Day 29 brings us Ohio poet Nathan Moore, with a poem entitled “Business Casual Pajamas.”

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

After a quick walk through Nathan’s work, you begin to recall any number of pleasure centers you forgot about. The first line of the following poem sets the stage for agitation. What chaos awaits? Just a little reordering of our known world.

Business Casual Pajamas

Panic plans the day’s shape. A confusion of chains. Steady:
no one stole the toothbrush. My portrait is not centered
in a haze of candle smoke. Even so, during the instant
of preoccupation, the aquarium goes green and my daughter
diapers the cat.

I shake stock props from a box: a bootlace, an object
that remains unnamed. Elevators and highways rumble
through my personal anecdotes. My precious crescent
is brittle like an antique handgun but shiny like the sheen
of soap on a daffodil.

There’s no teaching what the neighbor’s know: frozen
balloons and fishnet. Minutes are ellipses. Now is
the hour when gnats binge on heat. I’ll paint the trees
to resemble street lights and eliminate cover. Still,
a melody begs . . . the whirring nowhere.

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A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

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Tags: A Poet a Day, Nathan Moore poetry, National Poetry Month, Ohio poet, Ohio poetry, poet Nathan Moore, read write poem

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under A Poet a Day, Creative, NaPoWriMo, poetry. Both comments and pings are currently closed.