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 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 19 brings us Seattle poet Mimi Allin, with a poem entitled “here now white.”

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Whether or not you’ve read Mimi’s work before, chances are, for those in the Seattle area, you’ve seen her work in action, whether curating an event or serving as the unofficial poet-in-residence at Green Lake. I mention this because Mimi’s work is as much about performance and movement as it is about the words on the page. In “here now white,” we have a poem that dances its way through a wash of colors and images, and leaves us delighted to be part of the ocean’s foam.

here now white

somewhere in the middle of the sea
stands a strange village
made of broken pilings and piers
in a tower there
waits a princess
most dreadfully alone
her suitors come
by boat
but most are too big
their sails too wide
their hulls too fat
to fit through
the labyrinth
of pilings
to get to her
she is a tower at sea
she imagines them
on the horizon
the color of a wave
blue waves white
in the air the moon
over the sea
she sleeps from morning til night
and wakes every evening
to find a magic boot
filled with ink
outside her window
knocking against the wall
perhaps he sent it
she thinks
through the pilings
it came
and so she writes
the color of a wave
using the lace of his boot
she writes
on a dark page—
tie your sails in tight
use the passage of
the shortest pilings
follow the terns’ nests
to the last wall
when it looks like you can go no further
sail in very close
you will see an overlapping passage
take this channel
until you see my tower
i will use a white kerchief
to guide you in
if i hold a blue cloth
you must go back
if red you are in danger
tie to the nearest piling and wait

**

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 16 brings us two poems from Paulann Petersen, “Traveler,” and “Basin,” both from her collection Kindle (© 2008, Mountains and Rivers Press).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEMS

Paulann’s work can absolutely envelop a reader, and set them floating in whatever jet stream a particular poem provides. In both “Traveler” and “Basin,” we find ourselves in a place of new beginnings, not yet certain of our footing, and still coming to terms with the terrain. Yet we go forward with a sense of safety and familiarity, as if remembering a previous pass through.

Traveler


Cast ashore
like some fleck of wood
brought here from afar
by the sea,

you reel — stunned
to breathe this reek of
strange urine, strange perfume
thick in saffron heat.

Here you are, foreign one,
familiar with only
the moon and stars,
a cloud-scraped sky,

the lidless eye of sun.
Take heart: only what floats
could be carried
as far as you’ve come.

**

Basin

On a walk, your face catches
some of the rain — a bit
of river, mill pond, lake
coming around, slanted down.
Caught on your tongue,
raindrops taste sweet,
an ocean in its mild disguise.

What you gather into yourself
comes from as far away
as the whole world’s girth,
from as close as what you
can reach. Your upturned hands
could cup to hold part of it—
carried with you: this earth’s
steady recompense.

**

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.

**