April Poem-A-Day: Day 29

Grayscale

There is something beautiful about gray.
It is in the storm clouds and tin roofs,
Battleships and full moons.

It is the space where heathered words
Meet on the battlefield of mistakes,
Regrets, and second chances.

It leaves its mark on our temples
And every black thing that has
Ever been left too long in the sun.

April Poem-A-Day: Day 28

Ladies Night

Kanye brags about touching the sky
While I sink lower in a scoop back chair
Feeling too vanilla in a cold room filled
With women colored in thirty-one flavors

April Poem-A-Day: Day 27

Today’s prompt is to write a poem that begins with the title “The Trouble is ________.”

The Trouble is Gravity

There is too much of it.
It seeps down from the sky
into my lungs, tethering
Dreams and imagination
To the earth like anchors
Tied to drowning bodies.

April Poem-A-Day: Day 26

Today’s prompt is to write a poem about an animal. Bugs are animals, right?

Read the rest of this entry »

April Poem-A-Day: Day 25

Today’s prompt is to write about sports. Since this is Texas, I knew I wanted to write about high school football games. :)

Friday Night Lights

It is the magic hour.
Letter jacket cats come out to play
With mousy girls huddled
In giggling blankets.

They wish for stolen kisses
Under a cave of metal bleachers
That echo the roaring beat
Of pounding hearts and feet.

——

Lanes

we are faceless pins
waiting in formation
split
for a back alley honey
to knock us off our feet
strike

April Poem-A-Day: Day 24

Today’s prompt was to write a love or anti-love poem.

The Old Battle Axe (Love)

I spent my early years
Inside a glass case
On display as much
A warning as a promise

Until you broke through
And reached your hand
Into the shatterings
To grasp my body blade

We ran together
Into the fire

———

Point of View (Anti-Love)

Second hand hearts beat louder than the unused
Broken in skin more supple than the untouched

But you only saw the silver scars from older cuts
The patchwork of mismatched prints from other hands

April Poem-A-Day: Day 23

Today’s prompt is to write a poem about the morning. Those who know me know my aversion to fairy tale princesses, much in the vein of Anne Sexton’s “Cinderella.” This is a bit of what’s in my head, in a stream of consciousness sort of way.

Read the rest of this entry »

April Poem-A-Day: Day 22

Today’s prompt is to write a poem about judging.

 

Born This Way

Your compass mouth
Spins needle words
Toward my stationary self
I am target North

You assume the orientation
Of my eyes and every other part
Are written on the surface
Of my map body

You only see tectonics
Shifting at the mercy
(or is it power?)
Of the basal part of me

It is the heat
Beneath the skin
But you know nothing
Of the inside

April Poem-A-Day: Day 21

Impossible Bottle

You pull my strings with tweezer hands
Bending flattened pieces up on hinges
To make me dimensional like a vessel
Launched inside a glass shell
That holds the echo of the sea