6 APRIL 2013: MAGGIE'S SELECTION FOR YOUR POETRY PLEASURE

("At The Library" 1952 photo by Sam Hood)

THE JAMES BOND MOVIE

The popcorn is greasy, and I forgot to bring a Kleenex.
A pill that's a bomb inside the stomach of a man inside

The Embassy blows up. Eructations of flame, luxurious
cauliflowers giganticize into motion. The entire 29-ft.

screen is orange, is crackling flesh and brick bursting,
blackening, smithereened. I unwrap a Dentyne and, while

jouncing my teeth in rubber tongue-smarting clove, try
with the 2-inch-wide paper to blot butter off my fingers.

A bubble-bath, room-sized, in which 14 girls, delectable
and sexless, twist-topped Creamy Freezes (their blond,

red, brown, pinkish, lavender or silver wiglets all
screwed that high, and varnished), scrub-tickle a lone

male, whose chest has just the right amount and distribu-
tion of curly hair. He's nervously pretending to defend

his modesty. His crotch, below the waterline, is also
below the frame—but unsubmerged all 28 slick foamy boobs.

Their makeup fails to let the girls look naked. Caterpil-
lar lashes, black and thick, lush lips glossed pink like

the gum I pop and chew, contact lenses on the eyes that are
mostly blue, they're nose-perfect replicas of each other.

I've got most of the grease off and onto this little square
of paper. I'm folding it now, making creases with my nails.

"The James Bond Movie" by May Swenson, from New and Selected Things Taking Place.

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5 APRIL 2013: MAGGIE'S SELECTION FOR YOUR POETRY PLEASURE

"Tailgating" from Burdr

 

A BARRED OWL

The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl's voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
"Who cooks for you?" and then "Who cooks for you?"

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear,
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

By Richard Wilbur, from Collected Poems: 1943-2004.

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4 APRIL 2013: MAGGIE'S SELECTION FOR YOUR POETRY PLEASURE

 

THE GOOD OLD DAYS AT HOME SWEET HOME

On Monday my mother washed.
It was the way of the world,
all those lines of sheets flapping
in the narrow yards of the neighborhood,
the pulleys stretching out second
and third floor windows.

Down in the dank steamy basement,
wash tubs vast and grey, the wringer
sliding between the washer
and each tub. At least every
year she or I caught
a hand in it.

Tuesday my mother ironed.
One iron was the mangle.
She sat at it feeding in towels,
sheets, pillow cases.
The hand ironing began
with my father's underwear.

She ironed his shorts.
She ironed his socks.
She ironed his undershirts.
Then came the shirts,
a half hour to each, the starch
boiling on the stove.

I forgot bluing. I forgot
the props that held up the line
clattering down. I forgot
chasing the pigeons that shat
on her billowing housedresses.
I forgot clothespins in the teeth.

Tuesday my mother ironed my
father's underwear. Wednesday
she mended, darned socks on
a wooden egg. Shined shoes.
Thursday she scrubbed floors.
Put down newspapers to keep

them clean. Friday she
vacuumed, dusted, polished,
scraped, waxed, pummeled.
How did you become a feminist
interviewers always ask,
as if to say, when did this

rare virus attack your brain?
It could have been Sunday
when she washed the windows,
Thursday when she burned
the trash, bought groceries
hauling the heavy bags home.

It could have been any day
she did again and again what
time and dust obliterated
at once until stroke broke
her open. I think it was Tuesday
when she ironed my father's shorts.

By Marge Piercy, from Colors Passing Through Us.

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HERDING BURDS

(Bird outline left after hitting window, September 2011 by Ray Holman, Cardiff, Wales)

 

We've had much rain the last couple of days and my patio has become the covered discount buffet zone for local birds. Because of the wonderful temperatures, we've had the screens in and fresh air flooding this room (don't hate me, Brits). Consequently, Scout has been glued to the window.

She has discovered that if she backs up onto my bed and runs headlong at the glass, the avian mass outside cannot help but panic and fly off with a whoosh of feathers. She never gets tired of this. Equally stimulating is their response when someone moves up the sidewalk rapidly, making them feel temporarily trapped on the patio and schooling like sardines to find a way out.

The spud-brained doves and all the little chickadees who never met a conspiracy theory they didn't like are particularly prone to such panics. The former will run out of flight room and hit my window with meaty impacts that make me fear the putty will give. The latter little rattatats against glass leave me convinced they will stun themselves and fall to the concrete senseless. I think Scout envisions such a result as well and imagines herself scooping up the helpless strew into a suddenly tiger-sized maw.

It's kept her quivering and busy for two days. Except for when Dinah stiffly emerges and claims the mustard corduroy chair for herself, driving Scoutie off to knock about other apartment acres and mutter high little protests.

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3 April 2013: Maggie's Poetry Selection For Your Pleasure

SPRING

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

By Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems.

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LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP FOR 2 APRIL 2013

Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there.

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2 APRIL 2013: MAGGIE'S POETRY SELECTION FOR YOUR PLEASURE

(Milky-Way-balanced-rock in Arches National Park by Bret Webster)

 

THE GLASS AND THE BOWL

The father pours the milk from his glass
into the cup of the child,
and as the child drinks
the whiteness, opening
her throat to the good taste
eagerly, the father is filled.
He closes the refrigerator
on its light, he walks out
under the bowl of frozen darkness
and nothing seems withheld from him.
Overhead, the burst ropes of stars,
the buckets of craters,
the chaos of heaven, absence
of refuge in the design.
Yet down here, his daughter
in her quilts, under patterns
of diamonds and novas,
full of rich milk,
sleeping.

By Louise Erdrich, from Baptism of Desire.

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APRIL 1, 2013: MAGGIE'S POEM FOR TODAY'S PLEASURE

Someone I know and admire is a frank poetry lover who slides verse into her pocket all year, saving it for April. During that month she gives a select group of us her favourite selections, one a day, like a literary advent extravaganza. I cannot duplicate her feat but I can emulate the passing on, and thus, every day this month, I will share with you here a poem that reached me deeply this past year.
 

(Rivers form tree-like shapes in the desert in Baja California)

 

THE REAL WORK

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

 

"The Real Work" by Wendell Berry, from Standing by Words.

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OSTARA WITH KITTEH

Me and Scout take on the chocolate Oester Bunneh.

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