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National Poetry Month (2017)

4/4/2017

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DAY 1: HAIKU
Hey there Delilah 
I hear his hair is magic
What do you need more?

DAY 2: COUPLET
Heart, you gnaw at my lungs, unable to form the words
to keep you from starving.

DAY 3: ACROSTIC
Diderot believed in passions
Reveled in a blanket of wished-upon stars
Extended his arms until fingers were
Airplanes and nothing flew higher than their 
Motors. He thought someone else's love was reason
Enough to love himself.
Reason had no place in passion. 

DAY 4: TERZA RIMA

The sleep that paints my face grey
is weighted down by a laundry list
too long to do in a day

I'm dirty socks; days un-kissed
an uncharted route 
from the lines on my wrist.

My forehead marked by shapes of doubt
Forever aching 
to figure me out 

Arms open, shouting, "I'm here for the taking!"
Piece by piece; a person breaking.

DAY 5: RONDEAU
Blueberry picking on an upstate farm
a wicker basket on the crux of my arm
hands blue, lips blue, tongue too.
even the sky looks sadder without you. 
don't sound the alarm. 

Wearing two sweaters but still never warm 
legs sticky-sweet from your blueberry charm
When the fruit rots, what's left to do? 
Blueberry picking.  

Winds shift and bees start to swarm
buzzing around the fruit on my arm
lips blue, hands blue, shadows you once knew
everything reminds me. blue
drenched soles on an upstate farm

Blueberry picking. 

DAY 6: EPIGRAM
An unfinished cup of tea is a waste of a perfectly good Saturday. 

DAY 7: FREE VERSE

Back when knotting maraschino stems 
was a sign of womanly ambition 
I learned to twist my tongue inside out
to present my lover with a gift.

The equivalent of seven goats
this proof of my femininity 
was constructed to speak volumes 
from a tiny piece of earth.

Aren't we all searching for 
that which proves our worth?

DAY 8: GHAZAL


​
DAY 9: SESTINA


My mother cleans teeth for a living
a smattering of dentures and baby whites 
whose owners have nothing but stories 
from Lego-building days; lives smaller than the pieces they put together 
to lives cemented in tooth decay. Rooted. 
Uprooted. They all talk about life like it's already happened. 

From the lines on a face, we can piece together what's happened
or else, how their hands had once imagined living: 
pulling life from the ground, rooted
and faded like my tea stained window sill, off-whites
jumbled together
like what becomes of our favorite stories

If we are all just stories
in the end, who will remember what happened
long after we've danced at each other's weddings together?
I contemplate the importance of living
while the color in my eyes scatters against the whites.
My toes rooted

in the ground--rooted
to past-stories
of too many egg whites
and healthy mornings where nothing happened
but we were living 
alive together

I'm keeping it together 
ripping pages from my Book of Life, rooted
and bound so tightly, I forgot what it felt like to be living. 
I yearn to be bigger than my stories;
to know more than what happened
but how it felt in post-Labor Day whites.

Throwing caution to the wind; staining all my whites
until the colors tie dye together
shock, hope, now-or-never, rooted
in a life that hasn't happened
yet. A slew of bedtime stories,
dreams for the living.  

My mother is rooted in calcium-deficient whites   
that piece together stories of dreams that happened;
​from living too cautiously before they put the words together. 


DAY 10: LIST POEM
The Four Questions, Passover Morning
1. Will your extended family like me?
2. How do you expect me to show up empty-handed?
3. You ready for a lifetime of this?
4. Why is this night different from all other nights of the year?

DAY 11: CINQUAIN
                                               Soup
                                        comfort warm
                                dripping steaming stirring 
                    the best part about a rainy day in Midtown
                                                Soup

DAY 12: TANKA
                                         
made for sunny days 
                                 prospect park, union square mart
                                          hat and sunglasses
                                 light peering through the window
                                  hand in hand in shorts with you

                               
DAY 13: QUATRAIN
When moving the dining room table
don't get nostalgic at all. 
Remove all that moves, if you're able
otherwise, watch your things fall.                               

DAY 14: SENRYU 
I met a woman 
who asked me about living 
which I'd hardly done.

She sang heartbeat songs
looked back on 93 years--
promised I'd regret

Since I believe here
I am dusting off the dreams 
I tried to forget

Since I believe her
I am rewriting promise 
refusing regret.

DAY 15: SOUND POEM
(called Let You Down)
(stacatto) tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk
(legatto) booooo booooo boooooo 
(stacatto) tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk
(legatto) booooo booooo boooooo 
(stacatto) tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk
(legatto) booooo booooo boooooo 
ughughughughughughugughughugh


DAY 16: EPITAPH
She was quick, curious, playful and strong. 
A voracious reader, wanna-be ballerina,
she saved old snapshots and her emails piled up 
because she never wanted to forget anything good. 

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NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: Day 20

4/20/2015

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Let me be the ink stain 
on the corner left dimple
From where the 
pen bled, and your 
smile leaked words
so quickly, you kept
bleeding- until
the pen dried up
and your creation 
was a skeleton: like you. 
Long torso, with arms 
that make liters 
look like soup cans 
and water taste
like mother’s 
milk: Nourish me. 


Let me nourish 
you, with a hope 
that hibernates
in the wrinkles 
on my tear-stained 
toes and feed you
with a spoon made
of tulips and thyme.

Let me be the way you wish 
to go on the map that I will
draw for you with tattered 
pages from the book Moses
stole from god. For it is in the subtext 
of each commandment
that thou shall not
abandon those who
make you their home.


Let me roll up, both 
your legs, the invisible fraying.
Let me nest you in a hide-away 
made of stars and sunrise, 
nestle you  between 
the pieces of Ursa Minor 
so you will always find your way.

thou shall not
abandon those who
make you their home


Let me remember the night mother
ran away, with blue watercolors framing
her broken eyes, to be back by morning,
painting her mask with a normalcy 
saved for rainbow reflections
and the solitude of dust bunnies. 

Let every knock-knee bend to the floor, 
as daughters worry that their loves
won’t ever return to the beds they made 
three-times over--as if fitted sheets
are the reason it's three AM and he's still
not home. 

Let my fingers envelop yours
when miles fold like vanilla and cream
and hands are spatulas softly watching 
worlds collide. 

thou shall not
abandon those who
make you their home.

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NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: Day 19

4/20/2015

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Unhappiness is a genetic 
trait, passed down 
amongst the 
women in my family. For 
as long as I can remember, 
Misery’s hid in the crooks
of our eyes. Where our
tears were taught never
to fall. Our eyelashes 
learned to
be strong: hold things keep
our eyes open. What happens 
next is 

So, I’m sorry, if you wanted
to love a whole person. Two hands
that divvy responsibilities, two
feet, on soda cans, balancing 
the weight so neither gets 
too heavy. I'm made with one of each
taught only to extend. 

But I can string together
what sounds like a prayer, 
for a Friday night Kiddush 
though neither of us 
will know what we’re saying. 

 I am a pauper
because you think talk
is cheap. I can only
 string words together: backwards
hearts and upside down squares. 
It’s like us, geometry: 
it looks right—but it’s
not. 

And I’ve thought of
about a thousand ways
to tell you that.  But infinity
is the opposite of definitive
and our thumbprints are 
so unique that we could 
try to match them up 
forever but they will never be 
the same. 

I would rather not
blame the people
who built me 
but I am a flawed 
machine. 
My tears are blood,
my spit is blood, the 
way you pronounce 
my name as you fall
asleep is blood. The 
proud I cannot make
you is blood.

And I am unhappy.  

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NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: Day 18

4/18/2015

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But right now you'd be filling car tires
with faulty memories. Hot 
air that would peter out
before the highway. People
get stranded by lies like that.


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NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: Day 17

4/18/2015

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There are no words
that come after
goodbye 
and I am afraid 
of the silence.
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NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: Day 16

4/18/2015

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(3)

She gazed at me expectantly 
water boiling in her eyes
instead of one baby, they’ll be three. 

A soft hand on her belly
tender look, simple disguise 
she gazed at me expectantly

and asked if I was happy.
After countless pregnant-tries,
instead of one baby, three.

I’d dreamed of a big family  
but nothing quite like this surprise
when she gazed at me expectantly,  

I wondered if there’d be room for me
in a home of warm disguise,
instead of one baby, three 

She gazed at me expectantly, 
instead of one baby, they’ll be three. 

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NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: Day 15

4/18/2015

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What Water Destroyed

four bath towels we stole from 
le parker meridien
on your twenty-sixth birthday
when we were the only ones 
with pool access. 

a bath mat I bought online 
that says 'clean' on one side
and 'dirty' on the other. It's 
all dirty, now. 

two new toothbrushes

a pair of socks you forgot 

an old note i left on the 
mirror, 'i love you so,
handsome.' 

 

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NATIONAL POETRY DAY: Day 14

4/18/2015

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He said a group of kites
is called a mockery

laughing at the way
I chase my string 

through Central Park
on our staycation. 

The little boy whose
Spiderman kite resembles mine

but fits in his tiny hands
so that the string bounces

off his lifeline and across
the picnic blankets.

We grabbed the sheets
off our bed, soiled 

in soil, before laundry
day. Speaking 

only in British accents 
like we could be other people. 
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NATIONAL POETRY DAY: Day 13

4/15/2015

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How I Clean Our Room:

Your things first. 
They cover the floor. 
Dirty socks and pennies.

The copper change goes
in a mason jar labelled 
'Fun Monies.' They'll 
add up to something 
some day. 

The dirty socks go into
your maroon hamper.

I fold the shirts you can wear
again, refold my shirts in the dresser
under yours. 

Restoring order. 

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NATIONAL POETRY DAY: Day 12

4/15/2015

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The last time I did something
for the first time 
it was you. 

And the shock 
of being a person who still had firsts
sounded like the end of a sentence 

with the typewriter's first ding! 

As if, screaming 
"I'm new to all this." 
Please be patient with me. 


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  • Little Bit Of Cinnamon
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    • Dear Baby
  • LEFT2WRITE
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