National Poetry Month (2017)

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.