Inky, what up!?!
I keep missing tell you folks the interesting things that are going on in my poetical life! What up, three readers!?! I’m giving shoutouts to my girl Ruth, for having actually commented ever on this blog.
Have *not* been competing too recently, as I didn’t make finals in either Minneapolis or St. Paul, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working. I’m doing the Riot Act Readings at the Turf Club in St. Paul on June 7th, researching nursery rhymes and fairy tales and how to make books. I read Coraline, and I’m rolling with happiness as I work my way through German for Travelers.
And I had a very very happy birthday. A ton of my amazing friends all chipped in for a digital SLR for me, a Canon Rebel XSi, to be exact. Brilliant, wonderful, amazing. A-Mazing.
I also wrote this thing in a moment of emotion, not really *for* anyone or anything, and had a lot of positive response to it. I thought I’d put it here, too, just for there to be some more poetry round these parts.
How Not to be Bitter
He says he’ll never make that mistake again
and I find myself wondering, exactly which
mistake I was- because I could tell you
he was the mistake I make often: alcoholic.
He was the mistake of mystery and quiet
flirt, not easily impressed, so I started pulling
little secrets out for him, pride from under
feathers- a small shining thing I stole
from between the breasts of an angel.
I said, although I am short and graceless,
legs more like stout little barrels than willow
whips, although I am plain and unremarkable,
hair like muddied reeds not flaxen fields,
eyes dull like toads rather than the pale flits
of butterflies in with the alfalfa or the green
throats of the rare humming birds, I said-
I am fearless and clever, but sweet.
I will steal the king’s crown, just to say
I did it, but return it swiftly and without boast.
He said he won’t make that mistake again.
Perhaps I stole a pillar from his temple,
and he was frightened, to find himself
still standing without it, cried out for it,
and I made the mistake of returning it.
And so I tuck the small shining thing
stolen from an angel’s sternum, back in,
under my feathers. Heaven knows when
I’ll see divinity again.
-Inky
Fuckin’ A! I just re-read your “red line” poem and decided that in some instances you remind me of a less crazy hippy version of Anne Waldman.