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

In the left rear rectangular basin
of this segmented school lunch tray
sits an orange, green and yellow
jumble slipped from serving spoon,
a humble geometry demonstration:
spherical dented peas, carrot cubes,
green beans clipped into one-inch
lengths, corn kernal purses. As
a child, I spent hours at the table
from dinner to bed for refusing
to ingest ancestors of the specimens
I almost do not eat today, but for
the fourth grade boy beside me,
pushing peas around his tray.
---

The sun has come back from vacation or the sanatorium, to lighten this afternoon, my mood, the pink-purple-green hair of the woman at the crosswalk - her hair like the popcycle man's rocket bar.

Having published the poetry book for the junior high kids I now bring in models for poems of identity. I've lost the conviction these poems should be shared willy nilly - thrown on Community Center walls and into collections, these kids are so vulnerable to reprisals and physical attack. Many of them write about physical attack. They trust me, and I am tired of feeding their real pain into the fundraising machine that keeps me coming into classrooms. Thursday I saw again the power kids find in writing what they know, they've gone through, and this is real. I told them these poems were between them and the page, to stay within the walls of the room, to, if they wanted, be shared with me, their teacher, but nowhere else unless they chose.

They do not read them aloud to each other.
Each is a sovereign nation.

One girl turned her desk to the wall to write today, hunched close to the file cabinet, shielded then by cabinet and wall, faced away from classmates either working or wiling away the hour cutting eye holes, one boy, from his paper, to make a mask, pretending, one girl, to be a horse and galloping from one end of the room to the other. Two writing resistors began poems in which they claimed to be selling drugs to the teachers. "Make it worse!" I said. Each wrote a complete poem. The poems were wicked-funny. One of them boys wrote "This is a lie" in the middle of his poem, then upped the stakes of evil activity, and the other ratted the mythic drug sellers out at the end: "If you want to find them, they're in room ###." A few weeks ago two teachers failed an in-school drug test. Each teacher in the school was led from her or his classrooms in view of the students by two folks from security. The two teachers were fired.

I had advised the kids to follow the pattern of the model poems, including student work, to write "in third person." Two kids sitting together couldn't get started. When I said, "make it about you, even if you lie, but tell it as 'she/he did this..." not "I did this." They told me nobody ever had explained third person before. That's possible. Or their self-protective armor kept them from listening at the moment this fact was revealed. What these kids need is not curriculum but connection. Is that a buzz phrase? I also know kids who can't write, can't read are expert at distraction, at derailing the process that will lead to the reveal.

Boy do I miss napowrimo - I'm so obedient
I need permission to write poems.
---

This poem speaks with sober voice to cast away
desolation. It splays open to admit your stare.
Salted with truth and kindness, it travels
deserts and savannas, fields alive with maize.
My amazement shapes it, stirs its broth. It
echoes back-up from sorrow's canyon. When life
divides into ever smaller fractions, it gazes
like the ponchoed birder to chart our future.

---

and now for a two hour drive to teach two classes.

NAPOWRIMO DAY THIRTY

Mnemosyne stands over the silver drawer
with a blank look - spoon, knife, and what
is this? "Aphasia," she chants, for words
slip away, but others can't doubt her wit.

When the girls were young, Erato would
mess about in the produce aisle. "Euterpe!"
she'd cry, but nobody doubted her then.
Nine girls! Zeus away with somebody new.

NAPOWRIMO DAY TWENTY NINE

The owner of the Castries cafe
looked like Derek Walcott, and
underwater the coral looked
like brains and the fish swam
around my body, every one
missing me by the same precise
distance. I stuck my hand
forward, trying to trick them,
but their sonar blips moved
faster, as though I wore an
aura. In the little town up
the hill we went to a jump up
and danced through the back
entrances of outdoor bars,
but not up the stairs where
we were invited but our taxi
driver shook his head no.
A boy said he would always
take care of me, though I
pointed at my wedding ring
and at my husband bobbing
nearby. He cradled his heart
when we danced away, heads
ahum with rum and steel drums.
As Mary put beads in my hair
on the hotel beach her sons
outbragged each other - how
to hypnotize a chicken, how
to survive without a coat
when it's cold - 70 degrees.
We were on vacation, they
walked out the entry of
their cinderblock house
near the Pitons. At the market
I bought a batik shirt with
crooked sewn buttons. The van
stopped for sand crabs, we
drank more rum and watched
wind surfers plow the bay.

NAPOWRIMO DAY TWENTY EIGHT

On Trying to Match the Clapping
Rhythm of the Nubian song
"Nagrishad" (as recorded
by Hamza El Din) in a 6th Grade
Classroom Where No One's Nubian


You clap out six eight-beat measures
using this pattern of x's.
Tar and riq have separate rhythms.
You do not clap every measure.
You'll lose the beat if not your feet
as you try. My European

ears! American rock! Even
Bach would have trouble. Paul Simon
loves polyrhythms - African
beats. I cannot sustain Bartok
or even Dave Brubeck's "Take Five."
I am at home in 4/4 time.

The kids invented notation -
all 48 beats in one line,
shouted "ha" for unclapped spaces.
We all said, "I can't hear!" or "I
got lost!" foreign to this music
no matter how loudly it played.

NAPOWRIMO DAY TWENTY SEVEN

To make poetry you'll need a pen
and time, at least three minutes.

Write parodies of poems you love
until you love your own words.

When you can't write, draw pictures.
When your drawings devolve, wait.

While waiting, remember to breathe.
Poems won't play with dead people.

Waiting is no fun. You will do
anything to stop it, even write.

NAPOWRIMO DAY TWENTY SIX

City Light charts electrical usage
with rectangles like the rods
we used in elementary school
for arithmetic - units were
white cubes a similar size
to Monopoly houses. Both easy
to pop in your mouth in pairs
or trios to knock against teeth
and tongue on a dismal morning
like lozenges or river stones,
like forbidden candy. Orality
is not original, but library
paste was lumpy and sweet
and easily stolen. I cannot
eat my light bill though I want to.

NAPOWRIMO DAY TWENTY FIVE

Never begin a reading with a doubtful
stance or no one will trust you, however earthy
and earned your lines. What you’ve spotted,
trapped in ink can vanish in faux pas. Stamping
is ill-advised at the lectern. Counting copper
and pot metal coins makes listeners crabby.
Stick to onomatopoeia – or try barking!
No dairy, no drinking, no fried
anything whose rumbles or joggling
the mic might transmit. Your rapid
breath should convey that we’re spying
on a truth that you’ve just now met.

--

couldn't get onto the internet yesterday
my in-house on-line expert was in meetings
turns out he'd turned off the internet

---

NAPOWRIMO DAY TWENTY FOUR

I was born without a caul, without
witches predicting that I'd see spirits
or be spirited. I ejected early,
and spent several days in an incubator
More about this later.

Unspectacular, I learned to read
at six, at eight we moved to Florida.

My second decade was remarkable
only in that I thought myself
remarkable, as most of us do.
I went to college, I dropped out,
went back again, again, again.

Having lost a boyfriend, I went
into primal therapy to reunite
and found my high school sweetheart.
We revisit the incubator, no
more about this later.

Whelped twice, fabulous people,
my daughters. My husband too.
Me, I'm acceptable,

have passions, get giggles,
forget names, babble, drive
more than most people, am game
for lengthy conversations,
love my family, poetry, teaching,
morning light across a pool
in which I'm swimming.

I used to buttonhole anybody
with my autobiography, looked
forward to chanting my particular
sorrows. My lazy eye, congenital
hips. I'd rather hoola hoop
than tell you more - I expect
to live more than I tell.
I wish you well.

For kids in high school angst poems are the rage
they tend to cutting scars, malaise and doom
We all were Hamlet when I was their age
for death was what had meaning, YES! the tomb

Our high school life was silly, full of sighs
and fumbled mumbled crushes at the breast
and fevered hopes - the parting of the thighs
when east was far and wiser than the west

My every whim and passion struck me mad
and every sadness felt bereft as blues
upon the fainting couch its cushions plaid
(The last line I made up - here, take my shoes.)

I try to empathize, mostly I fail.
Oh Poe, oh Charlotte Bronte, read my mail!

NAPOWRIMO DAY TWENTY TWO

high school kids clustered
around the classroom file cabinet
after we turned it sideways -
magnetic poetry words -
BIG ones, five minutes per team.
The kids weighed the words
in their hands, one group slapped
words against the metal file cabinet,
kept those that stuck - some
looked for words they thought
of and some used the words that
were there. What do our
expectations say about us?

NAPOWRIMO DAY TWENTY ONE

fog obscures lanes at
the outdoor pool,
so I wonder if it's open
predawn,
snow on the ground
icy remnants on
windshield. I pay $4
walk into locker room
strip and don my suit
and flip flops,
douse my hair
under shower water
join the shadowy churn,
exhaled whuhs, skitter
of kickboards against
concrete wall lip.
I lick my goggles
put them on, push off.
I could I think
reach and pull, flutter
back and forth all day.

NAPOWRIMO DAY TWENTY

The principal says sorry, the track meet competes
with publication party, sorry, it competes.

My voice rises to angry protest then despair
poetry isn't practical, it can't compete.

In Slanted Truths kids write the truth, I want them to
shine at the Community Center not compete.

The morning dove mourns this morning, sad coffee house
music sighs as I complete this. I don't compete.

What if all the track athletes, the spring sports supports
came to the celebration, refused to compete?

What if all the soldiers became real warriors
dropped their weapons and lifted their pens to compete?

Laura dreams all the people gather to hear poems,
embrace beauty rather than the urge to compete.

--

mostly it's a ghazal
(rhymes with puzzle, gh pronounced like French "r". Unless you're speaking Arabic.)

NAPOWRIMO DAY NINETEEN

"you see I have always wanted things to be beautiful
and now, for a change, they are"
-Frank O'Hara, from a poem sometimes titled "Poem"

Pledge allegiance to our only
entropic world,our excited
devotion for sake of excitement,
our arbitrary, delightful smiles,
our surfeit of sincerity.

Cleave to our words' combustive
clusters, our nerves' acceleration
at loon flight, pomegranates,
miniature boxes, castanettes.

Give us Lincoln Logs,
silly putty, Kewpie dolls,
sleeved Crayolas - the old colors
from childhood's Palace of Art.

May we wriggle free
from hifalutin stances,
indulge our ill-considered
trances, love what we love
not what we are supposed to --
we'll be ghosts too soon enough.

---

NAPOWRIMO DAY EIGHTEEN

Yellow is the hydrogen burner
we circle obedient as yellow chicks.
My friend held up a Crayola
to explain yellow to the paint mixer.
This, she said to him, I want this.
He got it wrong and wrong
until he mixed color wheel yellow
but kinder, the yellow now
of her kitchen's abundance
of my yellow car and my baby's
yellow overalls gone dingy
over thirty years so her baby
cannot wear that particular
yellow nor the yellow swimsuit
oddly ribbon shoulder-strapped
that was baby mine. That is no
longer yellow but goldy-pink. Yellow
fades to a flash and scribble,
lightning burned
on your eyelid, fresh egg yolk
for only one day. Yellow
my mother who said, "I am
a coward, and lazy. I always
have been." Yellow gift, legacy,
longing. Middle C on the xylophone
yellow as teeth of the resistant
child, yellow as a quaalude,
as undiluted pee. Yellow stained
carpet yellow as Play Doh.
Sunflower yellow, daffodil
nodding by the university,
crocus, tulip erupting from
brown mud berm in the Skagit
Valley. Yellow for caution,
or for going very fast if
you are Starman. Yellow
construction paper spring
flower cut for your face
to poke through, sweetest
yellow was your baby hair
I'd have twined in a locket
in the Victorian era when
yellow roses meant all bets
were off. The florist says
they mean friendship and joy.
Joy dish soap is that yellow.
Yellow soapdish, yellow
construction hard hat,
yellow yellow flower
of Ginsberg's industry
and mine.

NAPOWRIMO DAY SEVENTEEN

by now the recipe book has fallen into
butter which has melted onto
floor and across my fresh apron,
its ripped right pocket
slick with grease and intention.

Onions sit naked beside
risotto, part of culture since Sanskrit.
Onions - no orbs as elemental -
nacreous pharoahs ate them
clear cooked by kohl-eyed women.

See how I slip off skins like
them, those nameless cooks, who wept as I
weep over these two white spheres that
tease my nostrils,

brittle bones of my bloodhound's
decrepit hips that lumber at
least, to lean sideways and lick
onion and butter from floorboards.
Body, you are temporary as this
onion I've flayed, turned
on flame for.

Through crisis, cooking's
sweetest anticipations live
on, our hunger
bud-like as this artichoke
densely closed over its
inner fur we scrape
most cautiously to avoid
nightmare in our throats.

Animals, we must eat. Mouths
secrete digestive juices,. Stove
perfume I claim is human. No
rumor more joyful than fresh crab
washed and cracked on yellow plate,
hint of lemon in drawn butter.

Usual accompaniments: bread done
up with garlic to
make the table say home. Repeat
minutest motions each cooking session,
switch ingredients, but sequence like
stairs must be climbed each by each.

***

line first words are line last words from "Onions" by William Matthews

NAPOWRIMO DAY SIXTEEN

I pulled up the back hatch having
pulled up at my friend's house,
light so thin it looked drawn
by a pencil ran along the lake's
far shore. Alpacas ran to greet
me along the fence. The rabbit
I thought had died chewed
hard kibble in its cage
the other side of this couch
and what have I to say?
The wind generator whirs arms
outdoors as the ceiling fan
turns above me. Last night's
frog whir has been replaced
by bird chirrup bursts. No
typewriters erupt here.
I could find a bucket if
I had to. I could find a mop
and I could wield it.
This field ends in scrub,
branches are bare on birch
and willow. Transportation
ought to be transcendental,
existential shift in meaning
out this south window.
I'm still here.