Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

She Used to Say

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                  She Used to Say

“How many loves, Senora?” she used to say.
“Perhaps twenty,” I  would tell her.
I was forty when I married,
and I had traveled the world.

She had married at fifteen
and was a mother at sixteen.
By twenty-six, she was a mother of five.

When he drank cerveza,
he had beaten her.
She had not missed him when he left.

No more men, her children had demanded
and she’d agreed,
for the young man from El Chante who courted her now
was handsome and had money
but was not in her heart.

Still, I could see her pining
over the tall Arab
who hired the men of her pueblo.

He neither looked at her nor talked to her.
But in the night, I imagine she pined,
Arabian nights unreeling in her imagination
impossible and foreign.

One day, returning early,
I found her asleep on the divan,
a Mexican novella
rolling out of the television
into the eyeless air.

What futile dreams superseded
all these vicarious heartaches?
What magnolia-scented air
slumbered heavy in the hot layers of her sleep?

“How many loves?” she had asked me
on the road home from Guadalajara.
“Oh, many loves, “ I told her.
“I was forty when I married,
and I had traveled the world.”

 

For dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night

Sweet Clover

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Photo by my sister Patti Arnieri

Sweet Clover

Before our dad told us its real name,
we used to call it wild mustard.
What did we know about sweet clover except for its color
and that summer smell, cloying in its sugared perfume.
It filled the air and smothered the plains—
bright yellow and green where before
brown stubble had peeked through blown snow.

On these dry lands, what flowers there were
tended to be cash crops or cattle feed.
Sweet clover or alfalfa.
The twitching noses of baby rabbits brought home by my dad
as we proffered it to them by the handful.
Fragile chains we draped around our necks and wrists.
Bouquets for our mom
that wilted as fast as we could pick them.

Summers were sweet clover and sweet corn
and first sweethearts parked on country roads,
windows rolled down to the night air,
then quickly closed to the miller moths.
Heady kisses,
whispered confessions, declarations,
unkept promises.
What we found most in these first selfish loves
was ourselves.

The relief of being chosen
and assurance that all our parts worked.
Our lips accepting those pressures unacceptable
just the year before.
Regions we’d never had much congress with before
calling out for company.
That hard flutter
like a large moth determined to get out.
Finding to our surprise,
like the lyrics of a sixties song,
that our hearts could break, too.

Hot summer nights,
“U”ing Main,
cars full of boys honking
at cars full of girls.
Cokes at Mack’s cafe.
And over the whole town
that heavy ache of sweet clover.
Half promise, half memory.
A giant invisible hand
that covered summer.

The dVerse prompt today is to write  a poem about a flower. Nice coincidence that I was working on this poem for a book about growing up in South Dakota and had just asked my sister if she had any photos of sweet clover. She did–and here are both the poem and the photo.

Turn about Does Not Play Fair

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Turn about Does Not Play Fair

If your social popularity has wandered off the track,
here’s a little good advice to help you get it back.
Practice your endurance. Listen when friends tell
all those oft-heard stories, even though you know them well.
But don’t expect the same from them when they show inattention
with each repeated story that you are going to mention.
Your stories retold more than once lack the fascination
of their latest version of their favorite rumination.

Prompt words today are go, social, track, endurance and listen.
This photo used for illustrative purposes only. In no way is this poem actually about these two lovely women.

The Temp in Accounting

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The Temp in Accounting

His prospects of affluence seem to be shrinking
in direct proportion to what he’s been drinking.
Lately it seems that the hours he’s been working
are less than the hours that he has been shirking
his tasks of the day. When we look at his history,
I must admit it’s a bit of a mystery
why they’ve retained him for even this long,
for he’s more attached to his lighter and bong
than he is to his actuarial tables.
His financial projections?  Primarily fables.
In short, his behavior is simply pubescent
and prospects of tenure likely evanescent.
When the boss went to find this latest young bloke,
he found he’d stepped out for his hourly toke.
All in all, I think I’m not amiss in projecting
 he’ll be more temporary than he was expecting.

 

Prompts today are evanescent, history, prospect, affluent and working.

Cease Fire

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Cease Fire

It is not superstition, nor mere artifice
that leads mankind to finally declare an armistice.
It is the pure exhaustion that hating brings about.
Peace makes a more desirable flag for us to flout.
What euphoria the heart at peace must feel—
that silence now the guns are ceased, at last, for real.

 

Prompt words today are desirable, euphoric, superstition and artifice.

Love Prone

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Love Prone

His heartfelt joy was palpable. His maelstrom of affection
spread throughout his body—a beneficent infection.
And yet he was resilient when his lover proved untrue.
He simply found another girl and fell in love anew!

Prompt words for today are maelstrom, palpable, heartfelt and resilient.

The Dress

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The Dress

She was blithe of nature and at the harvest dance,
men both young and aged straightened at her advance.
Noting her graceful movements across the grange hall floor,
the men all watched the flowings of the summer dress she wore.

Though the women called it skimpy, men found the dress divine
as it lifted out around her when they passed her down the line,
and as she was dipped and glided,
more than just a few collided.

So were girlfriends’ natures tested and marriage vows stretched thin
as boyfriends, partners, spouses contemplated sin
watching that skirt’s movements, its gentle falls and flow
as it swirled out around her with every do-si-do.

 

 

Prompt words today are skimpy, advance, nature and blithe. Photo is a detail from a photo by Amy Kate on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Lost World

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Lost World

There is no skin for our ceiling.
No skin.
The moon, like an animal, 
hovers over and around our houses.

In their caves, twitching iguanas live their small deaths
while, caught by moonlight, my friends go sleepless.
I follow my heart in circles, mutter protests to the stars,
running first against, then with
the incredible crocodile.

There is no skin–not any–for the ordinary world.
The dead in their graves are still for a very long time.
Then they rise to pass again around the circle.
The children are easily sleeping.
Tomorrow they will question the old women
with the candor that is necessary
to rub the callouses from their souls.

Straining to the song of life which calls,
“Awaken. Awaken,”
the mouths of the rising dead eat the steaming earth
and under them, in the earth,
are layers of the innocent
with the hearts of dead flowers
because they have neither the fragrance of life,
nor the beat of it.

When they were alive, they
spilled coins from their purses
and from their mouths, spilled prayers for their recent sins.
All of them balanced the two sides of sadness–
the sadness of seeing, and the sadness of not seeing.

At the time of death, all wash themselves clean of their friends.
And God, the rider through life––
through all things holy as well as all things evil––
hovers near the ceiling
while the refugees shake their brothers,
like water, from their hair.

This God,
who in life took passage in an ordinary boat,
who left his resurrection like a butterfly disappearing,
now travels with light,
words like new flowers on his tongue,
Whispering, “Now. Wake up.”

A sentry walks the escarpment of the reservoir–
an angel who grew up in the trench of the soldier
and the boat of the apostle––
an angel with the teeth of a serpent
who sings all night,
his beautiful face lifted to the violent sky.
“Where are the hands of my mother?”

There is no skin for his ceiling. 
No skin. No skin.
The aqua sky?
Gone, my friends,
replaced by fire.
No skin left for our world.

We are caught in a too-long day
that fades into inevitable night.
We lie awake,
our minds throbbing to music
from the drum of the moon
that leads us into dreams

where we forget the large lie
and remember, finally, that
the sins of the heart
are not just
theater.

 

for dVerse Poets open link night

Eleventh Hour

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Eleventh Hour

It’s true the groom was old and gray,
a cane or walker his mainstay,
and the one he called his child bride
was just as tall as she was wide.

Her bathing schedule so erratic,
she was rather aromatic,
but since he’d lost his sense of smell,
they were suited very well.

If they had cause to take a journey,
he’d simply push her in a gurney
in lieu of walker. It worked well.
Her needs and his were seen to gel.

Centuries later, folks will recall
the evening of their wedding ball.
The dance they chose was rock and roll—
as practical as it was droll.

He rocked, she rolled, then one dance done,
he wheeled her off to have some fun.
For the groom, so aged and furry
was nonetheless in a great hurry

to address their wedding bed.
Fearing that he’d soon be dead,
he rolled his roly poly mate
out of the ballroom, through the gate,

down the hall and  to their room,
an act, I fear, that sealed his doom,
for once his ardor was diminished,
alas, the groom’s long life was finished.

But in the end? A bit of magic,
for the ending was not tragic.
Nine months later his game was won
when posthumously, he had a son!!!

Prompt words are aromatic, century, journey, mainstay and wide

Change of Taste

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image by Debby Hudson on Unsplash. Used with permission

Change of Taste

I must renege on my vows of devotion.
What was said in the spring was only a notion.
I found in the summer that it had run thin
and by fall I regretted the mess I was in.
Now that my devotion has lessened in force,
I fear I was driven to file for divorce.
So ta-ta to the one who was formerly favored.
Good bye to sweet love so recently savored.
I’ve found the same meal offered each day
does not suit so well as a daily buffet.

Prompt words today are spring, renege and devote.