Day 30 brings us the well traveled Ed Skoog, with a poem entitled “Party at the Dump” from his recent full-length collection, Mister Skylight (© 2009, Copper Canyon Press).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

A few months ago, I went into great detail about the power of Mister Skylight, and I’m delighted to share another poem from the book. “Party at the Dump” leaves nothing out, but rather than get too metaphorical or mystical with “one man’s junk” type thoughts, Ed thrusts us through disillusion and old fashion weirdness as the scene shifts in and out of darkness and light, dawn and dusk, and all the sweet filth that makes possessing a body such a strange, joyous ride. Take your time and let it unfold.

Party at the Dump

What can’t be seen under the thrown
was home. The sky and its turbulent guard
fresco the kestrel storm harmless and east,
arrive like a hostage, an ear, a finger in the mail.
Wind unhooks the mirliton vine, kisses each begonia.
Shadow bricks the window shy. Cups fly.
There are times one ought to charge or fall back.
What I win from masking-tape tic-tac-toe
on the bedroom’s nine windowpanes,
I spend in silver, spend in empty hallway.
No one’s my brother tonight, watering his lawn.
So I take my chair to the roof flat as the hour.
Wind hangs laundry on the gable.
The hour is suitcase and landmine.
The moon rises over the abandoned town
like cutlery on the high shelf.
Our fishing camp is hip-deep now,
at the end of tidal song. Westbank cattle swim
to the east bank, and wind turns wood
in high cello. Sunset ripens and ruptures.
If I were nothing I’d be home by now
in Hemet, or Anza, or Los Angeles,
below the moon’s IV drip. From the pueblo
of the anesthesiologist and soup spoon
there is some wandering up. No one there is
my brother watering his lawn, and he calls
to see how I’m doing. And this is where I start,
at Mr. Samuel’s Tire Shop on St. Claude Avenue.
Life must be worth something
for the loss of it to hurt so much.
Take the foreign policy of weather,
palmetto bugs caravanning up the lime tree.
Winds crater power lines, and from these,
an empty and alone beauty busters down,
bullies the shotgun house, keeps a body
up late. Dogs know, the wild ones,
wheel-scarred and healed, that the storm
brings from hiding to scratch a deaf ear,
to sneak short lifelong sneaks brave to live:
I know the secret is to stay low,
adventure between calendar and heart.
Today’s hurricane flag only waves in photos.
The ocean opens Grand Isle like a casket.
We hit the beach late, dimple blanket
beside the fishing pier, where children seal,
spell with sparklers the Fourth of July.
Roman candles fire green artillery into the sea.
Teenagers park, sneak through scrub
to beach, and burn driftwood distinctions
between lie, lay, lain. My interest
is in things that disappear, ten men in dark
jackets staring asea, some foreign orchestra.
Is that you in the seat ahead of me?
You’ve never been here before.
This frog comes halfway in the open door
of Butler’s Bar and Restaurant. So it must be
frog time. Saturday night scouring levees down
into the gutters of Tchoupitoulas.
Then it’s Sunday and I’m at your doorstep.
Between Mr. Samuel’s and the cop garage:
water. As a kid, I knew the magic show
was a shape of eternity. And somewhere else
the desert smells like fresh belts and sweetly
tries to take us down. We went to look at what
was being forged, a quarrel in the mountains,
sketchbook avalanches covering up the world
and its passports, any business what the mountain does.
Hostages wash up at the embassy, unharmed.
Seven days after the storm those who did not want
to leave, or did, find ground in the laughter of loss.
When the wind turns along the fence, when the gray
horse rounds the turn, blue arguments gnarl
podiums of sky. Wind knees its August februation.
The boy with the web painted on his face
pursues his thoughts through the vineyard.

**

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.

**

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.

**

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.

**

Day 28 brings us Oregon poet Ellen Waterston, with a poem entitled “The Artist Feels Small,” from her collection, Between Desert Seasons (© 2008, Wordcraft of Oregon).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Artists and writers wake up to their unique callings every day, only to wake and wake again to new callings but never quite getting over the trick and difficulty of acknowledging, realizing and honoring the truth. In the following poem, our narrator flings a wide-angle lens out to the world, brings the view back to herself, then goes further inward, trying to capture the moment when this life as a writer began.

The Artist Feels Small

Pin-striped brokers wearing black market gold
watches negotiate timber contracts on Russian
forests over dinner in Prague. Medics in white lab
coats wipe fly eggs from the matted eyes of Somali
children under bed nets. Rail thin models giraffe
the Paris runways after a last drag of a Gitane back-
stage. Latino gangs with pierced tongues howl
at midnight in the empty streets of Albuquerque.
And in New York City exotic queens glue silver
feathers to their skin for the gay pride parade.

And I? I search the trash for words to describe,
pile behind me discarded lines, the refuse, the steaming
heap of redo forcing my plastic lawn chair
to the edge of a road lined with dusty date palms
that leads to San somewhere. A caballero on his skinny,
bare-hoofed mount quick-steps by.

I’ll do what I can to fledge a writer’s life of sorts
but these choices are hard. It started when I was small,
and downstairs heard others’ voices or, forgotten inside
my dark and airless playhouse in the middle of the living
room floor, listened in on their conversation. It started when
I stopped to watch the galloping river from a motionless
shore, listened to its instantaneous hello, good-bye.

**
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.

**

Day 27 brings us a poem from Oregon poet Mark Thalman. “Moving Into Night” first appeared in Poetpourri, and later in Verse Daily. The poem also appears in Mark’s full-length collection, Catching the Limit (© 2009, Fairweather Press).


THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

As with yesterday’s poem from Celeste Thompson, Mark puts us in the water again. In this case, the reader, along with the narrator, merge with the calm, placid scene of pale stars that dot the lake, and shove off into the coming darkness.

Moving Into Night

After dinner dishes have been washed and put away,
I walk down to the dock.

Clouds hover against snow-capped peaks.
The sun, already below the horizon, turns glaciers pink.

Shadows stretch across the hills
like blankets being drawn up for the night.

Along the distant shore,
one last fisherman trolls for kokanee…

Below my feet, trout meander between pilings
glide over dappled stones.

The moon rises. On the water,
it is shattered by each wave.

With cupped hands, I scoop up a brilliant shard
and wash my face with wet light.

Soon, the wind dies, and the moon is again whole.
Pale stars, floating lanterns, dot the lake.

I untie my boat, shove off,
and lifting the oars, row across the heavens.

**
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.

**

Day 26 brings us Portland-area poet Celeste Thompson, with a poem entitled “Looking for Whales.”

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

After a day spent searching, the poem’s narrator settles back into evening only to spot what may or may not be a whale. It’s a question of faith, and Celeste brings us to the brink quite naturally.

Looking for Whales

On the troller Mr. Max, green swells
slap-fling us airborne for a split second.
Salt spray mists our lips, our hair,
and we grip the rails smiling,
searching. I scan the horizon for hours,
looking for the telltale spray
from the Gray Whale cow
and calf seen swimming in the area,
but we see nothing.
Later in our hotel room you ask for silence
while the cello plays Adagio in G Minor.
This is my favorite part.
Just then I look outside the window and see a spray,
or is it the surf hitting a rock?
I feel the warm thrill
of believing in something I can’t see below the surface.

**
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.

**

Day 25 brings us Dana Guthrie Martin, with a poem entitled “Robot Passage.” Copies of Dana’s chapbook, The Spare Room, are available through Blood Pudding Press.


THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

What I love about Dana’s work is her ability to infuse empathy into the inanimate. The middle of the poem, for me, is the first gut punch — taking the life of one robot’s “favorite companion bot,” then setting the two down for burial. She could have stopped there, but instead she goes further, joining the robot couple while water fills around them.

Robot Passage

— after Linda Gregg


My robot has empty lamps instead
of eye sockets. And there are no
upgrades. I put him in this hole
because I began pawing the loam
and could not stop. And draped
on him my husband’s finest suit,
the black one with pinstripes.
I slit it up the back to fit it
over his wedge of a body.
Removed the photovoltaics
from his favorite companion bot —
watched it slowly slump away
its existence, flour going heavy
in a sack. Then tucked the bot
under my robot’s left arm,
the way he carried it each day.
To make happiness for him.
He is not dead automatically.
The hole is filling with water,
from beneath. The water is turning
rust brown. I see my robot
looking, though he has no eyes.
I trip into the hole, lie
on top of him, and sing.

**
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.

**

Day 24 brings us Oregon poet Heather Strang, with a poem entitled “Koloa Gardens.” The poem appears in her full-length collection, Anatomy of the Heart (© 2009, iUniverse).


THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Heather provides a tongue-in-cheek look at “domestic bliss” between two souls who seem to have little in common until the spirits (in this case, rum and wine) bring them together every other night.

Koloa Gardens

Domestic bliss
came easy
the television on
soup cooking on the stove
two souls
circling one another like figure
eights
you yell at the game
I read poetry
and we are complete
it only took a good glass of
Chardonnay
and a rum and Coke
before we knew it we were
tangled up
in this
apartment in the tropics
a question mark for the future
sex every other night
like clock work.

uncle same would be so
proud.

**
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.

**

Day 23 brings us Brian Turner, with two poems from his second collection, Phantom Noise (© 2010, Alice James Books).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEMS

In his first full-length collection, Here, Bullet, Brian took us into the world and psychology of 21st century combat, and guided us through a harsh desert landscapes fraught with military, civilians, causalities and hallucinations.

In Phantom Noise, he brings us home to the “clarity of rage” that punctuates our daily lives, and weaves threads between worlds until the “double-headed nails” in a hardware store become “firing pins,” and the opening and shutting of a cash register is the sound of “machine guns being charged.”

The first poem below, “Howl Wind,” comes and goes in an instant, but leaves a sour taste as we watch for the high angle of hell and wonder where the mortar will land. The second, “Insignia,” focuses on an unfortunately familiar war story, and Brian does a wonderful job serving as witness to it.

Howl Wind


                    I see people riding on shrieking horses,
                    steering clouds of sparkbelching fires
                    on their way to flame life out of you
                     —Mahd Al-Aadiyya (4000 BCE)

Launched from its tube, the mortar round
accelerates to the apogee of its flight,
rising fast to what the gunners call
the high angle of hell, the round
suspended over the city lights below,
where any one of us might find ourselves
deep within the very last day of our life,
but wholly unaware of the fact—unaware
that the steel-hard visitations of death
hang from the heavens above,
and if there’s someone we would kiss
good-bye, or a few words we’d rather share
than leave unspoken, then now is the time,
because just as missiles were hurled in fire
from catapults of old, a mortar round
howls a night wind over the city,
and just where it lands
we will see.

**

Insignia

                    One in three female solders will experience
                    sexual assault while serving in the military.

She hides under a deuce n’ half this time—sleeping
on a roll of foam, draped in mosquito netting. Sandflies

hover throughout the night. She sleeps under vehicle exhaust
and heat, dreaming of mortars buried beside her, three stripes

painted on each cold tube, a rocker of yellow hung below.
It’s you she’s dreaming of, Sergeant—she’ll dream of you

for years to come. If she makes it out of this country alive,
which she probably will. You will be the fire and the hovering

breath. Not the sniper. Not the bomber in the streets. You.
So I’m here to ask this one night’s reprieve.

Let her sleep tonight. Let her sleep. Pause a moment
under the gibbous moon. Smoke. The gin your wife sent

from New Jersey, colored mint green with food dye
disguised in a bottle of mouthwash: take a long swig of it.

Take the edge out of your knuckles. Let it blur your vision
into a tremor of lights. The explosions in the distance

are not your own. In these long hours before dawn,
on the banks of the Tigris river, let her sleep.

In her dream, your eyes are pools of rifle oil.
You unsheathe the bayonet from its scabbard

while she waits. On a mattress of sand and foam, there
in the motor pool, she waits to kiss bullets into your mouth.

**

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.

**

Day 22 brings us Oregon poet Scot Siegel, with a poem entitled “Autumn Turns Through Stratified Wars.” The poem previously appeared in The New Verse News, October, 2009, and will appear in Scot’s forthcoming collection, Skeleton Says (© 2010, Finishing Line Press).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Scot starts off with a musing that seems very tied to the moment and place, but by the fourth stanza, we sense that we are about to shoot off elsewhere. Soon all color is gone from the sky, and sounds that a moment ago arrived in a breeze seem to come in a rumble. The poem concludes with a reminder that we are all being summoned to the same end.

Autumn Turns Through Stratified Wars

A few little leaves alight on the sleeper wind
lemon, iron-orange, vermilion
but there’s no dive-swiping gnat-catching tonight

Some songbirds sense the slack-season upon us
stillness readies the river, trees glimmer
and we lean uneasily into the quiet . . .

Three warblers balance on one blackberry cane
not ordinary warblers, yellow-breasted chats
gone silent in the breeze––

There’s no yellow chip; no whistle, caw, nor rattle
just three imperceptible heartbeats screaming
through silver thorns & bramble––

                    *

Is their night not unlike our country?
Somewhere, a raptor hovers, drags her talons
over Arab neighborhoods, while we lie awake . . .

In my wife’s eyes a blue flame flickers
World News, a helicopter turns, delivering
or receiving the dead . . .

We hardly notice midnight passing over
as we tilt and spin on the dreadful wing of a hawk
Who says she loves us?

Crows on our tail, relentless––
I think I hear one say:

          Come home

**
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.

**

Day 21 brings us Todd Boss all the way from the land of a thousand lakes. The poem, “One Can Miss Mountains,” appears in his debut collection, Yellowrocket (© 2008, W. W. Norton & Co.).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Todd is a skilled and gifted practitioner at letting music carry us through a poem without forsaking meaning. Read this one out loud, and keep an eye and ear out for slant rhymes, especially at the end. From there, jump over to Todd’s site for a listen — his delivery adds another layer to the piece.

One Can Miss Mountains

and pine. One

can dismiss
a whisper’s

revelations
and go on as

before as if
everything were

perfectly fine.
One does. One

loses wonder
among stores

of things.
One can even miss

the basso boom
of the ocean’s

rumpus room
and its rhythm.

A man can leave
this earth

and take nothing
— not even

longing — along
with him.

**
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.

**