How Well Do You Know the News?

Test your News IQ. Me = 91 percentile (stupid Dow). You = ?

The List of Unexpected Things

Inspired by The Polka Dot Witch, here is my own list of things I, as a 39-year-old woman, never thought I'd own, need, or use:

Gas-X
Non-thong panties
Plastic shoes (Crocs, no less)
Anti-wrinkle cream
Music that is not "cool"
Video gaming system
Silk flower arrangements
Reusable grocery bags
Canteen
Drawings/artwork from teenagers (students)
Crock pot
Bumper stickers (Obama '08!)
Steam cleaner
Pants in a size 0 (that I can wear!)

RWP #35: Fun in the Sun?

Waiting for Bolivar Ferry

We wait our turn
on a weekend
when tourists and teens
converge
on the peninsula
to stretch their skin
in the sun. A sheen
of boys begins
to volley
for attention, girls
in open truckbeds
cake makeup,
spray at hair
already starched
with heat. The shoreline
brings the sleaze
out of everyone,
the steam
that shimmies up
from the concrete,
the stick, the sweat,
the hidden grit
that slicks
to the surface.
We are waiting
for Bolivar Ferry;
when it approaches
we’ll pull forward
in tight metal rows
onto the boat
that will carry us all
like stupid chattel
across the sea:
engines off,
windows down,
radios up,
as if the beat
proclaims
some inner rhythm
of the parched heart.

Cruella McCain

I really don't have much of a stake in the "who would make a better First Lady?" race. But surely this has been pointed out, right?



If it has not, well, there you go.

5th of July

(The poems for RWP#34 are below this one, just so you know!)

The streets are sharded with bits
of careless confetti, petty
patriotic explosions. The neighbors
are still asleep, tucked beneath
the gray haze hovered over
their driveways, skin still singed
with sweat and sulphur.
The neatly numbered curbs
prop amber toppled bottles.
Trash bags, tarry-black, collapse
in the grass. One rubber sandal
in the center of the road, plastic casualty
of a manufactured battle, points
its open toes towards concession.

Two Poems About Light

Old ones for this week's prompt...

A HEALING ART

A girlfriend found one in her breast while still in college.

One day a woman read her palm
and tarot cards, pressed a hand
against her chest, another to her back,
applied white light
and made it disappear.

One night my fingers touch my skin
to prove I am still here,
and here,
and here,
to forgive a body less than loved
or trusted. I find I cannot keep my hand
away, slip my fingers between lace
and blouse, seeking proof
of what I own.

I want to take hands and press them close,
say: here is truth of what I’ve been.
I want to feel
white light, the warm remedy of touch
against the poison of my skin.

Instead the surgeon
snips me open, allows the wound to spill
like sugar from a packet,
instead the surgeon
tells me that my scars
will heal, rubs his hands
together like a cartoon villian
on the verge of stealing, says:
I want to warm my hands
before I touch you, and smiles,
assuming humor, pressing palm
against my chest.

I want to hold him there, the weight
compressing tape and flesh, say:
I’ve given you nothing. Say:
I only let you take
what I no longer wanted.


EVIDENCE OF OUR UNREST

Now that you’re gone, I study
little craters in the hardwood
from those boots I told you
not to wear, trekked over
with scrapes and lines
from the occasional shift
of a dining chair, and I realize
this is why they scan dry riverbeds
on distant planets: obsession
with what went wrong.
Already they know a world
won’t survive without heat
at its core, but not what shifts
at the surface to cool
the liquid heart. Why did this
cheap-windowed room
fail to contain our heat?
You may have loved the way
the light mooned in
after dark, but according to the experts,
honey, the moon’s been dead
for a billion years.

Damage I & II

The prompt was "wordplay," which I am decidedly bad at for a writer of poetry. Anyway, I gave it a shot by "flipping" one of my poems, which is probably cheating. (Being a writer of poetry, I am good at cheating.)

DAMAGE I

That summer I walked with a limp
because I wanted to be a cripple,
wanted a flaw to mar the appearance
of perfection we created on vacation,
charging from diversion
to diversion. All I saw
were the backs of their heads,
my mother and her frosted hair,
my father’s white socks
and the tubby ass of my sister
in her terrycloth rainbow romper
always smelling of crotch and hairspray
when she tossed it off at night
into a corner of the Hotel 6
where the silence followed us to Florida
from our home, the home
we never left behind, the home
that trailed us through Adventure Island
and the Congo River Ride.
That was the summer I wished
for cancer, for a tumor that couldn’t be
removed, a mass so thick and palpable
the damage could not be denied, forcing
an amputation, its replacement so false
and hollow my faulty body would thunder
through botanical garden trails, and shatter
the leafy chatter of our family’s last resort.
 
DAMAGE II

The leafy chatter of our family’s last resort
through botanical garden trails.
And shatter and hollow, my faulty body
would thunder an amputation, its replacement
so false the damage could not be
denied, forcing, removed. A mass so thick
and palpable for cancer, for a tumor
that couldn’t be. That was the summer
I wished, and the Congo River Ride
that trailed us through Adventure Island
we never left behind. The home
from our home, the home where the silence
followed us to Florida into a corner
of the Hotel 6 when she tossed it off
at night, always smelling of crotch
and hairspray in her terrycloth rainbow romper.
And the tubby ass of my sister, my father’s white
socks, my mother and her frosted hair,
were the backs of their heads to diversion.
All I saw charging from diversion
of perfection we created on vacation wanted
a flaw. To mar the appearance because I wanted to be
a cripple, that summer I walked with a limp.