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Write the Year 2024—Week 46: Eurydice Reconsiders

Um. What can I say. I had kind of a dark idea for a short story and I turned it into an American Sentence Poem, which is what I do whenever I am especially lazy and behind. Title: Eurydice ReconsidersWC: 176 I have notonceassumed thatyouwould missme,even a little bit. I am no childhiding in the closetwaiting forMother’s regret. I have letthe scarf slip,the sleeve fall back,and the bruiseshave…

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Review: Falsettos: Court Theatre, TimeLineTheatre Company, Chicago https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/chicago/ch792.html

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Write the Year 2024: Week 45—Idiom

Some very serious avoidance tonight, and a comically clinical, literal poem. This is a kerf. In poetry that apparently means a poem in four tercets with syllabic and rhyme requirements. In forensic anthropology, it’s a measurement describing sharp force trauma. I just don’t have anything metaphorical or emotional left in me. Title: IdiomWC: 68 It has to do with knivesWho knows if the poet…

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Review: Every Brilliant Thing, Writers Theatre, Glencoe, IL https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/chicago/ch791.html

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Write the Year 2024—Week 44: Curio

A Stevenson for no real reason, other than I just finished reading Treasure Island. The imagery is, as usual, drawn from Danger Beagling. I let her take me well off the rough path that jogs south east through woods that aren’t (I don’t think) technically part of the forest preserve. This was partly because there’s a big downed tree across one part of the path and I wasn’t seeing a straightforwad…

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Review: Into the Woods, Kokandy Productions, Chicago https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/chicago/ch788.html

At some point, without meaning to, I got out of the habit of posting links to reviews.

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Write the Year 2024—Week 43: Alley . . . Oop

Dumb, but the song by the Oak Ridge Boys came up elsewhere today, and I had a memory of being six and annoying the hell out of the household of a friend who (mostly) lived with her grandmother and adult uncles across the alley from me. This is a Violette. Title: Alley . . . OopWC: 64 Rolling basement box springYou strum the rusty thingOff-key—loudly—we singWords we don’t know Upstairs uncles:…

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Write the Year 2024—Week 41: Ephemera

Low on inspiration and time this week; but I did see a tissue paper solar system hanging from a tree. This is a Veltanelle Title: EphemeraWC: 105 Tissue paper planets swing in the rainWho hung them on tiptoe?Leaving no question: this is their domain,as one, heaven bows low.The waving silver undersides of leavesMake-shift susurration of would-be thieves Chalk calculations taking root…

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Write the Year 2024—Week 4: Panes

Too exhausted for much of anything. This is a Waltz Wave. Three windows in an old brick building I have wondered about. Title: PanesWC: 23 Threelittlearchedwindows.Mysteriesbeyondtheirbrick-framedarrogance.They draw the gazehelplesslySkyward.Whocan tellanything’sMissing?Whywonderthis?

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Write the Year 2024—Week 39: Ultimate

Sort of inspired by this Reedsy prompt, I guess? I was thinking of my grandparents’ kitchen, though they’d long since left that kitchen behind before my Mimi died and my Papa followed soon after. And he smoked Pall Malls; I don’t actually know that she smoked Virginia Slims. Title: UltimateWC: 800 The linoleum curled where the wood of the door sill had started to rot away. It was a back…

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Write the Year 2024—Week 38: Lions . . .

Not really inspired by anything except a note about a neighborhood landmark. This is a Quatern. Title: Lions . . .WC: 93 Lions, with their painted-on scowlsAnd their neighborhood litanySummer-scorched lawns, gold at their feetI am sized up and found wanting Once, in winter, a sudden startLions, with their painted-on scowlsSeemed to come to blue-shadow lifeI hid in the cloud of my…

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Write the Year 2024—Week 37: Early, Bird

I am once again reduced to writing poems about trees. There’s one tree near the dog park (some kind of small oak, I think, but what the hell do I, a life-long urbanite, know?) that started to have red edging on its leaves back in, like, June. It is now entirely, blazingly, “IT IS FALL, BITCHES” red. I want to believe, tree, but it was once again nearly 90F today. And still, I want to believe.…

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Write the Year 2024—Week 36: Night Popcorn

The Poets & Writers CNF prompt from this week yielded this. At least it’s not Vogon poetry again. Title: Night PopcornWC: 500 The stove was ten feet from my bedroom door. Less than that when I moved from the boys’ room near the front of the house to the one off the kitchen that I shared uneasily with a sister. It would start with the snick of the light above the stove. Black knob on a harvest…

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Write the Year 2024—Week 35: E. C. M.

Decided to try an English Madrigal, and although i think this has been dredged up before, this turned out to be about the fact that somewhere in the last 9 months or so, the Danger Beagle sometimes has wanted to walk all the way to what is the south end of the cemetery where my grandmother is buried. I have no idea where her grave is within the cemetery, and it’s not something I can investigate…

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Write the Year 2024—Week 34: First Night

I have moving on the brain; this is an odd collection of memories and imaginings from the first night I spent in this house. It’s a Constanza. I suck at rhyming. Title: First nightWC: 86 One mattress on one hardwood floorThe air will depart overnightToo soon, the attack of sunlight Tired—did I even check the door?Will that centipede hold a grudge?Hold a funeral at the smudge. Company: a…

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Write the Year 2024—Week 33: Simulacrum

Bad, sad week. This poem is a Cinq Trois DecaLa Rhyme. It started out in one place, because I am shocked by the absolute dumbness of the work that prompted the creative nonfiction prompt at Poets & Writers this week. (I just cannot even, as the children who now have grandchildren once said, with the idea of a book in this, the Year of the Moribund Aardvark, that advances the thesis that…

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Write the Year 2024—Week 32: Piecemeal

Another clinging by my fingernails poem. I actually had started this one last week and got frustrated with it. It’s a Bragi. Title: PiecemealWC: 71 Merciless, brilliant sunOnce hardened this colorless clayThough first: a swift, precise flurry of linesEroded edges lay waste to designsMeaning or no, none can now sayIts sense long since undone Ruthless, the sun still shinesWho heeds the marks of…