ddvers
Overdone Quinceañera
She’s framed in a portrait that’s slightly off-center
wearing a fur stole her sister has lent her.
Her chin on her hand, jewels on finger and wrist,
she’s trying to hide that she’s never been kissed.
Just a teenager, she’s longing for glory,
trying to add romance to her story.
Though she looks mature, she is new to the scene.
Time enough for such glamour when she is sixteen!
An Ekphrastic poem for dVerse Poets Open Link
My Name
It would have never occurred
to my mother or father
to look up the meaning of the name
before giving it to me.
In the Apocrypha,
Judith slew the Asian general
to save her people.
In Ethiopia, Judith is “Yodit,”
cruel usurper of the throne
and destroyer of Axum.
These women my parents had no knowledge of
might well have scorned the “Judy” I evolved into,
despite my mother’s best intentions
of always calling me Judith Kay.
Uncle Herman called me Jude
and I loved that,
but for years,
until I married,
nobody else ever did.
I never had many nicknames,
except from my father who called me Pole Cat
and my sister who called me Jooj Pooj.
My oldest sister, Betty Jo,
knows her name
might have been prompted
by the popularity of Betty Boop
and my sister Patti Adair
has the same middle name
as her cousin Jayne
because my mother named them both,
but there is no story
for my given names.,
except that my mother liked them both.
I can draw a wading bird
using just the letters of my first name
in the correct progression,
lifting the pen off the paper only twice,
to form the eye and leg.
Yet for years,
my name was a bird
that hadn’t found its wings.
My surname was carried to America
in the hull of a ship—
when my grandmother,
born of Dutch-immigrant parents,
married to an immigrant
Dutch baker to have a son
who passed the name Dykstra on to me.
Judy Kay Dykstra
The last two letters of my first name
and my middle initial
are the first three letters of my last name,
and the remaining four letters, rearranged, spell “star.”
Nobody planned that.
Judykstra
Judykstar.
The “dyke” part of my name is self-explanatory,
and the suffix “stra” is derived from
the old Germanic word “sater,”
meaning “dweller,”
and although I’ve never lived by a seawall,
I like my name in its Dutch Shoes.
My surname
is not frequently seen
in the phonebooks
of most towns.
I’m not the one
who put it in famous places
like “Dykstra Hall” at UCLA or
in baseball statistics
on the sports page,
and it was John Dykstra
who had it engraved
on the academy award.
But it was my name written
along with my phone number
over the urinal at the library
in turquoise magic marker
by a disgruntled student,
and it took one month of late-night phone calls
from men asking, “Do you . . .?”
before a caller admitted
where he found the number
and was persuaded
to wash it off the wall.
And it was my name
written on the label of
a favorite coat left at the pier
and never returned,
so ever afterwards,
perhaps, my name
pressed against someone else’s neck.
I keep trying to change my name
into something else.
Into a bird.
Into a married name.
Drop mine, take his.
Keep mine and his,
I take his, he takes mine,
so we exchange names, both keeping both.
In the end, though, he drops mine, I keep both.
Judith Kay Dykstra-Brown. Bob Brown
My name next to his on a gravestone
in my hometown in South Dakota,
only mine open-dated.
My name on a paycheck every month for years,
and in the records of the tax collector,
then on a social security check.
For so long,
I was not yet within my name.
I wanted it to hold me,
but I couldn’t squeeze into it.
Until, finally,
my name on books and art
that told its full story.
Judy Dykstra-Brown.
I made it mine.
“The Final Word”
Purchased before fur was vilified, Mother’s fur coat was well-used during South Dakota winters when snowbanks piled up to our second-story windows, but it found little use once they moved to Arizona the year I left home to go to college. It was 30 years later, after her death, that we found it in the back of her closet. Along with her car, it was the one item that my mother had insisted should go to me. Ironic, I thought, as I had so often self-righteously railed against her possession of it. Attached to it was a copy of a poem I had written in college and sent to her, a line of which said, “I’ve lost the means to thaw my soul.” Across the bottom of the poem pinned to the coat she had scrawled, “Make of it a parka for your soul”.
For dVerse poets, we are to write a prose poem containing this quote from an Alice Walker poem: “Make of it a parka for your soul”.
I Took A Picture Of Your Name.
After so many years, seeing it again on the screen,
I took a picture of your name.
Not written by your hand,
it had a strangeness––
featureless, revealing nothing.
It had no voice,
no breath.
Out there sharing itself with the world,
it has formed a wall around
that intimacy it birthed when you took my hand in yours,
using your name to pull me closer,
powerless against its strength on your tongue.
Everyone wanted to share a part of what made you you,
but I only wanted to be with you, back when,
scrawled in your careless hand,
you were written on my soul.
Wanting to be perfect for you,
remembering that tattoo you traced across my back.
Your name and mine.
“Always,” you wrote.
For the dVerse Poet’s Pub, Feb 14, 2025
To see other poems written to this prompt, go HERE.
photo with permission from Lachlan Gowen on Unsplash
Night of the Dragon
Behold the dragon, how it flows
from its tail up to its nose.
Thirty feet and thirty arms
move the dragon’s sinuous charms—
its razor teeth, its threatening frown—
through the streets of Chinatown.
On its head, a golden crown.
Its many humps move up and down,
forming valleys, growing hills
while moving over rocks and rills.
Straightening out to cross the bridges
spanning between neighboring ridges.
Never flying through the air,
rising only up the stair.
So many mortals make one beast,
one night a year to roil and feast
on errant spirits wandering out
their vile sentiments to flout,
chancing their ends once more to free
those rotten souls they used to be.
One night of all we form the back
that otherwise the dragons lack.
We form their arms and form their feet,
arousing awe in all we meet.
And thus it happens, once a year,
we become that which most we fear.
For the dVerse Poets prompt, “Dragon.”
Out on a Liminal
The jolly crew over lunch yesterday. Happiest when the jefe is not in sight. He probably knows this and this is why the two older men eat in front of the house, the younger men on my patio in the back.
Liminal—I admit that I looked the word up, and I’m glad I did. I have always thought that since subliminal meant below the threshold of conscious thought, that liminal must refer to conscious thought. Wrong.
Liminal: of or relating to a sensory threshold. 2 : barely perceptible. 3 : of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : in-between, transitional
So, is my house in a liminal state between completion and constant repair and construction? If so, what is the state after liminal? Perhaps subliminal is the ultimate state rather than the one under liminal. Perhaps it is that state in which everything just goes along smoothly without having to think about it. Water flows, floors stay crack and salitre-free, lightbulbs stay perpetually lit.
Perhaps I’d better look up subliminal as well:
Subliminal: (of a stimulus or mental process) below the threshold of sensation or consciousness; perceived by or affecting someone’s mind without their being aware of it.
One out of two. It means exactly what I thought it did.
Today is the fourth day of construction at my house and the last day of the work week. Thankfully, only six men showed up instead of the usual nine, because that is how many beers I have in the fridge and I didn’t want to have to leave to buy more to treat them at the end of this short work day. The jefe and his assistant seem to have stayed home to leave the other younger men to complete tiling the kitchen and hammer-and-chiseling out the built-in large bathtub to transform it into a shower and construct a small wall to serve in lieu of shower curtain.
At first I was worried that the jefe hadn’t shown up because last night as I surveyed the day’s work, I noticed two problems. One was that the tiles on the front porch were not centered. I can understand that he was lining up the main tile with the tile in the inside of the house, but in fact the porch is more often viewed with the door shut, so as nice a it would have been if they’d taken this into account at the beginning, they didn’t, and so having the line under the door misaligned seems a smaller problem than having the entire porch off-center.
The second problem was that the bottom step in the hall leading down to my bedroom was 1/2 inch deeper on one side than the other. Now, these are the steps that have tripped me up three times in the past year, twice sending me careening headfirst into an edge where two walls meet and rendering me unconscious for a few seconds. So, I don’t need a further contributing factor to my own clumsiness. I do not need one slightly diagonal stair leading up to a square one!
At any rate, I was dreading pointing this out to the grumpy foreman, but the young man I reported it to was very pleasant and equally helpful when I tripped over one of their damn line up wires for positioning the tiles (heavy fishing line strung between two nails pounded into the cracks between the tiles.) This is about the fifth time I’ve tripped over the dangerous things, but this one was tangled but still connected to the two nails even though the tile had long been set, so it would not release, and sent me careening down the front stairs, head-first down onto the terrace.
In all, I probably traveled seven feet horizontally and about a foot from house floor level down to terrace level. If it had been an Olympic event, I might have placed, but as is I just said a few very vile swear words–in English, not Spanish, so perhaps they didn’t have the same effect on listening ears. At any rate, the nice young man who had heard earlier complaints came running to take my camera out of my hands, (Yes, I was going to photograph the misaligned porch tiles.) to help me up and then to remove that damn fishing line that should have been removed two days ago.
So, all in all, I’d say my day so far has been anything but subliminal. But although my entire state for the past week as we moved everything out of the house and then dealt with four days of noise, dust and constant activity has certainly been transitional, it is certainly not been barely perceptible. And in spite of the fact that my stumble and fall over my literal threshold was totally sensory, still, taking the full definition of both terms into account, I seem to be in a state neither liminal nor subliminal.
I’m just lucky that after that nasty spill that my state isn’t terminal!!!! And I can safely say, I think, that my bone density is excellent. This entire discourse, of course, simply acts as an introduction, to The Verse!!!!!
The Threshold
I must say that it’s criminal
how I must deal with liminal
aspects of this threshold wire
that seem to signal I’ll expire
if they do not complete forthwith
this entryway. It seems a myth
that I will ever pass it freely
without tripping. Will I? Reallly?
I fear my life’s conditional
on it being transitional.
Cold Truth
Those tasks she once squeezed in between the events of a real life consisting of job, social events, wifely duties and mom stuff, now filled out her day. The bare essentials of staying fed, clean and alive exhausted her. How had she ever fit all the rest in?
When she was just starting out on her career and teaching Native American Literature, she had balked at the cruelty of the tribes that set their elderly out to freeze in the cold winter air. It was the selfishness then that affected her— their unwillingness to feed, shelter and tend to their elderly.
She had never thought of it from the point of view of the ones being given these relatively kind deaths. What would she do when she was incapable of even the easiest tasks? Now she understood. Snow would be the easy way out.
For The dVerse Poets Pub “Snow would be the easy way out”
To see other responses to the prompt go HERE.
Inevitable
What folly that we thought our “we”
was something that would always be.
That lot we thought that we had cast
though once it was, was not to last,
for life is fated from the start,
conjoined hearts to rip apart.
Divorce or death, when it is done,
reduces two joined hearts to one.
For dVerse Poets Pub: “We” Couplets
To see other “We” poems go HERE.
I answered a prompt for a quatrain about maps on dVerse by submitting a poem I’d written entitled “Roadmaps.” Although no one objected, it bothered me that I’d just fulfilled half of the prompt, so I decided to transform the poem into three quatrains. It only meant adding a few words to each stanza. Here is the rewrite. I don’t know if I like it better, but at least it follows all the rules:
Road Map
I’m held captive by your wrinkles, dear, enraptured by your ripples.
I love your freckles and your moles and all of nature’s stipples.
They are sacred landmarks. When I find one that is new,
I give thanks to nature for adding more of you.
Sometimes, dear, with the dark night around us rich and deep,
my mind goes on a walkabout as you lie asleep.
The road map of your body is the terrain that I pace—
the slight knolls and the gullies and your face’s fragile lace.
Some folks bemoan the changes that nature brings about,
and they bring a different beauty. It is true, without a doubt.
But as I trace each special feature of your body and your face,
I am sure that nature’s carving instills a deeper grace.
To read the original poem go HERE. Which do you prefer? This illustration and the original poem are from my adult coloring book entitled When Old Dames Get Together and Other Confessions of a Ripe Old Age. Available from Amazon HERE.
For the dVerse Poets prompt. Go HERE to read other poems to this prompt.
Roadmap
I’m held captive by your wrinkles, dear, enraptured by your ripples.
I love your freckles and your moles and all of nature’s stipples.
They are sacred landmarks. When I find one that is new,
I must give thanks to nature for adding more of you.
Sometimes with the darkness around us rich and deep,
my mind goes on a walkabout as you lie asleep.
The roadmap of your body is the terrain that I pace—
the ravines and the gullies and your face’s fragile lace.
Some bemoan the changes that nature brings about,
and they bring a different beauty. It’s true, without a doubt.
But as I trace each special feature of your body and your face,
I’m reassured that nature’s carving instills a deeper grace.
For dVerse Poets Pub, the prompt was to write a quadrille about maps. This is definitely not a quadrille. It is a poem from my just-published adult coloring book: When Old Dames Get Together . Available on Amazon.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 