Poem 25: In Praise of the Greenland Frost Camel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Maybe it's this low light.
   
2. How the steel superstructure is like
   an abstract expressionist sculpture.
   
3. That American flag on top of the idle crane,
   fluttering way up high, like a toy.
   
4. The steel beams, spray painted with assembly
   instructions: gold in light, black in shadow.
   
5. A Hummer, speeding out into traffic.
   The driver wears camouflage.
   
6. A sketch on a sign: the building, its spare lines
   drawn in pencil, optimistic.
   
7. The steel in the beams is probably from China.
   
8. White office trailers, parked in a row
   in the corner of the fence.
   
9. Maybe I was wrong about my dad.
   
10. In vertical letters on the cage arm
    of the crane: THINK SAFETY
    
11. 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.
    
12. It's a weekday afternoon, and
    there are no other workers around.
    

Poem 16: Poets Group, Overheard

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

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

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

Poem 13: Grandpa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.