I debated long and hard about whether to include this page and I finally decided to do it, if only because it feels wrong to have a blog about poetry and not be able to prove I am a poet. Truth be told, I have been writing poetry since I was very small, and told them to Mama to write down. I continued to write poetry all through school.
This is one of my first poems, and of course it was about food:
Rolls
Rolls, rolls, are soft and white
but best
rolls go good with chicken breast
Since then it's all been downhill. What can top the understated masterpiece, Rolls?!
My first poem was published in READ Magazine when I was 14, in 8th grade, and I have a copy of it somewhere, in a scrapbook. The editor that published it sent me several books to read, because he wanted me to improve my writing, and became a pen pal friend for a while. It was a pretty extraordinary for a young teen in Tennessee, who was not in any way precocious except I was always getting out and doing things nobody else did, like audition for plays at UT and send in poems to national magazines. I was nothing if not brash.
me, 4th grade
I had a poem published in the literary magazine at Georgia when I was an undergrad, a tiny haiku they must've loved as a space-filler:
Brain-fried
Stir thoughts
Take a wok.
Amazing work, right?! So understated.
When I was in graduate school I got one poem published in the UT Literary Magazine, probably more because it was about a classmate of mine who had died than because it was so great, but so be it.
I went to graduate school at UT in the late 80's and got my MA in Creative Writing in 1990, which seems like eons ago now. Hey, wait a minute, it was another century...
So here are some of my recent works. Shout-out to Annmarie Lockhart over at Vox Poetica for being kind enough to publish some of these, and encourage me to keep writing.
The Lake
When I was seventeen,
the deep cold lake could be reached
Walking a short distance out the back door
Flowing between mountains, nurturing fish and ducks.
When I was seventeen the hours slipped by
I worked, went to class, chatted.
I didn’t ignore my homework and growl,
Did I?
You are seventeen, carrying more -
more than I ever did - more heavy memories
The fists connecting with your flesh.
The cold that pinched your bones.
I can live on noodles, you smirk
Disdaining my admonition about education
And work, explaining
Your preference for living just barely.
The abused always return to abusers, feeling
Comforted by the familiar.
Her long black hair whips you into trouble.
You eat poorly, sleep for eleven hours
In your clothes,
shuffling in poor shoes into the cold.
Behind our blue house only a creek flows.
I long to wrap you in swaddling cloth and run
Run home to the lake, and bathe
You, baptize you, again.
Just Go Sailing Out There
I put my hands on your chest each night and pray
As if intoning those words keeps you safe.
I like that you’re back to your old self, I say
It will last half a week, that’s all,
your man voice rumbles.
No no no no no…
Despite the perfect squared bedcovers
and the clean boy above -
Despite the whispered incantations
Despite my outstretched arms
trying to balance it all as I run -
You will insist on being sad.
I want to remember the way you talked to Katie on the phone tonight -
The serious boy gone, smile-lit
You promise to hit
tennis balls in the cold,
despite your soreness,
and homework.
Leave your 17 year old thoughts and seek out sunshine.
Laughter.
Sheer joy.
Run after it. Run hard.
Forward, abandoning barriers.
Let my love billow out behind you, sailing you forth
To love – not seriously but recklessly -
No matter how tired you are,
to love –
despite everything.
Weathering
My old Mazda slices through the wet cold morning world
Windshield wipers thwock thwock.
I hate driving in rain. Anxiety underlines everything.
The only beauty—tall pines fringing the ashy sky, a fit canopy
to my meditation cave.
Far west, my sister/friend prepares to journey east.
I know her journey.
Years ago I sped across the sky to my children.
Warehoused in orphan prisons, their faces engraved on my eyelids,
My only thought was Hold on, Mama's coming.
Five years past, my daughter awoke to her first day as an American.
I cannot forget her—huge eyes, thick straw hair, white stick limbs,
mute behind her Russian language.
We lived in terror together, Mother and Daughter, bonded only
by paper and mutual longing.
Now we fit together like a pair of old shoes, comfortable from the long wearing,
separate, yet working together.
My son says he misses snow.
We live in a place of rain, a place of tiny winters and lush, expansive summers.
Studying for a science test, I explain ice wedging to him by recalling the potholes
everywhere in Kazakhstan.
I explain about rivers as he remembers the recent torrent in our backyard that
swept away our stone angel.
I explain tributaries by showing how fingers connect to hand.
We talk of weathering, of erosion, of alluvial plains, of steep canyons rising from ancient rivers.
I am not a baby! He says indignantly at breakfast. I'm thirteen.
You will always be my baby, even when you have gray hair and a pot belly. My baby.
I labored in planes and fell in snow for you.
Time and water change everything.