -- thank goodness
for oil lamps for wood stoves
for waking up at 63 degrees
and stoking it for all the times
we stoke it for the stars
no street lights for envying
the people on the next street
over where we can see lights
in the windows for milk
on the back porch covered
in snow better than the refrigerator
better than October better
than going to bed in the early dark

Neon Pizza Sign

2011-04-03T09:15:00.000-07:00

There it was, the neon pizza sign
silhouetted against evergreens
in the afterglow of a spring sunset.
This is about seeing something
out your windshield, pulling out
of a strip mall onto a suburban avenue.
It's about contrast and composition,
the hot spark of commerce
standing apart in your field, your horizon.
It's about looking up. About those
thin slices of your day that flicker on.
And what does it say? Look.
Quicken. You are here. Now.

At the Sugar Shack

2011-04-01T19:37:00.000-07:00

April brought snow.
There were maple taps
in a bucket by the register.
I gave my daughter a couple dollars
to give to the waitress, to say
thank you for the strawberry pancake.
Once she crumpled them
in her hand, she did not
want to let go. Outside, the snow
fell, but didn't accumulate.
There was another child, sitting
in the mud on the path
to the animal village.
But we sensed the nap was close,
the end of our snow day adventure.
We piled into the car.
The crocuses won't die.
This might be all gone tomorrow:
the white-capped hills,
the mist, the bizarre melodrama
of winter.

Poem 28: March First, Evening

2011-03-01T18:42:00.000-08:00

Lumps of snow outside my car window glint
like sugar. Beyond the garage I see
Orion's belt, disrobed of clouds.
On the radio, a piano clinks through a ballad
like an empty glass at a hotel bar.
The groceries in the seat beside me
were midweek necessities: dog food,
coffee, dish detergent. Lights off,
I wait a moment. Not too long.
Home will reclaim me soon enough.

Poem 27: Robert Burns

2011-01-25T21:20:00.000-08:00

Burns is standing in front of a room full of co-eds in a kilt, a professor with real, live knees.
Burns is the starch collar splayed, the flushed cheek, the raised glass.
Burns is late, packed into a suitcase in the back seat, 30 miles per hour on the Interstate, alongside Mount Tom, in a morning of light snow and spun cars.
Burns is old friends, remembered.
Burns sees you in your striped shirt, like contour lines. Burns approves.
Burns is a horse named Jenny Geddes, tipper taipering through the borderlands.
He's the gowd, the hard words you don't understand, the brothers be, but the not-American-enough.
Burns is my brother's tie, a year ago on a cold January day under the Arch.
Burns is a repaired aorta, bleeding under control, sleeping on a chair in the waiting room.
Burns is walking down the hall, listening to the clicking of the leather tassels on your sporran, echoing off the painted cinder blocks.
Burns is being admonished for not being on Facebook.
Burns is the blue-bound embossed volume from 1881 that I read from on my wedding day.
A right guid willie-waught, the slick ice sweating whisky after midnight, the rustle of papers on the day before grades are due.
Burns is a diamond stylus, leaving poems etched into glass.

Poem 26: The Road Home from Pre-School

2011-01-24T07:15:00.000-08:00

Through the trees
from the Industrial Park,
I could see
the frozen bend in the river.
Over the iron bridge,
glazed with snow,
I could see puffs of mist
at the confluence.
This was my frigid return,
down the hill, across
the river, over a ridge.
The clouds were thin,
the sky, blue. You
probably didn't notice,
absorbed with your friends
at school.

Poem 25: In Praise of the Greenland Frost Camel

2009-12-05T12:31:00.000-08:00

For James Grinwis, upon news his book will be published.

Poems are hurtling from space,
unknown, darkly comic, incinerating
at the touch of atmosphere.
And we, Brontosauri, fix
our eyes upon the apocalypse.

Mussels, mayonaise and toast,
jazz saxophone in a moody
walk-up apartment on a sleepy
side street in a college town.
She says they look like genitals.

Gods named after Norse dogs
orbit across the wild sky,
black stick figures storm
the airport. Like the frost
camel, anything is possible.

I Got To 24

2009-12-01T18:34:00.000-08:00

Well, November's out. I wrote 24 poems (plus one revision) in 30 days, six poems off the pace. I think I will continue writing, at least until I get to the 30 poems, if not longer. It was an interesting month. Someone asked me, "How do you find the time to write every day?" And I told them that I didn't have the time, really, that a lot of the poems were dashed off in 15 minutes or a half an hour, when I really should have been doing other things. But it did make me pay attention during the day, thinking about things that could make their way into poems. As I wrote many of the poems, I was aware that they were hasty, rushed, half-baked, drafts. Some poems I think have interesting things going on in them, but I pushed them to completion so that I could have a poem in a day, and then the next day, I moved on to the next poem. But I have 24 poems, and even if most of them could use some serious revision and some of them should just be buried, it has been a rewarding experience. I forced myself to find the time and sit down and write. I should make it a habit.

Poem 24: I want a girl

2009-11-30T18:07:00.000-08:00

In a lyric, there's a boy and
a girl. Like you, chasing a boy
around the room with an orange
fire truck, under that painting
of Vermont. Like the song
that came on, while you were riding
in your car seat. In the rearview,
cars behind us were shadows
across your face. I want a girl,
with a mind like a diamond.
This morning, you said "Aretha,"
but it was a new singer and a long
time change gonna come. Like your mom
and the short plaid skirt. I want
a girl who knows about matches.
Who strikes anywhere. I want a girl
like a song makes your hips shake.
Like running down hills, like
not caring if you fall, like dusty
knees. I want a girl.

Poem 23: Four Word Lines

2009-11-29T18:54:00.000-08:00

she read stock quotes
her finger tracing down
newspaper on bicycle seat
plastic bags for clothes
the field's sunny corner
a warm November day
the tower loomed above
dog and I turned
end of the street

Poem 22: A Wedding in Maine

2009-11-28T17:06:00.000-08:00

What could be more Yankee
than a hotel on the beach
in Kennebunkport, the Bush
compound just out of view?
You wore your red dress,
and clutched my arm in the photo
that would become our engagement
picture. I loved to examine
your back, freckle by freckle.
We walked on goose rocks; it's true,
my ex rode with us, and we survived.
Enclosed, find my bias: the Green
Heron Inn on the briny marsh,
a garden, a stone bench. We walked
across a drawbridge, we walked
to a salty bar. The moon was
a nipple over the ocean, an oyster.
I refused to kowtow. I breathed
in your ear. "Flash & yearn"
I wrote in their book. Now,
they're back in Maine and we
are none the wiser.

Poem 21: Lights

2009-11-27T20:02:00.000-08:00

We stop the car
to show you: look
up, over the field
a tree of lights
on the stone tower
illuminating
the traprock face
of the rocky ridge.
It reminds me
of hot cocoa, late
at night, walking
down the hallway
of the hospital
with a newborn
respect for the small
hours.

Poem 20: A Hasty Ghazal

2009-11-26T16:33:00.000-08:00

For text messages, turkey, and the Chinatown bus, thanks.
For cousins across the table, and all the dinner fuss, thanks.

In Greenfield, Main Street's empty, it's a day to be home;
for driving on Interstate 91 without the traffic rush, thanks.

It's true, I remember Cleveland. Last time we were there,
you were pregnant. Now the family's three of us, thanks.

Several Thanksgivings ago, I brought cider and was the life
of the party, before I collapsed on the couch in delirious thanks.

Roux for gravy, red sauce, and Cajun turkey pie:
For leftovers like that, the only word was thanks.

Driving the car, with the impressionable daughter in back,
you didn't just cut me off, you made me cuss. Thanks.

Andrew, your Saint's Day is the end of this poetry month.
Six behind now? You should give, for his slanted cross, thanks.

Poem 19: Little Words

2009-11-24T12:36:00.000-08:00

Little words ricocheted, my hair was curlier
the days were orange and round and brilliant,
cold, with black silhouettes etched
into them. All the letters had little
tails, all the tails with ultraviolet
hues that only the birds could see.
One bird especially. The bird
of recursion, the bird that echoed
back on itself, over and over
again, my friend. But you knew this.
You were there, amongst the daffodils
outside the library. No, let's not
get fanciful. Those days are distant,
they shimmer on horizons, and we --
no, I -- oh, this isn't going anywhere.
I can't go back and rewrite the lines,
I can't think about metaphysical brinkmanship,
your knees, my cagey laugh, and the magnet
on my refrigerator the day I almost said no.

Poem 18: Sunday

2009-11-22T13:29:00.000-08:00

The angel's blue wings cross tips
in front of his white robe,
like the flag of Scotland.
I went downstairs to find
my daughter playing peacefully
with plastic plates and a plastic
hamburger. There was no magic trick,
the pastor said, talking about
the loaves and the fishes.
It was the culture of abundance.
We live, too often, in that other
culture. What blue angel?
All these stained glass white men
in our sanctuary. All these
city children, singing.

Poem 17: Friendly's

2009-11-21T16:51:00.000-08:00

I love you, uncle
I love you, cousin
I love you, red cardboard glasses
milk in a cup with a straw
a broken green crayon
and a snowman with polka dots
It's dark outside
in a booth by that window
Aunt N. started her contractions
now her four-year-old son
takes half bites out of his mini
hamburger, holding out for ice cream
I love you, cousin
I love you, uncle
I love you, lost little straw

Revision: Walking Around the Future School of Pharmacy

2009-11-21T08:02:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's this low light.
How the steel superstructure is like
an abstract expressionist sculpture.
That American flag on top of the idle crane,
fluttering way up high, like a toy.
The steel beams, spray painted with assembly
instructions: gold in light, black in shadow.
A Hummer, speeding out into traffic.
The driver wears camouflage.
A sketch on a sign: the building, its spare lines
drawn in pencil, optimistic.
The steel in the beams is probably from China.
White office trailers, parked in a row
in the corner of the fence.
Maybe I was wrong about my dad.
In vertical letters on the cage arm
of the crane: THINK SAFETY
Two men, under the steel spires,
next to a wood table with drawings splayed,
have clean white hard hats on,
and cell phones looped to their belts.
It's a weekday afternoon, and
there are no other workers around.

Poem 16: Poets Group, Overheard

2009-11-20T20:35:00.000-08:00

There's no joy in buying water heaters
I'm sort of willing to let it get retarded again
but you feel the difference
The high school thing? I didn't get invited to that
We roofed the barn and it leaks
I can feel the conflation's going to come
It's higher than the house
How long can this go on?
The I'm so f---ing cool bell
It's like child's wallpaper
The only think I've read of his is garbage
One year, it was a bad porn theater
The next year, Bob Dylan is playing
Talk about snow and the bird in the yard
Oh, you're just letting yourself go like that
It was a pretty Deliverance-y scene
Nasty guitar playing and snakes

Poem 15: 24 Hour Store

2009-11-19T19:34:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you about the letter that flickers
and the letter that's out, on the sign tonight
at the 24-hour grocery on the north end of town
inside, all those lonely aisles, those cans of beans
the bagger's brief smile and the man
holding a scratch ticket, but out here
the light of the red letters beckons over the parking lot
the trees are cold, all the carts are listening
in their little pens, touching, resting against the bars
like a drunk man trying to regain his balance.
Oh, it is quiet, but the lights are lovely; let's take
a drive. All down High Street, past the yellow flashing light
past the darkened fitness center and the car wash
past the hospital and the group homes
here we are, here we are: it's our turn.

Poem 14: Thoughts While Walking Around the Future School of Pharmacy, WNEC

2009-11-17T12:40:00.000-08:00

How the steel superstructure is like
an Alexander Calder sculpture.
Maybe it's this low light.
That American flag on top of the idle crane,
fluttering so high, like a toy.
The steel beams, spray painted with assembly
instructions: gold in light, black in shadow.
A man in a Hummer, speeding out into traffic.
The driver wears camouflage.
A sketch on a sign: the building, so optimistic.
The steel: America, its (once) broad shoulders.
White office trailers, parked in a row
in the corner of the fence.
Maybe I was wrong about my dad.
In vertical letters on the cage arm
of the crane: THINK SAFETY
I pause at the fence and watch two men, under
the steel spires, next to a wood table
with drawings laid out.
They have hard hats on, sweatshirts,
and hammers in the loops of their pants.
They are the only people on site.
What are they talking about?

Poem 13: Grandpa

2009-11-16T14:10:00.000-08:00

It's obvious, isn't it,
to note how early it gets so dark
nowadays? I've been thinking about St. Louis.
We stood in the sun, our daughter
lolling in the grass, and I thought
about a park in St. Charles.
Grandpa, much younger, with a hat on.
Swings. How our daughter loves to swing.
Wasn't it Frost who said, Earth's the right place
for love? And a photograph:
Grandpa ready to ship off in the Navy,
next to a swing set, whisky bottle upended
over his mouth. Those old photographs.
A world so different. Grandpa:
I miss your scratchy face.

Poem 12: We Always Talk About St. Louis

2009-11-15T17:37:00.000-08:00

You were talking about your car
it smokes, you said, but only occasionally

And only when it drinks, I replied
quite happy with myself for the misdirection.

It was an unseasonably warm day
we took a walk through the unfinished

housing development up the hill from your house:
Three McMansions dropped onto denuded lots.

They had hoped to build eleven when they started
before the downturn. One is still vacant, for sale.

Kids on four-wheelers roared by; my daughter
toddled around happily in her railroad hat.

She seemed to love stepping on and off the curb;
she ran to the empty trailers parked by the road.

Our wives, up ahead, engrossed in conversation.
We talked about St. Louis, we talked about beer,

we talked about icy rain and bad roads, bad drivers.
We always talk about St. Louis. You said you saw

Jim Brown play at Sportsman's Park -- the old, old Busch.
It surprises me when you say you're about to retire.

Here I am, home three days a week, chasing around
a toddler. Reading papers on the sly, writing poems.

Twenty-five, thirty years apart, but it doesn't feel
that way, that different. We both made our way

here for poetry, to this flinty town way up river,
out east from where we're from. And we stayed.

Poem 11: Fingerpainting

2009-11-14T07:37:00.000-08:00

Blue.
Clowds on
the lake at last light
scratched red
with a fork, scraped
and smeared
over, red dreams swimming
through, against, purple
we wake from water into storms
we rise up green
handprints underneath
we kick and squirm
little flutters of yellow
little clouds in our sky
tines, fingers, nails
blue.

Poem 10: Couplets

2009-11-13T18:44:00.000-08:00

In the darkness, I know what to write
the words wander, like planets, through the night

In the silence, I know what to say
it hums, like trucks on a distant highway

Across the water, through the crowds
over the noise, despite the fear and doubt

There is a notion, a separate sight
In the darkness, I know what to write

Poem 9: A Bitter Sonnet

2009-11-12T16:15:00.000-08:00

Defiantly, my students comprehend
universal health care: we just cannot
afford it. In their essays, taxes rocket,
doctors quit their jobs, and we wend
our way down that dreaded slippery slope
to Socialism. Their hero, Jeff Jacoby
says our society would be less free.
And Nick Kristof? How shall we say it? Nope.
His sob stories don't sell -- he leaves out
all the numbers. But this is not to say
they want that poor girl to die, they're not cruel.
Hard working plain folks shouldn't be without
health care. But they don't want to have to pay
for freeloaders. Isn't that the golden rule?

Poem 8: Something to Teach Us

2009-11-09T14:49:00.000-08:00

This is a poem with a naked girl.
She's my daughter, 21 months old,
standing on the vanity counter
of the ladies' room in church.
She's looking at her reflection
in the counter-to-ceiling mirror.
Mommy was changing her diaper,
putting on pajamas, but she stood up.
Now her hands rest on her round belly
on either side of her navel,
still sticking out like a little knot.
I'm standing behind her, watching
as she clearly sees herself, sees
her body. How do I say it?
It's a naked girl looking at herself
in the mirror. I want to see her
as she sees herself, at that moment,
a wondrous thing, a bird, a latch
that opens, water that spills out
from a spigot, how it catches the light
how it's warm to the touch, and,
with soap, makes your hands clean.

Poem 7: Trinity at Dusk, Sunday

2009-11-08T18:17:00.000-08:00

A citadel on a cross-town street,
cars and their tail lights streak by.
Is this all I can do? A poem so
end-stopped, so concerned with capturing
the last light of an early November sunset.
But there's no way, the orange and pink
on the windows of the turret above Sumner
Avenue, the azure sky: it slips away.
The lights from Asbury hall cast a studious
glow on the lawn. I can see one star
beyond the tower and its cell phone panels.
I must go in. I must stop imagining
croquet games on the green grass.
But how do I break this stasis?

Poem 6: A Photograph

2009-11-07T17:36:00.000-08:00

A delivery truck
a crowd erupting onto the street
glass office towers, police cars
as you cross at an odd angle
parallax and shot from the hip
Grand Central Terminal leans in
a fusillade of flags
on a light post, a stone eagle
this is you, your hair on fire
blown over your sunglasses
red-center in your tag sale slicker
halfway across 42nd Street

Poem 5: Of Chance

2009-11-06T09:01:00.000-08:00

Brown oak leaves, the last ones,
flutter at the far branches of their trees.
We stood on the trail, watching one fall,
watching its stutter and glide,
riding the currents and eddies of air,
of chance, with our eyes, with the leaf
as it feints toward us, then away, to settle
on the rustling carpet of the hillside.
Look, I said, and pointed. And even
tried to capture the moment on camera.
Hawks coasted by, tipping their tails
like ailerons in the wind. You said, "More!"
That would be nice, wouldn't it?
To rise up through these updrafts,
to go beyond the mere literal.
Hawks, come back! We have wings, too.
On this rocky ridge, on a bench,
in this partly cloudy town, shot through
with glimpses of sun, we watch closely
what's actually there. We say: more.

Poem 4: A Day Late

2009-11-05T06:22:00.000-08:00

The thing is
I have to go with
what's in my head
right now. Whistling
down the hall, past
stone faced college students,
a guli-guli-guli-guli
ram sam sam.

Poem 3: Interstate

2009-11-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

It's dark now, driving home
red tail lights, green highway signs
The road is its own city
dear neighbor, dear dashboard lit
in the next lane, is this
your exit? The radio says
all those workers, the radio says
every square state, every between
I'm here, staccato reflective
yellow, pavement, thinking
of the leaves on the trees
against the brilliant blue
sky, yellow stretching into
I'm here, down the ramp
my city at the city's end
stop lights, the donut shop
and up the hill, the moon

Poem 2: Every Fourth, Last, Now

2009-11-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

Red is every fourth letter,
and the leaves on that fiery tree
across the street. Red is M,
red is A, which you pronounce E
and say it's for your name
which begins with the sound of I.
Red was your last color, and still
you say it slowly, quietly,
without the final D.
That hat we loved was red.
That color, in finger paint,
on your cheek. Apple, strawberry.
Purple was more fun to say.
Yellow, too. But fire trucks
and roses and that little bracelet
you pushed over my fingers
and onto my wrist and smiled:
red, all red, say it with me
now.

Poem 1: Kills Mice

2009-11-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

Scratching in the wall kept us
from sleeping in our own bed
last night. I stood on a ladder,
wearing black gloves, peering
into the attic with a flashlight.
Wee timrous I, I'd called our friend
the squirrel guy. He said set traps.
So I did: black plastic jaws
set open with a dab of peanut butter.
Up in the attic, among the blown insulation,
there are artifacts from previous owners:
a humidifier in its box, wooden sides
of a bassinette and a box of Def-Con
("Kills mice," it says, matter-of-factly).
Last night, frustrated, standing on the bed,
I plotted tearing out drywall
to get at the noise, to stop it.
But this seems more sensible.
It was Halloween. We slept by the fireplace,
warming our toes. Today, our daughter
dressed up again in her giraffe costume.

The Challenge

2009-10-28T08:26:00.000-07:00

Leslea Newman, current poet laureate of Northampton, has issued a challenge to poets in the Pioneer Valley to write 30 poems in 30 days and to raise money for the Center for New Americans Family Literacy Project. I'm going to give it a try.

I had a discussion about this project with a friend of mine recently. We talked about the inherent tension of this project. (He went on to write a column in the Valley Advocate about it.) On the one hand, it's great to get poetry out there and to try to turn people onto it. On the other hand, it risks trivializing poetry, a form of literature that my friend and I both care deeply about and have dedicated a certain amount of our lives to taking seriously.

"Remember, they don’t have to be great poems," writes Newman. "They just have to be poems. But you may very well surprise yourself."

Well, I'm sure there will be some dashed-off poems along the way. But I could use the deadline inspiration. So I'm creating this blog with the intention of writing those 30 poems in those 30 days, starting Nov. 1, and moreover, allowing you the reader to follow along. If you would like to contribute to the charitable end of this enterprise, e-mail me at "avarnon at crocker dot com" as I'd say it if I was speaking to you. A dollar a poem is $30 total (assuming I'm good for all 30). A nickel a poem is $1.50. A dime a poem is $3. A quarter a poem is $7.50. Fifty cents a poem is $15. Or comment and say hi.