Conversing with a leaf

for Class tonight:

Conversing with a Leaf

Like a fledgling, it quivers. Though dead and brown,
cracked and dried, it shakes its thin wings. In scratches
and wiggles, it talks with the wind, then speaks to me
with unconcealed enthusiasm. I look around to be sure
you're not watching. If you were watching, you might think
I've lost my wits. Perhaps you'd be right.
I converse with a leaf, though I utter not a word, but instead,
shake my arms with quick spasms and flutters like a baby bird
begging for food. I open wide my mouth—a foolish sight,
you'd surely think, for one so large, without beak or feathers,
so decidedly un-bird-like. When I smile at the leaf, would you
think me an idiot? I ask the leaf for nothing, but thank it
and the wind for reminding me to look. Yes, spring comes.
Pausing in my tasks, delighted by its long-awaited warmth,
I raise my arms to the sun, rejoice in the purple glory of hyacinths
and blousy yellow jonquils that burst from under last year's
narrow, snow-blanched leaves. In grape-bark, grass
and mud nests, eggs hatch. Cardinals and robins
will soon fledge. You're not watching, are you?
Because the morning light and warmth seems ample
reason to dance around the talking leaf. I fling my arms,
twirl toward the promise of lilacs and the sweet breath
of hyacinths and flap and jiggle wildly for all the season's
fetal but upcoming baby birds.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
^this line, and everything below the line, is not part of the
poem—note to self, some drafts of this were not printed!
090427-1231-4a, 090426-1137-3a, 090425-2148-2e, 090424-2043-1g, 090424-0930-1st
Sun could paint my face with light and I might enjoy jonquils, hyacinths
and choruses of spring birdsong if I stayed outdoors. But instead, I go inside
and struggle with recalcitrant and unforgiving words. Woe closes
like darkness, cloys like stale air, on the poet who cannot or will not
relax and savor clusters of many-stamened speckled Hellebores
but carries experience away from its source
and ponders the language around it endlessly in the dimness
of her study. I am torn between the need to record and arrange these words
and the desire to stroke satin petals, while outside, sun shines
on newly opened scarlet and yellow tulips.

Started from the following journal excerpt: Conversing with a Leaf,
from my journal 090424: Through heaps of fallen lanceolate leaves,
bleached almost white by snow and sun, the neighbors' hyacinths press,
purple glories making their way without the aid of gardeners. And
next door, pink ones, like small fluffs of cotton candy on green
sticks, carefully tended. I incline my caring toward the wilder ones.
The air is cold but the sun is warm. On the sidewalk, a dead brown
oak leaf trembles in the wind, leaping about gently without blowing
away, reminding me of a baby bird, begging for food. If you had been
watching, you would have seen me speaking to the leaf, though uttering
not a word.

A Trick of Light (NaPoWriMo #18 Word Salad)

A Trick of Light

When her compass of shadows points only to darkness,
a rumble slashes behind her, a torn crack of sound.
Imagine the girl, hair brushing her waist, gown hitched up
and clinging damply to her skin as she wades through
the tall wildflowers that brush her bare legs with dew.
She turns in the meadow, resplendent with reds from the low sun,
curious and afraid. She holds the purple asters and goldenrods
close to her chest, flowers that evermore will signify the end
of summer, half the end, in a way, of everything,
but she doesn't know that yet. Not quite yet. She sees the horses
first, black, green-eyed, drooling spittle, dancing in their harnesses.
They paw at the air and rock; sparks fly from their hooves.
She sees the driver next, dark, handsome, old. Then young,
a sort of trick of the light. He is already in front of her
before she thinks to bolt. He seizes her, scoops her with an arm
around her waist, just as she begins to scream. Her head falls back,
flung on her thin neck by the upward rush as the chariot spins
and turns downward again. Dangling like this, she sees
one last glimpse of the darkening meadow, the flowers
a sea of colors, the stars whirl, the moon sets precipitously
at the edge of the chasm. The Underland seethes with the dead.
Their eyes and skin glow greenish, like foxfire or fireflies,
giving the vast caverns an eerie light. Creepy. In the throne room,
Hades makes diamonds for her by crushing coal in his bare hands,
a nifty trick, but Persephone will not stop crying. When he touches her,
the flowers blacken in her hands. She calls and calls for her mother.
He offers rubies, emeralds, pork chops, polenta, chocolate. Of course,
the pomegranate stops the tears. Her mother had fed them to her
as a child, one seed at a time, but when Hades feeds her his seed,
all trace of sweetness disappears from her tongue.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090420-1141-2a; 090419-2016 1st completed 1st draft

the fractal flame was made using Apophysis.

for napowrimo #18: word salad

confined

Confined

Fawn lilies, pale in the shadows of trees, open their throats

and call the bees. Bees, drunk with sleep and winter,

stagger from the hive. The hive hums with its own morning.

Spring caresses the forest lightly. If you hurry, you will see nothing

but the dark still-sleeping trunks of trees. But stop. Place your ear

to the trunk and listen. Sap thrums in its veins, singing

to the buds who hum softly as they gather their new leaves

to unfurl. And in a spot of branch-filtered sun, the first

mourning cloak butterfly fans slow wings among the fallen leaves.

You might mistake it for one of them if you didn't pause and look.

But I cannot look. Confined indoors, I miss the birthday

of the forest: the doe, licking her newborn, pressing

with her nose to balance it as it wobbles toward

its first breakfast. Picture me longing, aching; see me imagining

instead of watching, as, stepping among the white lilies

that bear its name, in a moment never to be repeated,

the newborn fawn takes its fleeting first steps.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

for BB

090419-1153-1c; 090418-1916-1st completed draft

for the prompt, "missing something or someone or something missing" for NaPoWri Mo #17 National Poetry Month at ReadWritePoem.

The fawn in the composit is by Berrybird. The word layout is by Wordle (from my poem). I took the trees and the fawn lily and made the composit.

Making it on my Own (Word Trails)

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge #16 Word trails, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Making it on my Own (Word Trails)

Writing as I walk, I follow word trails through a forest of thought,
each word linked mutably to a host of images and memories.
An Icabod Crane tree hangs over the path: twisted. The word twisted
links to broken, broken to shattered, shattered to glass
and to my heart, that old saw, that cliché that still feels so rich and real
to me, so true, in spite of centuries of overuse. It's difficult
to be a poet when you love clichés. My glass heart shatters from anger,
from a hand or fist or knife, smashed against a face, face links to fly,
fly escape bird wing fast fancy fallow Farrow Darcy.
I liked that name, Darcy. But I could not name
a daughter Darcy because of Darcy Farrow, though any name
must link to some tragedy or other. A good name ruined.
Alicia was another. I'd chosen it as a possibility until Robert Garrow
raped and killed Alicia Houk and abandoned her body along the trail,
the trail I walked to school each day. A beautiful girl left all winter
under the snow, no a trail of words, but a trail of horror. Strange
what we remember and what we forget. A trail of memories.
Reading old letters, I discover that I wrote my parents daily, twice
daily, often, after I left home. Such an outpouring of confusion,
a plethora of words, forbidden words, like fire hunger beg drugs,
like robbed, beaten, kicked, evicted, like plethora, a word my teacher
says not to use in poetry. Much of what I wrote my parents
I forgot, but occasionally, a favorite story surfaces, suddenly revisited,
shiny in the moment of it's recording, fresh with excitement
and pain or matter-of-factly written as commonplace,
two of us cramming into the turnstile together because we only
had one subway token between us. The half-rotted fruit
we pulled from the dumpster behind the grocers, devoured, grateful
for any sustenance. Sitting on the fire escape to get even the slightest
hint of breeze. "Don't send money," I wrote repeatedly
to my parents, "if I can't make it on my own, I'll come home."
Unlike Darcy Farrow, unlike Alicia Houk, I made it home eventually.
Boyfriend lover husband anger fist hit bleed abuse. Finally, escape.
Twisted, broken, shattered, home. I made it home,
if that breathing but mangled girl ringing my parents' doorbell
was still me.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090417-2124-1c; 090417-1641-1st (complete) draft

word image created on Wordle.

White Duck on a Green Pond

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge #13, a word list, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

White Duck in a Green Pool

The Clinton River makes an acute turn, chews
up the banks and topples trees whose roots hang fibrous
and ungrounded into the green water. Mallards, quacking
and grunting, slide along the current like pucks
in an air hockey game, smooth on the wrinkled green surface,
interrupting the reflection of willows and phragmites
with their shiny blue and green heads. When the river cuts
back far enough, it will rejoin itself, abandoning
this U-shaped oxbow to stagnate like an old appendix.
Already, the trail caves into the river and disappears,
almost impassable between the plunge to water
and the thicket of brambles. Already,
old oxbows ring islands of trashy willows and weeds
where Canada geese nest, the males hissing,
trailing intruders, attacking with wing blows,
with the heavy thump of breastbone against neck and shoulder.
No one in this dismal place is jubilant, but the white ducks,
resting on the sandbar opposite the bend of the river preen
their spotless feathers with bright orange smiles.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090416-1025-2a, 090413-1730-1b

Okay, something a little more cheerful.

Flash in the Pan

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge #8, for the "Old Flames prompt," for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Flash in the Pan

Barbara screamed, pointed at me, and everyone turned to look.

She screamed and screamed, pointed and flailed. Her face turned

scarlet. The thirty children who had gathered around me gaped at her,

all of us standing as still as if we were staring at Medusa, until my boss

found someone else to teach them and secreted me away with Barbara.

I shrank. Disappeared into a knot of thorns that tightened around me.

In the news, only that morning, a crazed wife had killed her husband

and his lover. But in private, Barbara's maniacal frenzy abated;

she spoke quietly. Fingers released their threatened hold on my neck

and I took a breath and another.

I still wanted her to disappear and take Gordon with her. Forever.

Before our first kiss, I'd asked him: "Are you married,

are you engaged, are you in a relationship?"

"No, no, no," he said, and he lied. I believed him. He wore no ring.

I tend to trust. I'd welcomed him

into my home, my heart and then my bed. But they were engaged,

and then they married. After he lied,

after he cheated, they married. He probably blamed it on me.

If I were her, I'd have been as angry, but never

would have married Gordon. She told me, in tears:

he'd cheated before. Said he saw other woman

when he was with me, too, Cheated us both.

Cheat once, cheat again. I so would not have married

Gordon that he was the first step toward a vow of celibacy

One year, then another and then a third. And on to ten. Barbara married

a cheat. I married silence, peace and a spacious

empty bed.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

090415-2212-3b; 090414-1115-2b; 090413-2252-1d; 090313-1602-1st

This poem has long lines which don't translate well into blog format.

NaPoWriMo prompt from ReadWritePoem #15: “Instead of”

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, for prompt #15, "Instead of," for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Instead of

writing this poem, I stare at the ceiling remembering how I used to watch movies on a blank wall, sometimes with a projector, and sometimes just staring at nothing but white. White sang and rippled into color, color meshed into patterns, creating people who often danced and sang. No one else could see those private movies. Now when I stare at the ceiling, because the wall here is blood red instead of white, I see a tea-with-oranges yellow from the lamp and speckled-horse blue from the cloudy sky seeping in the window to meet the yellow. The colors kiss near the shadows of books piled nearly to collapse above the lamp. Instead of writing this poem, I lie back in my swivel chair, stare at the ceiling and remember how as a child in bed at night, I loved to watch the pattern of car headlights sweep across the wall and ceiling, the rectangular window shapes gifted with flight.

Instead of doing my exercises and getting on with my day, I am pretending to write a poem. A prose poem, with spruces, oaks and elms full of water droplets and mourning doves. Raindrops stipple puddles full of sky almost as white as the ceiling. Full of the reflections of wings. Sparrows fall slanting across the window from the cedars to the feeder looking like sudden heavy snow, looking for food on the empty feeder. Instead of filling the feeder, I watch my fingers poke at the chiclet keys with their little letters, bing bing bing bing. Instead of getting dressed and making breakfast, I sit in my nightgown with my bare feet on the chair legs, shivering and shrinking from the cold of this rainy April morning and watch as one by one, the little black squiggles of letters fill up the white page.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090415 (tax-day)-0844-1st
NaPoWriMo prompt from ReadWritePoem #15 for 4-15-09: "Instead of"

This is a first draft. If I revise it, I will post the revision above this version. so the newest version will always be on top.

The photo of the Chickadee is from Kensington Metropark on Good Friday. We rarely have chickadees at our feeder.

I've done several others poems from NaPoWriMo prompts but haven't had time to post them.

I Come From Trouble

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, for the "Where do you come from" prompt, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

I Come From Trouble

White deer wandered through husks of burnt-out buildings,
browsing the new growth that sprang up after the fires and riots.
They'd fled into the river during the flames, somehow survived.
The gang from Royal Oak rounded up the deer for food,
but I hid a pair in the old zoo where I'd been living since
the trouble times. I hated to keep them captive; the place
resembled an ancient prison: small dark cells with no windows,
stalactites and stalagmites forming around the leaks in the roof,
but better that than eaten by the gangs. They showed up too well
in the woods and outer compounds, even at night. I blacked up
with char from the burned-over tree stumps. I gathered food
for the deer at night, let them loose in the inner chambers
where the hunger fiends couldn't spot them. The twenty-foot
chain-link fences with three strands of barbed wire
discouraged raids on what must have seemed to the gangs
like a hopeless jungle of weeds. I'd planted nettles and thorny
brambles on both sides of the fence and the moat of stinking swamp
was helpful too. They didn't realize that the dandelions,
burdocks, nettles and other weeds provided all the food
we needed, the deer and I. Though I couldn't see into the city,
I heard the gunfire and explosions, guessed at the gang war.
Heard the invasions, the Feds purging. Waited for silence,
And then waited some more. And here I am, with my companions
Snow, Ice and their baby, White Dove. We come from trouble
times. We came through flame and lived. I am a new woman;
call me Phoenix.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090413-1333-2b, 090413-1322-2a (first completed draft), 090412-1st
draft, unfinished

Note on the poem: this is for the NaPoWriMo challenge, "Where did you come from." I've written a number of "Where-did-I-come-from" poems, so I was looking for a different but related idea and yesterday, BB and I explored the old Zoo at Belle Isle where the white deer were kept captive after they were rounded up. The horrible, prison-like price and the fate of the deer (sold for food!) upset me and resonated, so I wrote this—it's "imaginary" but a metaphor of sorts—I
come from trouble—flame and fire. The fire, gangs riots and Feds are part of the history of Detroit. And Easter Sunday seemed like a good time for a rebirth image.

This is the first completed draft, what I wrote yesterday was only about half this and different. So there's a good chance there'll be more drafts and I will post them in the same post above the other during National Poetry month, anyway. That way, the newest version will always be at the top.

A Jar of Clowns

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, for Disparate things, yoked, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

A Jar of Clowns

Like the snakes at the museum with their yellowing scales
and pale, clouded eyes, my clowns are jammed in the jar
until no space remains for humor. Only a groan or two escapes,
the wheeze of tortured breath. My face presses, with theirs,
against the glass, three-quarters of the way to the bottom.
The pressure blanches my skin white and bloodless; it curves,
following the bend of glass. Bruises blossom at the contact
points. A hint of jelly clings to the jar by my tongue, apricot
maybe. Or peach. Not enough flavor remains to decipher
taste. The absence of laughter causes slow starvation,
a steady shrinking of the adipose of joy.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090413-1059-1st

This is my FIRST draft, it's likely I'll write more, and if so, I will post them ABOVE the 1st one so the newest is always at the top.

Getting Ahead, for NaPoWriMo

Happy Easter!

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, for "Found Poem," for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Getting Ahead, Found Poem with Canyon Bob

When I finally start getting ahead, disaster strikes.
Today it's the sewer line, the trees growing
into it, the basement flooded. My sister
wants to sell my mother's house. But who wants
a flooded basement? I'm still living
in my Mom's house after all these years.
With her gone, it feels like my house.
Maybe I should leave the basement flooded
so it won't sell, been in the family for generations,
but who wants that wretched sewer smell
and I'd probably fall in and drown. Sorry
to bother you. Do I smell bad? It's that stupid sewer,
oh, and alcohol, probably. I'm not an alcoholic,
but that that f-ing Roger next door gets me going.
Look, he drove on my lawn and tore up the grass.
My mother was a wonderful woman, but she slapped
me once for using the f-word and that f-ing Roger
wrote a note about my trees in his sewer, that's why
he was on the lawn, taking down his trees,
ashes they were, fire trees, and he wrote me a note
with the f-word and my sisters saw it; my poor sisters.
He didn't have to do that. I still try to protect them,
though I came seventeen years after my youngest sister.
They took Mom to the hospital, thought she had a tumor.
I was the tumor. Roger's Dad said she was too old
to be pregnant, to have me, but she did anyway.
He asked my Mom, "aren't you ashamed?" she said,
"no, I'm married." I know you gotta go, sorry
to bother you. But I'm not an accident or a mistake.
And I'm not an alcoholic. Smell like it, don't I?
No, I'm no mistake; I'm an unexpected pleasure.
And I'm not an alcoholic; alcoholics go to meetings.
I'm just a drunk.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
A "found poem" (captured "rant" from Canyon Bob)
090412-1128-2a, 090411-2341-1c, 090411-1704-1st

This is a "found poem" of sorts, from a "rant" by "Canyon Bob." I have used his words as I recall them and arranged them into this poem. Should I be concerned about appropriating his material or life? Anyone? Do I have the right to do this? And can I call it "mine?"

If I write any edits or revisions, I will post them ABOVE so the newest version is always at the top.

When I was God

HAPPY EASTER!!!

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, Paradise, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

When I was God

energy sang and eternal light interpenetrated
eternal darkness. Vast joy had a pulsing consciousness: me.
Thoughts gathered to make substance, things coagulated
and then dispersed, but they came and went
with little consequence. Mostly, I was alone in all that singing
emptiness, without thought, self or being,
except when I chose incorporation. Then,
I preferred high places, which I created so I could continue
to see forever. I gathered my body around me and sat
with the God Cat who was another part of me, who stretched
away from my energy-flesh in an attenuated light and snapped
into being. Its blue eyes radiated energy's song, its power
hummed around it. People, too, were a part of me,
shadow clones of the many thoughts
that drifted to the surface of my huge wild mind. I knew
everything then, but began to get lost in the minutiae.
My creations created problems, wanted solutions.
Back then, I could produce solutions with a single thought.
Miracles, they called them. But the attention was tedious
and overwhelming after the relaxing expanse of the void.
I shrank from my terrifying omnipotence
until I was one of them and could see only
what was in front of me. Paradise ejected me.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Peter and George Osawa
090412-0916-1b, 090412-0846-1st, Easter Sunday

If I revise this poem during April, I will post the revision above the current one so the latest version is always at the top.

Thrift Shop

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, Thrift Shop, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Thrift Shop

We cruise the neighborhood on trash day, hoping
to furnish the house with tables, bookcases,
desks and dressers. In Idaho’s desert mountains,
we find an illegal dump with couches, chairs,
everything we need for the still empty living room.
When we haul them back in my little truck,
the room looks almost real, like a student version
of Better Homes and Gardens. But we never
use the room. We spend our days and nights at desks,
wearing out pencils, grinding erasers to stubs,
burning the carbon from our eyes in the college library.
When the professor visits with his wife,
we haven’t yet located a trash-day or rubble-heap table,
so they carry their dinners to the rescued couch,
the first to ever sit there. Plumes of desert dust
rise in billows around them. Almost discreetly,
they swish the floating cloud from the roadkill rabbit
we’d proudly served for dinner.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090411-1318-2d, 090410-2349-1st

^newer above v older below

Thrift Shop

We cruise the neighborhood on trash day, hoping
to furnish the house; we look for tables, bookcases,
desks, dressers. One day, in the desert mountains
of Idaho, we found an illegal dump with couches, chairs,
everything we needed for our empty living room
where as students, we never sat. We spent
our time at desks, wearing out pencils, grinding
our erasers to stubs. When the professor and his wife
visited, plumes of mountain dust rose around them
from the rescued couch. We hadn't found a table yet.
They swished the floating cloud almost discreetly
from the roadkill rabbit we'd proudly served for dinner.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090411-0005-2b, 090410-2349-1st

Another brand new poem, prolly not done. If I create more drafts, I will paste them in the same post ABOVE these so the newest is always on TOP.

Trapped (Nicknames) for NaPOWriMo

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, nicknames for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Trapped (Nicknames)

Horsehair, Gary called her, spitting the word
like phlegm, burning her cheeks with it. Horsehair,
because she wore her hair in long braids,
instead of short, curled and coiffed
like the other girls. She liked horses, loved to ride,
but the name stung as if each hair were a bee
angry, spiteful. In the classroom, while other kids
screamed, she lifted trapped bees gently in her hands
and carried them outdoors. They never stung,
but Gary did. “Dale calls me Tiger,” she told Gary,
wishing, at his horselaugh, that she'd never spoken.
If Gary called her Tiger, it would be an insult,
but Dale smiled when he said it, his eyes full of soft heat.
He found her feisty, strong. Independent. Fierce, even.
In the glow of Dale's appreciation, she morphed to Tiger.
Stood taller. Growled a little. Stalked the forest
like a predator. Kissed with hunger.
Gary couldn't see a tiger in her. It wasn't there.
When Gary looked at her, the tiger morphed
into a mouse, wanted to be invisible and hide
from Gary and his gang. But they always saw her,
the all too visible target for their venom. In an attempt
to quiet Gary, she chopped off her hair.
Though she tried to blend like a chameleon
with the other girls, she’d already been marked
for the kill.



Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Gary Sommers, Mike Sullivan, David McNalley and Dale Ripberger
090409-2341-1e

v older ones below, more recent above ^

Trapped (Nicknames)

Horsehair, Gary called her, spitting the word
like phlegm, burning her cheeks with it. Horsehair,
because she wore her hair in long braids,
instead of short, curled and coiffed
like the other girls. She liked horses, loved to ride,
but the name stung as if each hair were a bee
angry, spiteful. In the classroom, while other kids
screamed, she lifted trapped bees gently in her hands
and carried them outdoors. They never stung,
but Gary did. “Dale calls me Tiger,” she told Gary,
wishing, when he laughed his horselaugh,
that she'd never spoken. If Gary called her Tiger,
it would be an insult, but Dale smiled
when he said it, his eyes full of soft heat.
He meant feisty, strong. Independent. Fierce, even.
In the glow of Dale's appreciation, she morphed to Tiger.
Stood taller. Growled a little. Stalked the forest
like a predator. Kissed with hunger.
Gary couldn't see a tiger in her. It wasn't there.
When Gary looked at her, the tiger morphed
into a mouse, wanted to be invisible and hide
from Gary and his gang. But they always saw her,
the all too visible target for their venom. In an attempt
to quiet Gary, she chopped off her hair.
Though she tried to blend like a chameleon
with the other girls, she’d already been marked
for the kill.



Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Gary Sommers, Mike Sullivan, David McNalley and Dale Ripberger
090409-11832-1d


Trapped (Nicknames)

Horsehair, he called her, spitting the word
like phlegm, burning her cheeks with it. Horsehair,
because she wore her hair in long braids,
instead of short, curled and coiffed
like the other girls. She liked horses, loved to ride,
but the name stung as if each hair were a bee
angry, spiteful. In the classroom, while other kids screamed,
she lifted trapped bees gently in her hands
and carried them outdoors. They never stung, but Gary
did, Gary who called her Horsehair, and his buddies,
Mike, and Dave and the boys on her street.
"Dale calls me Tiger," she told Gary, wishing,
when he laughed his horselaugh, that she'd never spoken.
If Gary called her Tiger, it would be an insult, but Dale
smiled when he said it, his eyes full of soft heat.
He meant feisty, strong. Independent. Fierce, even.
In the glow of Dale's appreciation, she morphed to Tiger.
Stood taller. Growled a little. Stalked the forest
like a predator. Kissed with hunger.
Gary couldn't see a tiger in her. It wasn't there.
When Gary looked at her, the tiger morphed
into a mouse, wanted to be invisible and hide
from Gary and his gang. But they always saw her,
the all too visible target for their venom. In an attempt
to quiet Gary, she chopped off her hair.
Though she tried to blend like a chameleon with the other girls,
she'd already been marked for the kill.



Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Gary Sommers, Mike Sullivan, David McNalley and Dale Ripberger
090409-1757-1c

This is very brand new for me. If I make any edits or revisions, I will post them in this same window above this version.

Third's a Charm ("Three in a Row") again (revision)

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, three in a row for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Third's a Charm ("Three in a Row")

The first one beat her. She was bad because he beat her.
Bad because a dragon, hatched from an egg of flame incubated
in her heart. Deep in that pocket of inherited midnight,
it struggled to press its scales through her slimy skin.
Her breath burned with dragon fire. The beatings
squeezed the dragon-flames into that dark heart hole, transforming
it to dynamite or maybe a neutron bomb. That bit of antimatter,
heavy with shame and pain, prepared itself to blow acid and fire
in the face of the second when she finally escaped the first.
The second hit once, hard, then shrank
her with words and venom until she was smaller than the point
of a needle and crammed with the impossible mass of the universe.
The third one's a charm. If he can pry her out of her shells
of darkness and protective fat, and get past the land mines
and fire-breathing dragon, he might find a beating heart
held exposed in an open palm, eyes green
with forest light, a swallow, swooping through the trees,
carrying, like his cousin, an olive branch, a promise of roselight
and rainbows, kisses, a soft embrace, a hand to hold in his.


Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Pius, Nat, Keith and BP
090409-0802-3a, 090408-2124-2b, 090407-1651-1c

I edited this a little and think it's a little better and I am sure it's still not done!

Third's a Charm

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, three in a row for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Third's a Charm ("Three in a Row")

The first one beat her. She was bad because he beat her.
And because a dragon, hatched from an egg of flame incubated
in her heart, deep in that pocket of inherited midnight,
struggled to press his scales out through her slimy skin.
Her breath was hot with dragon fire. The beatings
squeezed the dragon-flames into a crevice, transforming
it to dynamite or maybe a neutron bomb. A bit of antimatter,
heavy with shame and pain, prepared itself to blow acid and fire
in the face of the second when she finally escaped the first.
The second hit once, hard, then shrank
her with words and venom until she was smaller than the point
of a needle and crammed with the impossible mass of the universe.
The third one's a charm. If he can pry her out of her shells
of darkness and protective fat, and get past the land mines
and fire-breathing dragon, he might find a beating heart
held exposed in an open palm, eyes green
with forest light, a swallow, swooping through the trees,
carrying, like his cousin, an olive branch, a promise of roselight
and rainbows, kisses, a soft embrace, a hand to hold in his.


Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Pius, Nat, Keith and BP
090408-2124-2b, 090407-1651-1c

Of course, I didn't do their three in a row, because I was working on personal poetry, but I still hope to complete some or all of the NaPoWriMo challenges, even if not on the given day.

A Can of Worms

A Can of Worms

"Isn't sex over-rated?" a long ago husband
writes to ask.  "Except, of course," he adds,
"what we shared in the sixties."  Enter
Hieronymus Bosch with his can of worms.
Twisted trees shoot up around me and fill
with monkeys; the ones riding my back chatter
and screech.  A fountain of acid erupts from the earth;
grass sprouts tongues and the edges of flaming
dragon's teeth scorch my inner thighs. 
I remember honey bright kisses,

fists and bruises, languid touches
but mostly terror, long alleyways, hiding
under bushes and inside trashcans full
of maggots.  Always, he found me, dragged me
out by the hair and hit me, painted me
into canvases with leering eternity signs
between waves of fire and mustard.
Always grinning.  He dressed me and stood
me by the highway, thumb out (or in my mouth),
while he hid in the bushes, waiting for a ride.

He forbid my descent into undersea canyons,
beam probing the coelacanths, if my mermaid
laughter wasn't on his schedule of simultaneity,
tantric song and knives balanced on his nipples. 
Malevolent demon bats, keepers of eternal darkness,
fluttered around us, roosted in the shadows
and threatened to engulf us.  We argued
about who had called them.  He insisted I did,
and of course, I did.

Now, when I dive through the skin-nets of their wings,
they dissolve in veils, and I am home in the lychnis,
catchfly and moonflower.  I sit among garter snakes
and mother stones, sun soft on my face.  No
longer do I fall endlessly into darkness, as I did
in his arms.  I walk down a different path.  No
man lives beside me, no sex shatters me.  No
landmines, no torn talons, only a vow of chastity,
cardinal babies and their red-beaked parents
in the sweet syringe, and black raspberries,
with their small thorns, ripening outside my door.


Mary Stebbins Taitt
090404-1219-3a, 990705-2f, 990621-1st, originally called "Underrated"  L
from the Desire 6 Ms

NaPoWriMo: 30 Poems in 30 days

NaPoWriMo: 30 Poems in 30 days

OK, I found it, a little diligent clicking and there it is.  Thirty poems in 30 days for National poetry month at ReadWritePoem.  I'm not really sure I want to do it--I don't do my best writing when I write a new poem every day, I do my best work when I work on the SAME poem until I like it--for say a week at a time, and then start a new one and return to the old one later.  And of course, I'm starting at a disadvantage, because I missed the beginning.  Luckily, I wrote a poem yesterday anyway.  But not an official NaPoWriMo Poem.

I am not committing to commit, but hey, I might work on it.  Hmm.  You folks are inspiring me.  Happy National Poetry Month, by the way!  OK, I'm going to write down the challenges and see what I can do.  I'll try to get back to you--someday.  LOL!

Dream Poem "Backwards"

This poem is from a dream I had last week. I had considered making a poem of it and didn't attempt it because it seemed too difficult, but it continued to worry me, so I attempted it and here it is (danger, upsetting images!):

Backwards

Round, puckered and striated like a nipple, the fossil

hides among rocks on the mountain top. I stroke it,

feeling the bumps and indentations in grey rock.

Limestone, perhaps. Below, sky stretches, endless,

fading toward white. It shimmers like the sea. I call you

to see this ancient stone creature, knowing

how you like breasts, the soft roundness of them,

the responsiveness of nipples. Not rock ones,

of course, but still, "come check it out."

But you frown and step back, refuse to touch it,

and when I look back, I see, not a fossil,

but a dead girl, naked, lying deep in the rocks,

disintegrating. An arm here, a leg there,

features half rotted from her skull, the nipple

just showing in shadow on the twisted torso

deep between the summit's rocks.

Boulders shift and ocean now surrounds us.

We're on a breakwater, but no waves strike

the rocks. The water is still, calm and blue as a summer sky.

We stare at the dead girl. She's become intact and fully clad,

her clothes pressed and clean. Her cheeks blush

with color, brightening. She lies on top of the rocks,

no longer lost between them, and I'd swear I see her

breathing. She's flung across a slanted rock

as if dropped there by great bird, head downward, legs up,

long brown hair draped down the rock toward the water,

facing the endless blue above. We're on an island,

a shrinking island, no land in sight, only the glassy water,

the unmarred sky. I'm surprised when I realize

she looks a lot like me, at maybe nineteen.

Her eyelids flutter, and I awaken, in another century,

in a distant place, alive, and much much older. Tears

dribble down my cheeks.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

090403-0930-2a, 090402-1757-1c, 090402, 1st 4:15 PM; from a dream last week