Cheryl Snell's Blog, page 33
June 7, 2011
Made from Smoke
Turn away from its grimy breath.
Let it blow around you like hair.
You can always push it away or tuck it
behind your ear, the plumes hiding you,
holding you
apart from the plastic, the falsehoods,
the impersonators.
You've escaped before: the holes
in your space
are still where you left them,
part of your armature
chalked to the texture of ground-up pills.
Tears of second chances clear your vision
so start again. Gather up the familiar,
idealize it until it appears beside you.
Its distraction is only temporary.
Pay no attention that its head turns
on a neck arched
with your own longing.
Stop. This is the moment
before all the positioning begins,
the grand negotiations,
the heat that melts before it can singe.
Understand that it's never the thing
you bargained for. All faults are fatal.
Pick the ones you can live with
and glory in your own erasure.
You are an image made from smoke.
On this canvas, you're the man.
June 5, 2011
How to Interpret a Blurb
inspired by what's floating around the interwebs
"pulls you in immediately" = nothing else to read in the waiting room
"innovative" = a head-scratcher
"luminous writing" = heavy on the adverbs
"a tour-de-force" = earmarked for re-gifting
"compelling" = a traffic accident, I couldn't look away
"deeply felt" = made me feel like a voyeur
"lyrical" = writes like a girl (sez Naipaul?)
"rich language" = opaque and Latinate
"redemptive" = soon to be a chick flick
"pulls you in immediately" = nothing else to read in the waiting room
"innovative" = a head-scratcher
"luminous writing" = heavy on the adverbs
"a tour-de-force" = earmarked for re-gifting
"compelling" = a traffic accident, I couldn't look away
"deeply felt" = made me feel like a voyeur
"lyrical" = writes like a girl (sez Naipaul?)
"rich language" = opaque and Latinate
"redemptive" = soon to be a chick flick
June 1, 2011
THIS Literary Magazine
Click THIS for two more of my poems. Life is good!
May 31, 2011
One Shot:Too Hot to Sleep
I stand guard over your fitful sleep. Heat rises, mixes with your sweat,
and I watch your fever rage. It's almost midnight.
Planets blink, offer neither clue nor compassion.The hour's breaking shivers
with sound that draws me to the window below the shingled wings
of the sloping roof.
A bird tunes its throat, swells a single pitch from the quavering source.
Shapes from a far branch answer, the motif embellished as if caught in a lie.
Notes loosed into an imitation of flight remind me of all that must not happen
in the dark: a soul slipping away, all vigilance forsaken.
I turn back to you, pulse quick with dotted rhythms,one bird following another
into the guttering shadows.
One Shot Wednesday
and I watch your fever rage. It's almost midnight.
Planets blink, offer neither clue nor compassion.The hour's breaking shivers
with sound that draws me to the window below the shingled wings
of the sloping roof.
A bird tunes its throat, swells a single pitch from the quavering source.
Shapes from a far branch answer, the motif embellished as if caught in a lie.
Notes loosed into an imitation of flight remind me of all that must not happen
in the dark: a soul slipping away, all vigilance forsaken.
I turn back to you, pulse quick with dotted rhythms,one bird following another
into the guttering shadows.
One Shot Wednesday
Amma Comes of Age
Ever wonder how Amma from Shiva's Arms got that way? Read her backstory on your Kindle to fill in the blanks. BTW, that's my mother's drawing of my husband's mother as a teenage wife in India on the cover.
The Backstory
Ever wonder how Amma from Shiva's Arms got that way? Read this free download to fill in the blanks.
To illustrate this coming-of-age story, I used my mother's drawing of my husband's mother as a teenage wife.
To illustrate this coming-of-age story, I used my mother's drawing of my husband's mother as a teenage wife.
May 29, 2011
Memorial Day for the War Dead
Memorial day for the war dead. Add now
the grief of all your losses to their grief,
even of a woman that has left you. Mix
sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,
which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning
on one day for easy, convenient memory.
Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,
in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."
No use to weep inside and to scream outside.
Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.
Memorial day. Bitter salt is dressed up
as a little girl with flowers.
The streets are cordoned off with ropes,
for the marching together of the living and the dead.
Children with a grief not their own march slowly,
like stepping over broken glass.
The flautist's mouth will stay like that for many days.
A dead soldier swims above little heads
with the swimming movements of the dead,
with the ancient error the dead have
about the place of the living water.
A flag loses contact with reality and flies off.
A shopwindow is decorated with
dresses of beautiful women, in blue and white.
And everything in three languages:
Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.
A great and royal animal is dying
all through the night under the jasmine
tree with a constant stare at the world.
A man whose son died in the war walks in the street
like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."
--Yehuda Amichai
the grief of all your losses to their grief,
even of a woman that has left you. Mix
sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,
which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning
on one day for easy, convenient memory.
Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,
in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."
No use to weep inside and to scream outside.
Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.
Memorial day. Bitter salt is dressed up
as a little girl with flowers.
The streets are cordoned off with ropes,
for the marching together of the living and the dead.
Children with a grief not their own march slowly,
like stepping over broken glass.
The flautist's mouth will stay like that for many days.
A dead soldier swims above little heads
with the swimming movements of the dead,
with the ancient error the dead have
about the place of the living water.
A flag loses contact with reality and flies off.
A shopwindow is decorated with
dresses of beautiful women, in blue and white.
And everything in three languages:
Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.
A great and royal animal is dying
all through the night under the jasmine
tree with a constant stare at the world.
A man whose son died in the war walks in the street
like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."
--Yehuda Amichai
