M Christine Delea's Blog, page 17
July 21, 2024
Pen Pals: Prompt
There is something magical about getting an actual card or letter in the mail; it was wonderful when that was the only way to get mail, and it is now, when there are other, faster ways to write to people.
Today's poem on my blog, simply titled "Friendship," was written before email and texts, and conjures up the magic of a deeply felt message to a friend in pain.
This prompt asks that you read this poem for inspiration and then write a piece that describes writing to someone important to you;...
Friendship by Lucien Stryk
Friendship
by Lucien Stryk
(published in Selected Poems, 1976, The Swallow Press)
He writes again. Since his divorce
a fist has never left his chest.
He needs my words, and so I fill
a sheet--what joy it gives
to utter words to eyes that plead
from paper. I place the softest
on his cheek, his brow, a special one
upon his mouth. Sigh across
the page that he still has a friend.
Now off to do its loving work,
my scroll of bandages and kisses,
my dried and flattened heart.
Lucien Stryk wa...
July 17, 2024
Elegy for Myself by Stanley Moss
Elegy for Myself
by Stanley Moss
(published in Poetry, OCT/NOV 1987)
The ashes and dust are laughing, swaddled,
perfumed and powdered, laughing at the flowers,
the mirrors they brought to check his breath,
—and he no longer singular.
Who will carry his dust home in merriment?
These things need a pillow, a clay pot, a wife,
a dog, a friend. Plural now he is all the mourners
of his father’s house, and all the nights and mornings too.
Place him with “they love” and “they wrote,”
not he loves an...
July 14, 2024
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...
July 10, 2024
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...
July 7, 2024
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...
July 3, 2024
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...
