Silver-Tongued

Winter

blue begets blue,

metallic warms to black,

pregnant & revelatory

Color.

Music in the Imaginary Garden: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Time (The Revelator)

This Week in Poetry

C’mon over to the Thirsty Mind in South Hadley, MA on Wednesday and warm up with coffee or tea and some spoken-word poetry! Gonna be a fun evening, for sure. Hope to see you.

Dependency

Explaining

my love for you

is like describing

how a vowel glides

to a diphthong

there’s no explanation

it just does

Diagramming

our love as a tree

would be trying

at the start

by extraneous phrases

antiquated pedagogy

unredeemed

Trailing

like ellipsis

clauses lain doggo

for a preposition

at last deemed

perfectly punctuated

by you

For Michael/Grapeling’s word-list prompt to the Real Toads: ABSENT

Gelid

A season fraternizing

with gallery ghosts,

red-curtained brooding

means seashell-iridescent

skyshine shocks,

suggesting beach-balm breeze

and a promise that bitter

might actually end.

Ways of Looking at the Snow Moon

Read a book aloud, observing

the space between words

A long hair in the shower looks

like the Madonna and child

Peek in on your sleeping daughter

blanketed in snowlight

Oncoming traffic headlight stars

are maybe moons

Globe of frustration

behind your eyes

Lost baby tooth,

canine

Still light

at 5:30

(With apologies to Wallace Stevens.)

Love on a Desert Planet

Don’t put a cactus shirt on a mannequin.

He likely will resent you forever,

certain to develop a prickly sense of humor

that would spoil any friendly endeavor

you employ.

Too busy being angry to enjoy

love sooner,

he’ll resist your touch, still

wondering whether you’ll try again, and again

doubting your intentions, sharply, until--

Flash 55 PLUS Kerry’s super-hard word-counting Robert Herrick stanza.