M Christine Delea's Blog, page 16

Little Star: Week 8 by Cameron Morse

Little Star: Week 8

by Cameron Morse

(published in Whale Road Review, Issue 9, Winter 2017)

Embryo son, fetus daughter, wherever

you are in your path of orbit, hear

me: I am dying. My brain tumor

is bigger than you are. It is all

the stars together, packed into a snowball

searing bare hands. I could never

say this to your mother, that saintly

apparitional being I so unworthily

married, who hasn’t for a moment

doubted living to be old together,

but if I’m not standing there in my sky

blue ...

Crossing a Little Star: Prompt

In today's beautiful poem posted on this blog, "Little Star: Week 8," the speaker--a father-to-be--addresses his child-to-be. In his very famous poem, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," Walt Whitman addresses future generations who have yet to be born. (You can read the Whitman poem here.)

Too very different poems, with two speakers with very different reasons for speaking. But these two poems are similar in being heartbreaking/hopeful and gentle/powerful.

Speakers in poetry often speak directly to l...

A Parking Lot in West Houston by Monica Youn

A Parking Lot in West Houston

by Monica Youn

(from her 2003 book, Barter, from Gray Wolf Press)

Angels are unthinkable

in hot weather

 

except in some tropical locales, where

from time to time, the women catch one in their nets,

 

hang it dry, and fashion it into a lantern

that will burn forever on its own inexhaustible oils.

 

But here—shins smocked with heat rash,

the supersaturated air. We no longer believe

 

in energies pure enough not to carry heat,

nor in connections—the thought of som...

Bridging the Gap: Prompt

I am a little obsessed with bridges. On drives across country, I will go out of my way in order to cross an old covered bridge miles from Interstate and plan a route so I can drive over a famous bridge. My photo collection includes decades worth of bridge photos from all angles, and of all types of bridges. One of my favorite novels, Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, includes some serious bridge plot points. Maybe growing up on an island made me appreciate bridges (along with ferries and trains tha...

Bridging the Gap

I am a little obsessed with bridges. On drives across country, I will go out of my way in order to cross an old covered bridge miles from Interstate and plan a route so I can drive over a famous bridge. My photo collection includes decades worth of bridge photos from all angles, and of all types of bridges. One of my favorite novels, Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, includes some serious bridge plot points. Maybe growing up on an island made me appreciate bridges (along with ferries and trains tha...

Women Whose Lives Are Food, Men Whose Lives Are Money by Joyce Carol Oates

Women Whose Lives Are Food, Men Whose Lives Are Money

by Joyce Carol Oates

(published in her 1978 book of the same name, Louisiana State U Press)

Mid-morning Monday she is staring

peaceful as the rain in that shallow back yard

she wears flannel bedroom slippers

she is sipping coffee

she is thinking—

                            —gazing at the weedy bumpy yard

at the faces beginning to take shape

in the wavy mud

in the linoleum

where floorboards assert themselves

Women whose lives are food

br...

Chicago by Carl Sandburg

Chicago

  by Carl Sandburg

 

         HOG Butcher for the World,

         Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

         Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;

         Stormy, husky, brawling,

         City of the Big Shoulders:

 

    They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I

         have seen your painted women under the gas lamps

         luring the farm boys.

    And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it

         is true I have seen the gunman kill and go f...

10 Things I Hate about You: Prompt

I love odes, I admit it. Counting my blessings? Sure. I try to find the beauty around me. I write down something I am grateful for every day.

But sometimes . . . sometimes . . . a gal's just gotta hate.

For this prompt, I want you to think of something (rather than someone) that you really, Really, REALLY dislike. You don't need to limit yourself to just 10 things that make this thing so noxious, but you can challenge yourself to keeping it at 10.

So, write something that

addresses somethi...

To the Pay Toilet by Marge Piercy

To the Pay Toilet

by Marge Piercy

You strop my anger, especially

when I find you in restaurant or bar

and pay for the same liquid, coming and going.

In bus depots and airports and turnpike plazas

some woman is dragging in with three kids hung off her

shrieking their simple urgency like gulls.

She's supposed to pay for each of them

and the privilege of not dirtying the corporate floor.

Sometimes a woman in a uniform's on duty

black or whatever the prevailing bottom is

getting thirty cents an ho...

On the Death of Benjamin Franklin by Philip Freneau

On the Death of Benjamin Franklin

by Philip Freneau

Thus, some tall tree that long hath stood

The glory of its native wood,

By storms destroyed, or length of years,

Demands the tribute of our tears.

The pile, that took long time to raise,

To dust returns by slow decays:

But, when its destined years are o’er,

We must regret the loss the more.

So long accustomed to your aid,

The world laments your exit made;

So long befriended by your art,

Philosopher, ’tis hard to part!—

When monarchs tumble...