NaPoWriMo Poems Day #3

Brothers and sisters, we are up to 738 blogs on the over at NaPoWriMo! Mistress Maureen's prompt: Write an Epithalamium. I couldn't do any better than Fred Eaglesmith's, "Your Sister Cried," covered by Mary Gautier.

 

And it seems I've lost my post for day #2 on this. I'll find it. Onto the poems!

Refusing Miss Havisham:  An Epithalamion

This poem wants to go in three directions.

This poem wants to tell you that after we broke up,

he picked me up at the airport,

and once I had folded myself into the bucket seat,

made me wait while he finished a phone call.

That he touched the back of my knee unconsciously

to calm me. 

That I liked it.

This poem wants to say,

Tend your garden. 

Go in peace. 

This poem wants to say,

Sooner or later

married or no

the artist makes a bride

of herself.

Posted here.

*

Cabbage-Cabbage-Headed Man

The morning we unpacked the kitchen
He took me to a square rumpled patch

Where we heel-toed through cabbages
Until he found the one
Green and heavy
Like a Jurassic bud
And placed it on his neck.

On moss-lit nights
I would prop myself   
up on an elbow 
Look close at those waxy veins

Maybe peel a leaf back just a bit

With the thumb and a tender finger
Wondering what dreams and thoughts
How much more absurd could they be?
It was a bad day when he rolled awake 
To find me over him                                   

Contemplating Russian recipes
Unable to apologize for practicality and
Realizing that he had thought 

the perfect marriage for a cabbage-headed man
Was a cold, dark wife.

Posted here.

*
 
Untitled

I am the owl. Bring me dust, red dust
flash paper; gunpowder
in the silhouette of a woman,
shower me in paprika.

I am the awl. She just wants a hug, that's why
she's crying; she wants to reveal, one by one,
her punctuation tatoos; font: courier,
the sphinxlike question on her ribs.

I am the all. Unquarantined lymph system
intact, arrhythmia in the formula, appetites
unsynchronized.

I am the cowl. I pray using FedEx boxes;
I make poison out of camera film
and the organs of hyperpronated pigeons.

Posted here.