Who We Are – {fiction, instead of lies}

{pf: poetry peeps wabi their sabi}

June 28, 2024

4:50 am

11 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps wabi their sabi}

Mental Health, Musings on Extemporanea, On Writing, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, What We Do, Who We Are

Welcome to another Poetry Friday Poetry Peeps Adventure!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of July! Here’s the scoop: We’re writing …Haiku/Senryu classifieds. Reprising our 2015 want ads project, we’re combining our love of Missing Connections, Desperately Seeking______, For Sale, and other random Penny Savers, Craigslist, and back-page-of-the-newspaper weirdness into deliciously brief poetry bites. Are you game? Good! You have a month to craft your classified creation and share it on July 28th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

Friends, this is not a real poem.

As long as we’re clear on that, okay?

In the past, I was the person Most Likely To Rant about our poetry challenges, and heaven knows I’ve tried to tone that down a bit so Certain People stop giggling (looking at YOU Sara Lewis Holmes), but BOY did this one bring on the urge to scream. UGH.

From Process…

I mean, technically it’s a poem – it’s …Poetry Friday and I posted it. But, that’s about all that went the way I wanted it to. Very rarely am I really, really, REALLY unable to put together words into something that at least resembles a poem… but whenever the Poetry Sisters say “no rules,” I hit a wall. This business of using the same title, but doing our own thing with no rules on form or content I KNEW was going to be a pain in the neck — so I started writing about what I wanted to write immediately. This…should have worked.

In a way, it did work – I wrote a long poem in blank verse. However, I couldn’t tell when I was …done. After a while, I realized it was simply shaped prose instead of a poem. I scrapped it.

I wrote a ghazel. Then two ghazels. All of them were terrible, but they had absolutely robust vocabulary, and best of all, they rhymed, which… tells some part of my brain that I’m Doing It Right.

…except that Ghazels don’t rhyme (except internally), so… I scrapped those, too. Plus, did I mention they were terrible? I kept getting overly invested in the turns of phrase, and forgetting that the theme was wabi sabi. Paying attention. Transience. Imperfection. Change. I was like a kid who had the assignment – to write a paper about the Second World War and got stuck in a discussion on military haberdashery in 1944. It’s adjacent to the topic, but not there at all.

After more reflection, I figured out that the real issue is that I don’t like wabi sabi as a… concept. I mean, it’s fine, but hello, it’s the melancholy awareness of the transience of living things. It’s a reminder that all things metamorphose, adapt, and die; a reminder that nothing is permanent or will stay the same or will last. Oh, goody, all of the things that the human brain is hardwired to ignore.

Was this just an emotional wall I hit, a tantrum because I didn’t like the topic? No…? I mean, I wanted to write about having a big anniversary the year my brother is getting married – year one and year thirty, a month apart. That’s not a bad topic – but it’s personal. Maybe the struggle came with adding the personal to the transient – on a week when my Dad’s been hospitalized yet again. My literal baby, as in, “woke up with you, carried you, changed your diapers” baby brother is getting married. I know this is a tectonic change – that’s quite clearly being rubbed in my face. Maybe it’s just right now too much to put on one poem.

That happens sometimes.

…To Poetry

After this sprawling mess of realizations, one thing I also examined was why the first poems had disgusted me so much. I don’t usually …fling poems from me quite so energetically. Most of the time I make things work – and our Poetry Friday exercises have, for the last how many years (since 2007!?), been strictly about the PRACTICE of poetry, and not the PERFECTING thereof. But the poems struck me as slick, glib – and wordy. I can do that – I can produce words that sound good, at least – as tuneful as a drawer full of cutlery, if nothing else. But like that bright clatter, they’re basically meaningless. There’s a difference between wordplay and poetry, and too often, I err on the side of wordplay. Normally that’s fine – you can use wordplay to elevate your poem, but it’s a mistake to rely on it, and think it’s the same…

Anyway, I knew I wasn’t really digging in and putting in the work to get to any Actual Feelings (TM) or Insights about the things my poem allegedly was about. So. I stopped writing. Honestly, it felt like my house was sitting on the surface of the sun, and it was too flippin’ hot to think straight anyway.

**** Fortunately, OTHER PEOPLE DID NOT POUT AND KEPT AT IT! **** Laura’s poem is here. Liz’s poem is here. Sara’s poem is here, and Mary Lee’s poem is here. Here’s Tricia’s poem, and she’s got the full Poetry Friday roundup today. Michelle K’s poem is here. Linda B’s broom wabi sabi is here. More of the wabi sabi-ing may be wafting in throughout the weekend, and I’ll post their odes to transience and imperfection as I find them – stay tuned for the roundup!

Okay, here it is, Thursday evening, and I’m left with what I’m left with – finally a lovely, temperate day and… a word salad.

Flawed. Unfinished. Abandoned. As Richard Powell put it, “Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”

Wabi sabi on the nose.

WABI SABI: A Word Salad

A squalid stuff, word salad –
A wabi sabi wasteland.
A welter of syllabic stress
songs sounding dissonance.

Imperfect and unfinished
its point lies in acceptance:
Release of our own relevance
as center of the mass.

in still seeking distinction
And means of contribution,
we try for conversation,
to compel connection

Clever clatter cannot cure
what yawns, hungry, for a Word
That lasts through transiency’s attempts
to be the last thing heard.

If you can’t find the right words to write something this weekend – don’t despair. Remember that the genius is within you. The words are there – give yourself the time to think them. In the meantime, lying down with an ice pop certainly won’t hurt …

{pf: poetry peeps sound an ode to ourselves}

by Tanita S. Davis

May 31, 2024

5:04 am

10 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps sound an ode to ourselves}

On Writing, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

Welcome to another Poetry Friday Poetry Peeps Adventure!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of June! Here’s the scoop: We’re writing a poem with the title ‘Wabi-Sabi.’ Aaaand, that’s… the scoop. That’s it. A little unsure of the concept and philosophy? In his book Wabi-Sabi Simple, Richard Powell described wabi-sabi as a philosophy that acknowledges a lifestyle that appreciates and accepts three simple truths: “Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.” We’ve left ourselves room this month to meditate on all sorts of things, including, but not limited to, ellipses, pauses, and periods to acknowledge endings. Are you game? Good! Whichever way wabi-sabi wafts you, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on June 28th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

Friends, this month was a doozy.

Periodically in our poetic perambulations, we wander into a quagmire and find ourselves just… stopped. Stuck.

This time, it was because we were writing in the spirit of Lucille Clifton’s “homage to my hips,” and uncovered a lot of body image issues in ourselves. Here’s this lovely poet, praising the promising swing and sway of her bountiful hips, and we… recoiled from a paean of praise to our own bodies, because… eew. There was imperfection. There was wistfulness. There was frustration. There was a lot to dig through to get unstuck.

Soooo, we had to do a little therapy. As one does. Results? Liz’s poem is here. Mary Lee’s affirmation is here. Tricia’s poem is here, and Laura’s is here. Michelle’s poem is here, and Linda B.’s poem is here. More peeps with poetic panegyric might sally forth to give thanks for their thighs – as I discover their poems, I’ll post them, so do check back for the roundup.

From Process…

I was so, so grateful that I’d found the Bill Moyers’ recording of Lucille Clifton reading her own poem aloud. She made people laugh. She made people worry. She laughed at herself, and, gently, at their worry. She claimed she had “thrilling” body parts. In performance she was a live wire, and her joy in herself – in opposition to the societal norms which bid her condemn rather than celebrate the swish of her hips – is infectious. We all listened, and we none of us could resist that joy. So, step one, if you’re ever stuck writing something kind about yourself – listen to Ms. Lucille.

I listened for the “presence” word as I reread the poem. Ms. Lucille’s hips are big, they take up space, they don’t fit just anywhere; those hips are free and have never been enslaved. They were mighty and magical, and then she offered us proof of this. When the poem is stepped through instead of skimmed, it is easier to see where her hips sort of “break through” the confinements and actions of other people’s calmer, tamer hips. With that in mind, I turned to my own poem.

…to Poem

Of course, that meant trying to find a body part that I could deal with. Oh, sure, I could have echoed the mentor poem, but Ms. Lucille had capital ‘h’ Hips. I have… a hinge that does the job, but without much ‘verve and swerve,’ as it were. I do have shoulders that hit all of the presence words – big, take up space, don’t fit… but five lines into trying to write about them, I became entangled in the metaphorical uses of shoulders – people use them to cry on, they have to bear the weight of the world’s problems. I have shoulders like a linebacker (with only minimal exaggeration) but I don’t always want to be leading the defense and protecting the quarterback. That’s… less about the shoulder and more about what a shoulder’s expected to do. Nope. Wrong direction.

I sighed and considered. Belly buttons – what can one say about an ‘innie’ in a squishy belly? – necks – boring, really, – fingers – um, right now the joints are a bit too inflamed to be giving me praiseworthy vibes – feet, hips, spine, same issue. This is the problem with a flawed body, friends. A lot of my systems started to fail in my late twenties, and I’ve had somewhat of an adversarial relationship with my body since then. It’s too easy to find fault with it. Too easy to look at the scars of deficiencies and disorders and the associated insufficiencies and think there’s no room for homage, only abhorrence. And that’s …not good. Understandable, but not sustainable. I have to LIVE here, after all – we need a working relationship, and at minimum, respect and care and appreciation. So. Back to the drawing board yet again.

I considered body parts which I actively dislike, but couldn’t summon the energy to fight myself for them. I wondered aloud if hair was a body part – I mean, technically that could count? – and then I saw a picture of a stairwell in a museum which I love, and remember walking down those stairs MANY years ago in three-inch heels (for an event) and thought, “I loved those shoes, they made my calves look…” Oh. OH!

Suddenly, I was unstuck.

Acclaiming My Calves

These calves are strong calves,
bulging muscles Foundational
to my under
standing. Like cocoa-butter silk,
when I’m bothered to shave
them, these calves – not milk-fed (yet
Outstanding in their field) –
they don’t fit into
ordinary settings
or stovepipe boots.
Solid maple, this Mare’s
shanks. These calves,
they like a lug sole
a long stride, and a
short skirt ‘cause these calves,
they gotta Breathe.
Legs louche or Ladylike, these calves,
they lay it out, straight,
no chaser, though I have known them
To stop on a dime and Flex,
To strengthen the stretch
of my strut.
draft ©2024 by tanita s. davis

That was just the warm-up! There’s more poetry this Friday, hosted by Janice at Salt City Verse, exploring a great new poetry anthology, so check that out and the community’s poetry as well. Thanks much for hosting, Janice!

Meanwhile, here are the calves in question: you’re WELCOME.

Don’t forget what Ms. Lucille said. You have thrilling body parts. You are, both body and soul, breathtakingly made. Celebrate the wonderfulness that is you.

{npm24: progressive poem!}

by Tanita S. Davis

April 23, 2024

5:02 am

11 Comments on {npm24: progressive poem!}

General Coolness, Happenings, NPM, Part and Poetry, Small Fictions, What We Do, Who We Are

Aaaah! It’s been exciting to watch this poem take shape. This is my first year, and as I watched the couplets collect at first I thought, “OH NO, I should have picked a MUCH earlier date to contribute!” There were intimidatingly beautiful phrases! (…the tender, heavy, harsh of home – *alliterative swoon*) And so many details as the poem took on a narrative shape. I felt like I was too late to do anything “good.”

Well, that was silly. This day, this moment in the life of these young immigrants… this time is perfect. Cousin, thanks for giving me a strong springboard from which to jump into playing with you all. The mastery of the Muse to those poets providing our conclusion, including:

April 24 Molly Hogan at Nix the Comfort Zone
April 25 Joanne Emery at Word Dancer
April 26 Karin Fisher-Golton at Still in Awe
April 27 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
April 28 Dave at Leap of Dave
April 29 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 30 Michelle Kogan at More Art for All

And now for our featured presentation…

Cradled in stars, our planet sleeps,
clinging to tender dreams of peace
sister moon watches from afar,
singing lunar lullabies of hope.

almost dawn, I walk with others,
keeping close, my little brother.
hand in hand, we carry courage
escaping closer to the border

My feet are lightning;
My heart is thunder.
Our pace draws us closer
to a new land of wonder.

I bristle against rough brush—
poppies ahead brighten the browns.
Morning light won’t stay away—
hearts jump at every sound.

I hum my own little song
like ripples in a stream
Humming Mami’s lullaby
reminds me I have her letter

My fingers linger on well-worn creases,
shielding an address, a name, a promise–
Sister Moon will find always us
surrounding us with beams of kindness

But last night as we rested in the dusty field,
worries crept in about matters back home.
I huddled close to my brother. Tears revealed
the no-choice need to escape. I feel grown.

Leaving all I’ve ever known
the tender, heavy, harsh of home.
On to maybes, on to dreams,
on to whispers we hope could be.

But I don’t want to whisper! I squeeze Manu’s hand.
“¡Más cerca ahora!” Our feet pound the sand.
We race, we pant, we lean on each other
I open my canteen and drink gratefully

Thirst is slaked, but I know we’ll need
more than water to achieve our dreams.
Nights pass slowly, but days call for speed
through the highs and the lows, we live with extremes

We enter a village the one from Mami’s letter,
We find the steeple; food, kindly people, and shelter.
We made it, Manu! Mami would be so proud!
I choke back a sob, then stand tall for the crowd.

A slapping of sandals… I wake to the sound
of “¡GOL!” Manu’s playing! The fútbol rebounds.

{npm24: 19}

by Tanita S. Davis

April 19, 2024

12:27 pm

Draft, Untitled 4/18

The more you try to hold them in your hands
The more the tumbled grit slithers away
You’re micro in the cosmic, that’s your place
Let go! There’s nothing you need understand.

What troubles you is trouble’s thinning skin.
You’re triggered, primed, and spoiling for a fight.
So packed inside you’re ripe enough to crack
But you’re a lady, so you pack it in.

Dust riding on the wind can’t slow this train
Unless that windstorm’s fine enough to choke.
When engines, falter, wheezing your mistake,
Make common cause with nomads, wait for rain…

We see all that we have here, what is known,
Is all our people need is all we lack.
Yet somehow, hearts abraded still, we chafe
Hands fumbling after smoke that’s being blown.

Have you been following this year’s Progressive Poem? I am kicking myself for not jump in to add lines on an earlier date, in a way, as the poem now has… like, a name and an identity now, and maybe I should have worked with it when it was more of an amorphous zygote!? I hope I don’t ruin it.

Meanwhile, Poetry Friday is celebrated today at Second Cousin Heidi’s juicy little universe, where you’ll find poems with clarity – and titles. Happy Friday.

{npm24: 17}

by Tanita S. Davis

April 17, 2024

2:02 pm

1 Comment on {npm24: 17}

NPM, Part and Poetry, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

Mom has what she calls a “Senior Moment” when she walks into a room and forgets what she came for. I have what I call ‘Dyscalculia Moments.’ Today it was the date – I literally read the 1 and the 7 on the calendar as a 1 and a 2. I often invert numbers and/or completely make them up, so it shouldn’t surprise me. And, yet it gives me a double-take each time.

John Hopkins University has a Mathematics of Music course. The American Mathematical Society has a whole page exploring the intersection of mathematics and music. For a long time as a kid, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t “get” reading music, remembering time signatures and what all the little patterns meant. As an adult, learning about the way my brain works and does not… well, now I get it.

This will never be effortless for me. This will never not be a problem. I’m learning to be unembarrassed, and to accept the good. Look at the intricacies of sheet music, and I can understand that! Look at me claim the weird little things that I do to make my life function: see the tiny notations in my music, places to put my pencil so I can count? It’s not ‘Touch Math’ as its taught in many school districts, but it’s close – and it works for me.

Everyone has coping mechanisms, I remind myself. May yours continue to work for you.

Mistakes Were Made

Mistaken, yet again
My blunders make me sigh.
“This too shall pass.” But when!?
Perhaps before I die?

My blunders make me cry.
Burnt cookies in the bin!
Perhaps before I’ll die,
I’ll know twenty’s not ten?

Burnt cookies in the bin…
“Too late to reapply.”
Can’t rely on my brain,
My calendar’s awry.

“Too late to reapply.”
And can’t apply my brain.
My whole schedule’s awry.
Numbers drive me insane.

Can’t rely on my brain.
This too shall pass. But, when
Math gives me a migraine
Mistake are made, again.

{npm24: 11}

by Tanita S. Davis

April 11, 2024

1:51 pm

7 Comments on {npm24: 11}

Musings on Extemporanea, NPM, Part and Poetry, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

I enjoyed writing with a mentor text so much the other day that I’m going to try it again… (and to be honest, this is the easiest way for me to gently move into blank verse, and avoid my pathological need to rhyme things…) I was introduced to this poem in my small writing group, and just loved its simplicity. But, as I’m practicing not evading, its simplicity turns my eyes a new way.

One of the simplest truths about humans is that they are fear-based species. About a year ago, the National Geographic did a whole piece on how our fear drove our evolution (yay?). It’s an unpleasant truth, isn’t it? But our ability to fight or flee or freeze has made us who we are…

Others have used Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Valentine for Ernest Mann” as a mentor text and taken it a new direction – today I’ll be replacing courage with poetry. Or is poetry actually courage?

Getting to Grips with the Gift

You can’t order courage like you order fries.
Move up in the drive through and, say, “two orders, animal-style”
and wait for the shiny-faced young person
to hand you a waxed-paper box.

Still, it’s a worthy quest.
Demanding of the cosmos, “Give me courage,
I need to be brave,” rates something in reply –
Maybe more than the expected:
Courage collects. Behind the bunker called Fear,
it is bunched up under a drift of “fight” or “flight. It
crawls from beneath the bed, but crouches, trembling
at the edge of the stage
when it is our turn to step out into the spotlight.

It erupts at the call of karaoke,
sometimes with no notice.
It pulses to life when your section stumbles.
In realizing, “I recognize this part,” you’re reminded,
And your voice rings out, flaring
bright against the formless dark,
pointing out the path. Your singing,
no better than it has been before, but for
love of song, you break ranks and shove aside
silence. When courage layers a chord,
it discloses the secrets that fuel it,
forcefully vouchsafing that though we fear,
fear can be forced away.

Maybe if we refuse what secrets and silence suggest,
we cultivate courage. Spread your shutters, loose
your lion heart, and approach the subject which distresses you.
Let courage grow.

{npm24: 9}

by Tanita S. Davis

April 9, 2024

10:27 am

3 Comments on {npm24: 9}

NPM, Part and Poetry, What We Do, Who We Are

The Poetry Sisters’ recent pantoum project reminded me of how much I have disliked repeating poetry forms – but the pantoum was fine. However, I recently compared the pantoum to the villanelle. For a rigid topic, a villanelle works SO well – short lines, direct ideas. It’s good for inescapable truths. A pantoum sometimes leaves more wiggle room…

Pivoting back to my examination this month of those “deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being,” that T.S. Eliot mentions, I started thinking about growing up poor. Talk about an inescapable truth. I remember seeing an hourly pay stub of my mother’s when I was in the seventh grade, and being …afraid. I remember murmured, late night conversations that were probably my parents trying to figure out what to do, what not to pay, how to stretch what we had. That they owned their home was their sole saving grace.

My life is so different! I don’t own my house. I don’t own much. Yet, am I better off?

inescapable

Couch cushions never hid cash
We winkled every last cent
Never allowed to buy “trash.”

Squirreling away in a cache,
So youth could not be ‘misspent.’
Couch cushions never hid cash.

Washed and pressed – neat, not slapdash.
“Who do you girls represent?”
No one could call us poor trash.

Concocted “cures” for a rash.
A doctor’s care? Infrequent.
Couch cushions never hid cash.

In school we read of the Crash,
Kids worked in fields for the rent
They even reused their trash.

Treats – cash and candy – I stashed
Where I hid my discontent.
Couch cushions never hid cash,
We were never allowed to buy trash.

How’s that for not “evading,” my truths, Mr. Eliot?

{npm24: 5}

by Tanita S. Davis

April 5, 2024

1:51 pm

2 Comments on {npm24: 5}

Musings on Extemporanea, NPM, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Sleeper Stories, Who We Are

Extended family isn’t something I ever talk about, or write about, I realize. Those… extensions run a long way, and while I don’t love them any less for it, those extensions rarely ever lend themselves to poetry. However, this morning I considered the OTHER extended family I have, by law.

Cousin Mary Lee’s prompt to the Inklings’ poetry group this month was a haiku sequence in which they, using a mentor poem, talked about the topic of poetry without mentioning it by name. I was inspired to approach my own connections thusly, in a roundabout, gingerly fashion, carefully not naming – but letting the outline of a thing define its shape. I used both religious and forensic metaphors, which reflect specifics, and I was amazed by how much I wanted to reveal, when the object is to, in part, hint and obscure. I’ll have to try this again sometime…

A Last Supper

Actions speak louder
Than the space between silence –
Would you pass the salt?

hearts hide in plain sight
seeking, though silent. Something
Sings out its presence

prodigals plead for
reunion, not reckoning
choke on fatted calves

if we measure life
not in time, but in heartbreak
we’d call time of death

crisply chalked outline –
officially declare it
done: on to dessert

Poetry Friday today is hosted by Irene @ Live Your Poem.

{npm24: 4}

by Tanita S. Davis

April 4, 2024

2:53 pm

Inheritance

Quantum
Defined by blood
Explores questions of “sum.”
Does mere birthright change Us to Them?
How come?

{npm24: 3}

by Tanita S. Davis

April 3, 2024

12:18 pm

1 Comment on {npm24: 3}

Mi Familia Loca, Musings on Extemporanea, NPM, Part and Poetry, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

Relationships with parents remind me that their parents had dreams, goals, and expectations which they passed along, pressed into them like clay, and which affected… us, their progeny. From the other side, my mother’s experiences with me must have been somewhat terrifying. I wasn’t the first child – by far – but the one who was so different than the others, it must have been a little off-putting.

Materhood

She told me, at birth
I was like a new gadget:
Boxed, with no handbook.
Just rows of shiny buttons.
Just so many ways to break.