Submitted by Neil McKay on January 5, 2012
My cupboard and pantry doors stay open and it drives her crazy.
My books lie open on couch arms,
Bending their spines in unnatural positions.
Bedroom door is, you guessed it, open all night,
So the cat can wander in when he is ready to settle down
How do I explain this need?
When the doors are shut, where does the food go?
Where are the bowls? The spoons and forks?
When the book is closed, who is reading it?
If the bedroom is not inviting, who will come in?
Submitted by Jennifer Dixey on January 4, 2012
to write without writing
(I would have written)
to be heard without speaking
(I would have spoken)
to be known without knowing
(I would have known)
Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on January 4, 2012
the curved backrest of a wooden chair
rises over snow-dusted asphalt—
a boxer’s bowed spine
pulling himself up from canvas
broken spars of wood that held back to seat
cling like broken teeth;
training and instinct tell him
get up! get up and fight!
scattered around the back alley with other trash:
seat, legs—yesterday’s bones.
KO’d in the 12th, this brutal match is over:
stay down, stay down.
(for January 3)
Submitted by Jennifer Dixey on January 3, 2012
in some of us
imagination
lives feverishly
in others it is wan
worn down
by the demands of every
weary day: no longer
what we dream and do
but what we must be
ask yourself:
are you still the same
person you were
when you were a teenager?
if you aren't,
what's become of
her dreams?
the older I get
the more I realize
that the little poem they had us learn
-- the one about the bird
-- the one with the broken wing
-- the one who couldn't fly
in junior high
was written
by and for
forty year olds and fifty year olds,
not the teenagers we were
and the older my child gets
the more I realize
that the hope that fed that poem
-- broken winged bird poem --
to us
was the fervent, baseless hope
that we would not
grow up to be
who we are now
Submitted by Neil McKay on January 3, 2012
If I had to keep my first drafts I would be
more like Rod McKuen than Theodore Roethke.
If I could not afford to take a chance on fumbling a line
my poetry would more resemble Mother Goose than Gertrude Stein.
If I was not allowed the luxury of using cheap tricks and fun
I would never be able to approach the beauty of Emily Dicksinson.
My dead mentors are Don Marquis and Ogden Nash
And I wear my subtle humor like a handlebar mustache.
I once won a woman's heart by composing a half dozen limericks
Which, while not overtly dirty, will still embarrass me in front of both dudes and chicks.
I guess it's good that I still have a moral compass
And I engage in ludicrous rhymes to keep from becoming pompass.
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