Cheryl Snell's Blog, page 38

NaPo 10

migraine

like a restless husband
looking toward the door
the body begins to betray you

it sends up warning flares
along darkening roads
and hidden railroad crossings

one brow lifts
over squeezed-shut eyes
as if it has another place to be

and, as if intending to deceive,
tears leak from only one side
of your face.

a body tries to tell its truth
but the sun is shining hotly now,
never mind the pain light brings

NaPo #9

A woman rises up under her man
and the world disappears. Shadows
sweep across his face and swallow the room
like Atlantis or Pompeii. Disasters like that
should stay packed away in a history book,
hidden in the back of the stacks someplace
where people who don't want to know
don't have to look.

The man lights a candle and brings it to bed.
A bright spot blooms behind the silhouette
of the woman, fully dressed now, leaning
out the window. Someone in the street below
is smoking a cigar, but the woman can't see
what it cost him: his hands are full of ashes,
his fingers licked with flame.

NaPo #8

My before followed
your after,

your down and out,
your without within.

Despite or because,
I became around and about,

but you wanted behind
and possibly under.

Considering for and against,
how to get beyond?

Our inside among was
neither here nor there,

so

if became when
and then, right now,

and the present was where
I moved past you.

NaPo #7

With the album spread across her knees,
she turns the pages of her life
where sons become brothers, nieces are cousins.
A husband died,
but peacefully, of natural causes.

Is this you? she asks, pointing to a photo.
I'm ten, my Brownie uniform weighted with badges.
You were so sweet with your band-aid knees and blonde braids.
You liked to sketch the horses we kept on the farm.
Her farm. Her childhood. The brain unravels backward.

Did I know you then?
I tell her that I am her daughter.
You are? How lovely!
She closes the book and holds me
as close as if one of us had been lost.

Sheila Deeth Reviews Variations on a Theme with Harmonica

Some short stories tell simple tales to immediate effect. Others draw the reader deeper, leaving a lingering taste on the tongue or haunting music in the air. Cheryl Snell's tales in this collection belong to that second type. Bounded at both ends by the song of a harmonica, the author creates vividly real and wounded characters. There's Roger, falling to twin temptations, beginning a tune but never quite ending it as the heat wave passes through. There's Zoe, filling her mind with facts and detail like Novocain to hide her pain. A fat sister recalls how she became who she is then finds it isn't shape that defines her after all. A mother is still a child and another mother's maybe falling in love.

Cheryl Snell creates scenes and memories like poetry, filling the senses and drawing the reader in. Stories flow through the eyes of her characters, telling truths they've failed to see, and blossoming each into singular shapes of honesty. What matters? People matter, a combination of how they see themselves and their relationships, a vivid mixture of different layers of existence.

Hurt birds, popsicles, harmonica's song--like elements of a well-written tune the refrains repeat through these stories making this truly a collection to savor, not just a random grouping of random tales. If you want short and simple, these stories aren't for you. But if you want those deep lingering tones, a harmonica's birdsong haunting the basement's gloom, this collection's for you.

Thanks to Sheila Deeth for this lovely review!

NaPo Day 6

In the drawing
I am not the charcoal,
not the chalk. I am everything else
the drawing is not. I am not
the line nor the space, the light nor the shadow.

I look into my moving mind and see
the charcoal and the chalk,
the line and the space,
the light and the shadow.

They lope along the blue landscape
where my thought's just been.

Every day I turn inside out for you.

NPM-Big Poetry Giveaway

I'm participating in the Poetry Month event Kelli Russell Agodon is organizing, Big Poetry Book Giveaway. I'm offering one of my own poetry books, Samsara, and also Patricia Fargnoli's much praised collection, Duties of the Spirit. To enter, leave a comment here with your email address. I'll choose two winners on May 1, and ship the books to them.

Happy Poetry Month!

NaPo, Day 3

You are nearer now,
a flicker of light upon a spine,
floating toward me
over carousels of luggage,
through time zones
pocked with stoplights
and the bulge of alternate lives.
I wait with nerves vibrating
like colors on a map,
one stumble away
from cold fluorescence
and worst case scenarios
while you stand still for a moment,
perhaps waiting for the hour to fulfill its destiny
before you bound down the escalator,
eyes on the exit, its revolving door,
your fingers curling around the handle
of the cab that will pull you
into the roaring rush hour surge.

NaPo, Day 2

The ear, taken by surprise
encloses the dark,
its singular humming.
Your own song could confuse it,
so keep it sotto voce.

To separate nuance from noise
takes practice: let whorls that circle
the smooth-muscled tunnel
swell like summer.

Against the drums, a percussion of bones moves
intricate things in their fringed peripheries,
and a spiral shell, like the one you once held
in your six year old hands, twitches
with a truth you had to learn to hear.

NaPoMo, Day 1

For National Poetry Month, I plan to make a poem each day to accompany a drawing by my sister Janet. I'll leave the pieces up for 24 hours and replace them with new ones, over and over again. Wish me luck!


For months she crisscrossed
a hot dry path
until her lips split
and she called out for comfort.

The rains came and she opened her mouth
greedy for each drop that filled her.

She was a river
and fish leapt from her
until her hook was baited
and she became the worm.