Voodoo

I dunno how I feel about this one. I was feeling the pine trees, but I also wanted to write something for the topic "voodoo," which I've written into a lot of poems, but which I haven't had as the main sort of "theme."

Comments appreciated!

"Totems and Godhood"

i. Confronting giants.

I take the pine tree as my totem,
learn to love the nakedness of its nether-regions
and its northerly fibers stretched and waiting
for the weft to its warp.

Girlhood is still a part of me as the
learning what I am. In the end,
I haven't climbed a tree in a long time;
I am small, and scared, and ringed round with walls,
and I beg the moon to teach me
to use my pine trees as a ladder.

ii. Young love.

You, sir—
you are pine chips, and I carry you
like a fetish in my mind.

You are a vampiric sweetness
to suck the breath from my body:
unknowing, the feeling of yearning;
I am fibrous—celery stalk,
pale and clutching my thread self together.

iii. Transmogrification.

Watch as I become a giraffe,
stretch until my bones
will not bend to let me drink.

With age I become a god,
brittle-boned and cackling; with age
the osteoporosis will leech my fibers dry
and my pine sap blood will freeze in my chest
to keep me warm in winter.

My fingers—blue-green and spindly,
and though never-married my insides
are ringed-round with bands.
And I'll settle down with a cuppa,
tinged with the whisky my grandmother loved so much.

iv. The autumn comes to lead me home.

With no god to forgive me my ghosts,
I sink down into November brown,
and let the wood-rot take my roots. 

Divination

Wow, I just realized I was a LITTLE late on posting this one. It was written for a lit-mag theme of "Tabula Rasa," and received recognition on the art site I belong to! :) I'll probably update when I hear back on whether this has been accepted to the journal or not.

I'm not sure the piece is evocative enough or flows well. All comments most welcome!

"I Have No Names of All My Teacup Babes"

I feel always like I am starting over.

As a magpie I gather trinkets under my pillow,
bay leaves and bags of herbs to bring the next lover to me,
to call the next dream-face forward—a picture
painted in the tea leaves.

But truth be told the start-again
is never clean, is never gentle,
and the sweat of all that labour
is a fire on my skin, telling me
I will never resist its wind-cry.

The moon comes when I call, to help me;
midwife, she is, and she carries into being my new selves
like the babes they are, teaches them to
fill long footsteps like hers.

Truth be told, I tire of the destiny
I was given once—I am a teacup,
and I cling close to my china womb,
to my cup tipped over, upset
by careless elbows.

I imagine Mother Moon climbing her way back to me
on the backs of pine trees, sweeping across the Appalachians.

South by Southwest

For this topic, I couldn't help thinking of the wind, somehow. The wind and the Grand Canyon.

Written for a Halloween contest! I'd love any and all comments ;)

"A Kiss for a Ghost, Not Given"

I remember the bar in Ocracoke,
the chill that came like a wind from the Southwest
as he told me where he was from.

There was a moment when he looked me in the eye
and I could see my walk
one morning along the southern edge of the Canyon,
my hurried scramble from the oracle-birds
that had guided my steps

—and a moment of realization in the car
when I had rejected him, and, heading for the highway,
found my eyes searching the rearview mirror,
hoping not to meet his gaze.

Flightless Bird, American Mouth

I challenged myself for this piece by following a prompt that asked me to compose a poem backwards. This poem was quite a challenge. Ultimately the way I did it was write a poem, then reconstruct it roughly backwards (though I've obviously taken some license with the phrasing so that it makes SOME sense when read this way).

I'd REALLY love some critique on the piece:
1) Title - I've tried to come up with a title that signals to the reader that the chronology of the piece is backwards, but I'm not sure I've managed it. All advice to this effect would be IMMENSELY helpful.
2) How much sense does the piece make as it is? Do you like it as is, or does it still feel like it should take place in the other direction?
3) Punctuation: Do you like it? Does it work?

"End to Beginning, Lived Life"

Christ.)

to the dying of the light
and to Hades to pay my respects
my solemn flightless way
make I ,Ophelia and Virginia Woolf

.the sea to the lifeblood
mountain stream ,followed I the path
that burnt had been ,cold and clean

,to Georgia ,lonely and looking
at my own wingless bird-back
,bore I myself as a pilgrim

.(shuffle I may my Merlin feet
,but never still will I be 

Ice

From fire to ice. Huh.

Short piece this time. Not something I REALLY like, but it's something I needed to get out.

"Winter-Heart"

 Still, I can again feel the growling winter
     dawn over my thawed insides,
     can sense the sweep of the Arctic
     and the crystals that will build me,
once more, into who I was.

It has been a long summer,
     but my heart is a season
     and you, my dear, are gilded
     and brown.

I only hope you say the words before I do.

Bonfire

GAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I'M STILL NOT HAPPY WITH THIS! PLEASE LEAVE CRITIQUE!

CRITQUE IT! CRITIQUE IT INTO THE GROUND!

The flow of this thing is just driving me nuts. I feel like gnawing my own fingers off in frustration.

I wrote this for a contest with the prompt, "color": "The theme is "Color". You can choose to write about one color, or many. You can describe a situation, person, object, scene - anything, but describe it in color(s). How it looks...makes you feel."

 I decided to approach the prompt sort of like a painting. I suppose another title for this piece might be "A Study in Brown [and orange]". I'm worried I didn't quite address the prompt, though. Thoughts?

As usual, all comments appreciated. Enjoy!

"Hunger"

Fire in the wild isn't the color you think it is.

It's all amber and umber and
terra cotta, one great roaring tower of orange
like the Wrath of God in a chestnut tree.

I can't go back again to Devil's Hollow—
just like so many wolves he will wait,
until I am ready, blazing burnt sienna and shining,
all teeth.

But I'm not ready to give up the ghost yet,
I'm still waiting for an excuse
to travel the galaxy empty-handed.
I want to see those bronze nebulas
gleaming like forest fires.

Oh, lover—I have watched you swim volcanic craters,
have seen your flaming eyes amidst the snow drifts
all brown with dirt. Dragon, mine, you bring
the mists in the morning, set the roads to smoking
after the evening rains, and you came to me as
a henna dawn that time when I
opened my sleepy eyes.

But this really isn't about you, you know.

I am always hungry and like a forest fire
I am eating the cedar crowns brown and bare
just like me, and one day I will call you a fool

And then the sepia, crackling gods will return
from the ends of a caramel sky and race roaring
to meet the great wolf and his brother serpent
and I will go down to die in the heroes' hall,
and become russet, stinking, crow-picked
on the exhausted battlefields.

And then: my hunger at last will die ash-like
and I will not be left to gnaw on the whitewash bones
of the post-apocalyptic paradise, and I will leave you like a widow
tanned and sunburnt and empty of me, hungry on your own.

Barefoot

UGH, Sonnet, I HATE YOU. I'm so terrible at fixed-form poetry, but a poetry group I belong to convinced me <a ref="http://my.deviantart.com/messages/#/d59gy0a">it was time to have another go at a sonnet</a>, so here I am.

I think generally I did pretty well. Except for all the places I didn't....SONNETS ARE HARD. Gah, for me just getting rhyming and iambic pentameter was hard. RAWRAAWRAWR

Anyway...enjoy?

"Hold, Youth"

You are verging on knife edges, wild youth:
The pricking of the blade in your bare steps
Marks trees of paper cuts, spells out the truth
that like lime juice keeps the wounds fresh -

You're not yet the person you'll want to be,
And that boy 'cross the room for whom you long,
Wild youth, will swallow you down like sweet tea;
You must feel your bones curled 'round, and all wrong.

Tightrope walker, do not let yourself slide -
Sense the vice-fear like spikes beneath your skin;
Use them well, cliff-walker, toughen your hide,
cling still to the walls, hide even from winds.

Hold - hold, for a boy who shall not, Grendel-
like, crush you warm and wet, small and spindle'd.