Category Archives: Children’s Poetry

A Message for Henry Selick

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The Prompt: Make It Count—You’ve been given the opportunity to send one message to one person you wouldn’t normally have access to (for example: the President. Kim Kardashian. A coffee grower in Ethiopia). Who’s the person you choose, and what’s the message?

A Message for Henry Selick

In our age of information—
and also instant confirmation
of every little truth and fact,
it’s necessary to react
with some protection, I understand.
The famous of us take a hand
to protect themselves from the clamoring band
of those who call for their attention
to win a conference or audition,
an interview or invitation
to meet for food or a libation
as a means to talk about
ideas that we have need to flout.
And so I see why I could not
reach the person whom I sought
to pitch my Christmas storybook.
The plot is good. I have a hook.
The characters are funny and
the artist has an expert hand.
I even know the person who
I wish to do my pitching to.
But he’s grown famous through the years
and our acquaintance is in arrears—
his movies scarier by far
than any of my stories are.
But readers tell me that in a pinch,
my Christmas story beats the Grinch!
A Christmas classic the film would be
if only Hollywood could see
the book that no one yet has seen
because my Facebook notes have been
seen by no one and I have not
a way to advertise my lot.
So here I make a heartfelt plea
for Henry Selick to contact me!

(To further jog your memory:
Your wife Heather had a job
teaching with my husband Bob.)

The book is Sock Talk: A Christmas Story, and you can see more about it here.


Blog Sock Talk

Epitaph of a Fulfilled Poet

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The Prompt: Quickly list five things you’d like to change in your life.  Now, write a post about a day in your life once all five have been crossed off your to-do list:

Find an agent/publisher
Get all children’s books published
Write a line of adult picture books
Lose weight
Find someone to dance with

“Epitaph of a Fulfilled Poet”

Fulfilling all these book orders just seems to keep me hopping.
Without the time to cook or shop, my weight just keeps on dropping.
My clothes just hang around me, from my body they keep flopping.
I’d buy some smaller ones if I just had the time for shopping!

Five children’s books are published and my agents want some more.
My grief book they can’t keep in stock—It flies right out the door.
Libraries and bookstores just keep clamoring for more,
and still my weight keeps dropping till it’s really quite a bore.

Now that I am skinny—lithe and trim and toned,
no one has to make excuses that I’m just big-boned.
And I must wrap this up soon for a suitor has just phoned
who wants to take me dancing—so perhaps I should be cloned.

Then one of me can write that line of adult storybooks,
while the other stays at home and plans my meals and cooks.
The third has time to shop for clothes and tend to things like “looks,”
and the other goes out dancing with a brand new beau named “Snooks.”

As you can see, my rhyming prowess now is wearing thin.
The last word of that last stanza I admit is just a sin.
Frazzled and with much to do, I’ve broken out the gin,
fell off my pool ladder and badly bruised my shin!

Okay, I’m really hard up for more sentences that rhyme,
so I think that I’ll stop now and just write another time.
Perhaps tomorrow I can write of something more sublime.
But for now, I think my drink could use a squeeze of lime.

Our goals just keep us going—they propel us through this life
and keep attention focused through the problems and the strife.
I’ve always kept on working as both single girl and wife,
slicing through my problems with my words used as a knife

to trim the boredom from my life and go wherever I please,
to make my living with my wit instead of on my knees.
Taking care to always mind my q’s as well as p’s.
and extract all the fun from life that I have found to seize.

Now that my life is near its end and I’ve time to reflect,
I do not choose to pray about it or to genuflect.
I don’t crave meditation or to join a church or sect.
I‘ll find my own atonement and a way to resurrect.

I’ll do it through my writing, for I’ve found that is the key
to figuring my pathway while remaining true to me.
I’m just as I have written. I’m exactly as you see.
My words have all been written, and I’m finished—“a” to “z.”

The Daily Post Snapshot Stories: Hair Washing Day

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The Prompt: Open the first photo album you can find — real or virtual, your call — and stop at the first picture of yourself you see there. Tell us the story of that photo. (Note: Although I’ve posted this picture on my blog before, this was the first photo in my album, and since I’ve never told the story, I’ll do so now.)

Image

Hair Washing Day

The phone was on a party line.
The leg, the robe, the hair was mine.
The chair was from our dining table.
I’d called as soon as I was able
with all the news that had occurred
since last we shared a private word.
Though my friend lived just two houses away,
my mom had had to break our play
so she could wash my dirty hair.
Take 15 minutes (how did she dare)
from “Cops and Robbers” or playing store?
Washing hair was such a bore.
First to take my clothing off,
barrettes and rubber bands to doff,
a chenille robe to cover all
my nakedness, and then the crawl
up on the chair to lie upon
the kitchen counter. My efforts done,
it was my mother’s turn to work—
to wash my hair without a jerk
or pull to create whines and tears,
avoiding water in the ears
and soap in eyes and water squirts
on ceiling, counters, shoes or shirts
of family who might gather there
to watch my mother wash my hair.
Then, trials done, my friend to phone
for all this time I’d been alone.
Without her fine complicity,
life had too much simplicity.
No imaginings or plots.
No hide-and-seek on empty lots.
No bike rides up to Mowell’s drug.
No comics on the bedroom rug.
No love letters to steal and read
from older sisters—that evil deed
we both adored and did most often.
No trumpet vine pods to peel and soften
in the sink to make our boats
for potential rainy season floats
down ditches swollen with summer rains
No paper dolls or paper chains.
I’d been away from my friend Lynn
for fifteen minutes! It was a sin.
So I’d called to say I’d be right over
to search with her for four-leaf-clover.
And tell her all I had to tell
since mother rang the “come home” bell.

In the Motel Breakfast Room: Poetry by Prescription

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Image

In the Motel Breakfast Room

That little boy
is screaming and mad.
At eight in the morning,
he’s already bad!

He tasted his waffle
and doesn’t want more.
He just dumped his Fruit Loops
all over the floor.

His mom didn’t see
from her side of the room.
The attendant was swift
with her dustpan and broom.

She removed all the cereal
dumped at my feet
by the brattiest child
I ever did meet.

I came to this place
for some coffee and quiet.
I didn’t expect
to encounter a riot.

He’s having a tantrum.
He will not sit down.
His voice at screech level,
his mouth set on frown.

Does he want to go back
to the room? asks his mother
as she struggles to feed
both his sister and brother.

At this breakfast bar set up
for all of the guests,
regrettably, no sign says,
“We don’t serve pests.”

Last night when my friend
went to get us some ice,
“Excuse me, Excuse me,”
the desk clerk said twice

as he ran down the hall
in a manner uncool
heading straight for the door
that leads into the pool.

Now I can imagine this
terrible kid
pushing some button.
(I bet that he did!)

that signaled “Emergency
Call 911!”
watching the panic
and calling it fun.

The manager thinking
“perhaps a cracked head!”
but encountering only
this bad boy instead.

Now this morning my coffee
was ruined by his cries.
This early-day tantrum
a rite I despise.

I started to gather
my coffee and fruit,
then grabbed a few
creamers and sweeteners to boot.

When from my eye’s corner
before I could stand,
at the edge of my table
I saw a small hand.

I looked up to encounter
a smile ear-to-ear.
That horrible child
looked ever so dear!

He flashed me the smile,
for a moment stood near,
then departed the room
nevermore to appear.

When I looked at the table,
an astonishing sight.
He’d left me one Fruit Loop
right there in plain sight.

That child’s behavior
now leaves me in doubt
whether I should remember
the smile or pout.

Was my disapproval
so plain to see
that this tiny child
could see right through me?

And had he the wisdom
to do what he did
simply to remind me
a kid is a kid?

 

Note: The event described in this poem actually happened on May 24 at a motel in Des Moines, IA, where I was attending my nephew’s h.s. graduation party. And yes, this is “the” Fruit Loop, which I still have.  The subject was prescribed by Duckie, who, when I told him what had just happened, said, “You gotta write about this.”  Poetry by Prescription. You suggest the topic.  I will write about it.