Daily Crossword Puzzle Draft Resumption

You realize your conversations adlib
what you'd never tell - drag races,
drug tracks, anything that lined you
forward, threw you one-on-one.
Oh sun oh noneborn sons I'll never meet.
Oh rearing dogs and peacocks down
my street. So long I've been at sea
beyond the scent of maleness
behind the bars the unloved maned
and all of them amusable
What is the truth, the clandestine
destinies beyond the grave?
What would I save or never shave
for you? What would you break
to gain continuance?
How would you breathe if I left?

To walk, amble, stride, stand on the Pont Neuf
to stare into Seine sliding around the point
of the Ile de la Cite on an Autumn afternoon
to wander idly lanes in Les Marais, to chance
upon medieval edifice or Roman bath or both
and pay the fee to view the Lady and the Unicorn
in its darkened room ah where's the loom
that shuttled six tapestries and who had money
to hang them? Pre-Norman kings your heads
are double-sized rubble in garden wall to outlast
revolution's rabble who might have broken your
already severed heads to unrecognizable bits
though we do not recognize other than that you
exist together in the restored refrigeratorium
we drop into rabbit holes, wave our Navigo cards
over purple swirl eh voila we surface where
we don't know where we are but do not care.
L'Opera Garnier hurts my eyes - too marble
too chandeliered too high the grand foyer
too tiled the floors though a blacony glimpse
of the opera hall ceiling settles me -
Marc Chagall no folderall - Swan Lake
and Tour Eiffel. The urine reek not only
when I seek le toilette it permeates it all
we do not gasp nor hold our noses but stare
until we have to leave to breathe. Shuttle out
through gift shop with its luminous ballerinas
to plug in at home. Along the marble flank
"What's this?" a woman with a mouth of golden
teeth holds forth a ring we must have dropped
she insists - oh yes this bit is still alive
I open my coin purse that spills a one
and two cent coin that send her off, disgusted.

All Hallows Eve

Besides, the pumpkin's un-jack-o'lanterned
and the grog's unspiced. Nice to devour
a spider's leg brew or two. Have you a keg
of newt's tooth beer, or have I come here
misinformed? What looks like an eye I'll pop
from your forehead and eat. What do you
most wish to hide? Does your pride hurry
home with a smile or does it beat you
with a broom? What loom will you weave
your story on? Your ghoulish fate's revealed
there'll be no healing here and what's
begun will too soon end in corridors too-
bright with chlorox. Your wig's askew
and no one will ask you to the ball.
Venice sinks as we speak though every day
they play damp-booted and cellars non-
existant. In an instant the pageantry
is moot. What is more destitute than hope?
All that glitters is not a thing a ghoul
can hold. The empty chair,the hair
that lenghtens, nails, teeth, ears
and nose that grow grotesque and
pendulous. Oh crones, envelope us in
wax lips and dollop our throats with
sugar blood. A candy kiss in a paper bag,
a pumpkin's sunken smile. Ah mold
is black art too, and potions not all
that set in motion spells that crackle
upwards in the night. Sweets tribes ring
our bell who smell of nougat. They wear
ills they do not feel - a bloody wound
half-peeled from shiny face,vampire-fangs,
lipsticked mark by reddened lips, black goo
for absent tooth, witches' brew of licorice
and lungwort, fort of fern fronds down
the trail. Life entails too few performances-
shout and carry on, we're too soon gone -
what beauty lies where there be dragons?
Drink your flagons, pull snot-tied seeds
from pumpkins before they sink
another season you may not share. Care
that those who follow are already here.
Why should they climb to your spider-webbed
lair when the caramel apples melt down here?
They walk forward with lanterns, we founder
in marshmallow goo, heads whirled
like sugar on a paper cone. There's
a home inside the darkest wood. The finger
gnawed to bone chills us for a coin,and
grisly goblins leap and lear - our neighbors
gotten up and if you won't be taken in
or played the fool then lie down here
and let the hatchet snatch the squash
from off your neck, oh Ichabod no horse
to ride where Sasquatch claims mountains
tangled with ghostly lore, rivers swim
with corpses and our beaches slap with icy
fingers to rip away your scream and bury
you in sand. Not wit to say we cannot
stand like Ozymandias, visage vast
as rock can make it - look on my works
ye mighty - but they never will,
so drink this beetle-beer and scuttle out
like one who's died. I'll YES paste a pearl
beneath my eye. Was that a wolf? We be
ruthless as babies all hallow's eve.

New York Times Daily Crossword Poem Draft

Pounding corn for masa on the mesa
we watched sun rise, set, the staple
crop in the diorama at your expo.

We women want rhythm and no terror
to speak and not be branded hag
ah men, we say, you and what army.

the wildest of us joined the orders
faced their fill of stones and styx
it takes no balls to follow leaders

Readers, what ever, the ova
wins no matter the make of your car
or how Maya worshipped jaguar

cenote under full moon, an early
riffle, dart into your heart
easiest to fall apart.

New York Times Crossword Poem Draft

Is all fair foul or fowl my brother in my
father's basement that comes with troll
who stole whose sanity for I've a code
to break and trails I'd rather take
than these. Photos on a stick no Bond girl
dreamed and I've a job to do so help me
sooth my father's woe and so to work
I oughta for blood etceteras to water.

--

you're maple leaves and I'm the raker
you're the target, I'm the dart

New York Times Crossword Poem Draft

Awe and alleluia tucked away, the alcove's
dark and safe. Who now will wield crop
on each? To reach with wit and sting
oh anything can make me cry, and why
this ugly leaving, calendars damp
with grieving, and noone I can call
no matter how you whipped me rageful
I miss your laugh at my expense, at
yours, and dad can hardly move without
your chiding. We abide and toss and turn.
It's weird to yearn for you who wound
yourself so close I hardly breathed.

New York Times Crossword Puzzle Poetry Draft


A new week dawns, we're out of Q-tips
the crosswalk yawns with apes.
A passing car, a lofted glob
oh autumn rain, ah puddle jump
it's new, the raincoat isn't rote.

A note: my uncle's 92 no end
approaching. His belly's open
suctioned by a pump, his
daughter home to help. Removed
the hanging fly strips from his view.
Oh purple purple eggplant in
my arms, the plums and pears
and peaches bend the trees as we
load another box and pick, eye
watermelon, cleave beets from soil
and carrots from the silt
what lilt this action gives my eye.
We say good bye, head east, auto
full of dinner and dessert.

Staring out the window as trees and wind play Martha Graham
Sauntering the neighborhood as plums fall from a neighbor's tree
and what does it matter if I begin every line with a gerund?

Families, they f*$( you up. you know the poet, and the Granta issue
Why poetry? These comfort me.

Too much time with family
they look like me and we have history
and pathology in common

My Mom is gone and my rhythm is jangled
no matter how terribly we danced together

School year beginning I arise and soon
will go now into classrooms
my friend says she feels privileged
to work in this system she opposes

and I admire those who meta-think
and those whose arithmetical mode
is to add themselves to the equation
and I want to go on a vacation

New York Times Crossword Poem Draft

Once saw-toothed tigers saw to
the vermin, and camp
meant dogs around an aura, lath
met plaster, last night, last year, I mean
before the grafted apple and oboe,
before the plow, Euro never
met yen, the trilobyte, and a cobra
rose without a basket, no one asked it
but we share the ride
with oh who knows but all is faster
than despair - I cling to the spar
and far off land fades, a sprinter
from a burning building, present past
and I didn't ask, and now it's ash
as I will be though I want to burn.
I'm out of tune, you hold the hymnal
I cannot hear, you're not aloof
is anything indelible? Erase
what trace we leave, our fallen sash
another chistled stone.
Don't leave me alone, I need oomph
for every tibia and ulna
There's ahead to love not just a sled
ride down and out but grace
before the years-off grave.

View of Mt. Rainier from Paradise
wild flowers in spring bloom - September -
lupines and crimson paint brush -
purple! magenta! the upper slopes
puff painted green below the hem
of white snow, glaciers stark
and stippled with crevasses beneath
a sky painted crisply blue. Summer's
new pearly everlasting and a marmot
chewing placid as the neighbor's cow
if the neighbor had a cow.

in her last days my mother croaked
she rasped a phonecall was disaster
she'd been ill so long, she'd lost her sight,
she could not hold a pen to write,
and then, good night, she could not speak.
we'd made amends had become friends
like all we love it had to end
I'm not philosophical like George Harrison
amen.

On the road many a which way
proof of too long gone
I left my notebook
in the Wallowas.

Fishtrap folk found it
it's coming home
who knows who read what
probably nobody
boy do I feel exposed.

Gray day east of the Cascades
I'm more blue than gray
not ready not ready
to do what I should do.

Let's all run and play
lie in the sun and not care
our skin is folding pleats
in face and neck
let's throw ourselves
into the lake and not care
it's so cold too cold

Let's not only be me
let's be a tribe
like my little brother
and his "mans"
when he was four
before what came
I won't name

the ravens cry their raucous cry
they fly at each other and lash beaks
they'll devil the bald eagle
until he drops the fish
if he catches a fish
don't you wish the world
was more benign
that when your friend says
"I'm fine" you believed her.

I wrote this morning en plein air
my pen a whimsical cudgel
walloping my malaise calmly
as mayonnaise. The lesson
we never learn or I don't
is to get up and go again
all is forgiven in doing
all done is done and sun
wags no accusatory digit
I go low in disbelief until -
relief - I lift my pen again.

New York Times Crossword Poetry Draft


oh blinkin bladder oh latte
Lizst me Bach in g clef
squirt me a dash of PAM
thunder me not your Eliot
swami swim my past Irani
I bet it all on number seven
oh heaven oh Hook my Smee
we sing we suffer apnea
we see the shooting star
that ran the sky, the gamuts
of lives in crusty relics
the Ottos, oliphants and Omars.
ask not but genuflect for oil
run we now the bulls in tutus
the real McCoy Fibber Magee
McPhee monkeys masked in panic
oh manic mayonnaise oh maize
amazing Incas, you nod tsk tsk
we backward bend the blarney stone
go home to lives less large
no Haydn on the barge, ink
fodder, a rabbit's foot
in boots more agile
but fragile as Ionic
columns underground your zit
ginormous as your earlobes
and no respite from trash.

today I may get a loaner car
my knight may fly over the pass
swoop me into the passenger seat
and whoosh me back to Chelan
or I may drive in a loaner.
Meanwhile my yellow car
sits waiting for a new hose
a $250 hose because of biodiesel
says the guy who acts as go between
between me and the mechanic.
the guy who when I kept questioning -
this seemed overly coincidental
that the hose goes just after
they don't top off fluids
when my oil was changed
oh! and at the top of the pass
with nowhere to turn off
and a red light yelling
that I must stop
so that I illegally called
the service department
and engaged the very young man
who answered in a dialog
that included the question
"Did you guys give me a wall job?"
and then, "Can you go check
with the tech?" and then
a little unladylike speech
when the reststop had pit toilets
and no water. Though I had
a quart because of modern
hydration needs - a red no-peta
nalgene. Is it peta?
Yesterday morning the go-between
asked if I ever put biofuels
in my car. Yes.
He said they have
solvent properties. Yes.
He said biofuel got on the water hose
and over the years softened it
until it popped a hole. Hmm.
Coincidental, don't you think?
He said if I was going to be distrustful
I could go elsewhere. But really,
I said, doesn't it seem
the least bit odd?
My friend says he'd
never have said that to a man.
As a relationship driven woman
being told I was being distrustful set
off my anti-confrontation bells
so they still have the car and
I will pay for the $250 hose
and the how ever many $$
it will take to unhook
the flaccid one
and strap on
the new rubber.
Yippee Kai Yay
as Bruce Willis would say.
Peace Out.

I visit my two friends' suburban book store - good to talk books: Let the Great World Spin, Little Bee. They're staying open, buying fewer books, selling fewer books. I asked about Bonnie Jo Campbell's new book - it isn't out yet, but I'm sure I'll love it - having read the great article in the latests Poets & Writers. The author had a photo of Annie Oakley up on her wall for inspiration. Learned to shoot as part of her book research. The book is set on the river, and might be called On the River. Or something like. I wanted to be Annie Oakley, except I was afraid of guns and horses and couldn't really walk that well. The Wild West Shows were gone.

I bought STATE OF WONDER by Ann Patchett. I hope I like it. I've read lots of things lately I have around the house with bookmarks in them. Books I left listlessly.

I sent in an essay yesterday - overnighted it since the deadline for RECEIPT not POSTMARK was today. I spent two hours revising in Kinkos before the 4:30 FED EX pickup. I made the pickup. Rereading the essay today I see I buried my first paragraph mid-essay. Perhaps they'll be charmed by the intentional (HA) oddity of that. Perhaps a punch will have been packed. I spent a lot of money to send it, mostly because I wanted to honor my promise to myself that I would send an essay this year. I have little illusion that the piece will win. BUT I SENT IT.

I wait now for my friend to meet me for dinner. I am driving my daughter's car, knee deep in food wrappers and starbucks frappucino cans.

imperative: write anything so that last post doesn't
impose itself on me everytime I pull up internet.

Pull up in front of internet?
on my ebon steed with the flaring nostrils...
in my Morris Minor? (which is still FOR SALE)

Pulling out of town once the yellow car
gets a new front strut, oil change,
headlights that glow even when you don't
leap from the vehicle and whack them
again and again with both fists.

Technology Development of the Day:
I have broken the adaptor that supposedly allows the tiny new-fangled SIM card to plug into my computer so I can download the photos that are too large to send to anyone - except for a few of them for reasons I do not understand. Perhaps the phone is whimsical. It is not a smart phone. Everyone else in my family can go on the internet on the go, can check email and e-cetera. I campaigned to get internet access for my not-smart-phone. For $10 a month, I can see some whirling and an ATT homepage inviting me to go to an ATT preselected site. I can get email only if I pay another $5 a month. Probably if I wanted to do something outlandish such as looking at or posting to my blog I could pay another $5 a month. I'm going to pay the additional $5 a month for a month. If it is still ridiculous (also with text so small that bottle bottom glasses may be required) I will disconnect and continue as a phone user who uses her phone as a phone. An acquaintance, the same one who commented about my new haircut that it made me look, "like an older lesbian," made fun of my phone yesterday. He doesn't understand why his marriages don't last. (not simultaneous ones.)

On the docket for today:
(checked off already) Push Q's tricycle around the neighborhood while Q steers "go right!" and she does! "go left!' "Straighten her out!" She likes to repeat, "Straighten her out!" She also likes when I recite my poems to her. "I like that sponge poem," she said yesterday about a poem I'd said to her the day before. We like to say nonsense rhymes together, including "baby, caby, daby, waby, saby." She's a new big sister. This has its drawbacks. Baby R is two weeks old today. Q hasn't asked that she be put back in the womb as her mommy did when her younger sister was two weeks old, but this is on her mind, I think.
(checked off already) Went to VW dealer and made appointment yellow car
(yet to do): get mail forwarded to Chelan. There's a check in the mail from a person who's renting in August, so gotta go to the house and check mail daily 'til that comes, THEN put on mail forwarding. Mail forwarding takes 7 days to actually forward.

Suck marrow
from what's been given -
it is never enough.
Scream when
platitudes pelt you
with
soggy righteousness.
Love is given
on paper plates
like store-bought cake.


---
Putting together poetry books for 3rd and 4th grade classes. I'm excited about searching out embroidery floss and an awl (or a nail from a hardware store, and a flat rock.) The kids will lace their books together tomorrow. We revise today! Some kids say "I don't want anything in the book." I ask again, "I'm alright," a boy says, as though I offered a second helping of green beans. I say everyone will get a copy. "I don't want one," says one girl. Three kids in middle school turned away their copies of our book. "I'm stupid," says the 4th grade boy who asked the earth to teach him the cleverness of the jaguar with its camoflage. He used the word "camoflage." He comes up with five more poetry lines, with me taking dictation. I am determined the book will have work from every child, not only the girls. The boys resist, but the teacher and the aide sit one on one, encouraging, taking dictation, like me. Each 4th grader turns in at least one poem. Some are excited about them. Maybe even proud.

New York Times Crossword Poem Draft

Cloud white sky, drive north, latte
in the cup holder, something in G clef
on the radio. Dial sticky. No Pam.
Commentator speaks in French or Irani.
The views inspire awe and apnea,
too light for brights or shooting star.
How far? NPR has run its gamut -
I listen again - a piece about a relic
the one that makes my hips ache - oil
and the Al- whatnots and Omars.
Twirl the dial as though it were tutu-
Sylvia Pogolli, a spot that shows me how -
red car on my tail, I flail and panic.
Antics? Let them age like stone
let sun warm to my foot sole
give me time with book and ink
and time to profer agile
pronunciations - Corinthian, Ionic -
Doric - I am not being metaphoric
the litter at the rest stop tops
the ancient tourist drive thru cedar
with the roof to keep out rot -
my aching eyes and earlobes
trash cans haloed with trash.

Lock Down Drill

The third graders are choosing crayons from the teacher's cache, and passing the beaver-chewed yellow willow stick that looks like a canoe when a woman's stern voice over the intercom says, "We are code red. Teachers, lock down your classrooms." The teacher instructs the children to sit against the wall of drawers, and locks the class door. I tug at the window blind, which doesn't descend past 2/3 closed. A string hangs loose above my head. The teacher brings what she has, a poster, a large box holding a board game, to block more of that window. We join the line of children sitting silently, though some whisper. The teacher says, "you must be totally silent. There is an intruder in the building. We don't want him or her to know we are here." I was in a lockdown drill at an elementary school a few years ago. The kids were far squirrelier than these, I think to myself. I don't know if that's really accurate. I was thinking many things to distract myself from thinking this might be real. I was nervous about how open that window view was. If anyone were outside on that side wishing us ill, that person could aim easily through that huge opening. A girl sat one side of me, a boy on the other. Twenty-five minutes later, when the woman over the intercom informed us the red alert was over, the boy offered his hand to help me up. The teacher told us this had been a drill. She answered questions from the kids. One girl offered, "an intruder can be your father." Time for P.E.; I left the building.

---

Maybe a child
falls flat
skins a knee
that awful bump
the silent moment
the wailing
a fall is an abandonment
a surrender
a loss of innocence
as the scab hardens
and falls
will always
have been