#10: busy, didn't write

#11: rest

#12: From an exercise in The Practice of Poetry (p.51)

“Experience falls through language like water through a sieve.”

"Poems begin where ordinary conversations leave off. If we can say something clearly, we don't need to write a poem about that experience or feeling or idea. Such a poem would be superfluous. Instead, we write poems about what we can not articulate, but feel pressured to say, which is why poems use language in unusual ways. In ordinary conversation we rarely use fresh metaphors. We don’t say, as William Carlos Williams does in one poem,"nature in its barrennes/equals the stupidity of man" (These) or as Rita Dove writes in another, “Everyday a wilderness" (Dusting). But a poem will often begin with a metaphor the poet has to learn how to understand. And often, metaphor and simile may be a poets only means for capturing experience in all its rich complexity."

The things we leave undone are different (or)

how bitterness leads to unfinished poems

A book that has been

sitting on a shelf, dust

accumulating in its spine, unread

The corner of the yard,

thicket has spread over our fence

for years. I could weed it out,

plant a lemon tree.

Fifteen minutes of overtime

everyday - never leaves early enough

to tickle the toes trapped in a onesy pajama

or to make a long-distance call

on the drive home.

To work on: metaphor and simile, create them

The time between us not talking is like the cardboard between my wooden desk leg and the uneven floor. Pushed on, balancing, pretending to be steady, not true to the desk, telling of the floor.

#9

Atlanta weather | Storm rolls through area

Tornado watches

in my hometown, my brothers

sleep beneath lime green

clouds. Will they wake up

to missing walls and slashed trees,

or to your steady hands

smoothing out their hair,

whispering their deepest dreams

into belonging?

#8

Customer Service

My name is Gary.

I have worked at Home-Depot

for almost eleven years, been livin’

most of my life on Gaviota Beach,

finally quit partying there five years ago.

That’s how I got my job though,

I met the manager at a bonfire.

You need screws for drywall and studs.

You need one and a quarter. That’s plenty,

those will get you through the particle

board. You said you needed

an outdoor storage container too?

Those are not in my department but I’d be

glad to walk you to that aisle. You know,

if you need something really sturdy you might

try the on-site tool boxes. They are bullet proof.

No, it’s really okay. I don’t mind walking you

down there. This is a big store and I like

the company.

#6: not posted

#7: A Dialogue between Table and Chair

Table

I was made by her father after he came home

from Fort Benning in 1942. He never got shipped out

because of his clubfoot. He says, “I should have shut-up

and not said anything about the pain, then I coulda gone.”

She was eleven then and so happy

he’d not gone anywhere.

Chair

They got me before the table

was made. She needed me. Her legs didn’t work right

since she was born and the Women’s Missionary

Union had donated enough money to buy me. My wheels

were coated bright blue then. I remember when she saw me,

she said, “Mama, do you think

I can take it to heaven?”

Table

He built me to replace the one his mother-and-law had

loaned them when they married. She wanted it back

and he wanted a table the chair could easily

slide under. He didn’t worry about making me fine.

It was for utility’s sake, mine and her’s.

Chair

He finished the table on a Friday afternoon

in October. His wife asked if they wanted to celebrate

by making a special supper and my girl responded by quickly

rolling me to the edge of that table. She helped her mama chop

the last of the summer tomatoes, and asked,

“Can we invite miss Janey? They just sent her papa

off and I know she’d like to see our new table?”

#3: not posted

#4: rest

#5: Line Drawing (not attached to this title)

Follow the mountain ridge

with your eyes, chase the wiry line

down until the end pecks the sand

and disappears into the water

of the ascending wave. See the point

jump out of the backwash and seek the white

line left by the wave’s descent. Watch it,

walk forward. Let the up and down bait

your feet. Consider the wave as it erases,

alters, recasts the line. Do not look

for the point. Move your eyes to the ice

plant on the cliff or the bougainvillea

or the batt houses. When you have finished,

record the line with pencil

or pen on a piece of

brown paper, a lunch bag.

#2

Today I wonder

if I have enough knowledge

to write anything.

From Levi I learn

when we make ourselves alone

there is no justice.

I want to possess

the most of every good thing.

Please forgive me Lord.

40 days of writing. ready. go.

I find myself between

you and our new sheets, between

the unblemished set of pots

and your lean hands scrubbing them,

betwixt and between the manicure I got

before our wedding day and the chipped

opal polish and cracked cuticles.

I study you take in everything.

I want to put our lives between the glass walls

of the blue jar I found to hold the flour,

take it everywhere I go. At the end

of the day I would bring it to you, pour

the powder on the hardwood floor

so you could watch the cloud

of white mystery surround us.