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After a long hiatus it’s time to get some poetry out of my head and onto paper. Er, computer screen.
As a journalist, I write all day. As a freelance and foreign correspondent hopeful, I come home and read books by other writers for inspiration and motivation. So I suppose it’s understandable, although not excusable, that I’ve been putting my poetic life on hold.
It’s time to rewater the leaves on those musty poetic laurels. The first poem I published (in Holy Trinity School’s newsletter after a writing contest, at age five) went something like this:
My Brother Zachary
My brother Zachary is happy and gay
He was born on a day in May
And every day when I come home from school
He plays with his toys and he drips and he drools
And I say to him as I walk through the door
Zachary, you’re the baby I adore
Our little "Boopers" is now 20 and a business/kinesiology student at IU in Bloomington. Don’t worry- as he’s grown up, so too have my poems. But as he’s entered the real world with a little trepidation, so too am I a bit nervous to reenter the world of poetry publication.
I’m using Xanga as a way to hold myself accountable through the creative process. I’ve set a goal to post one poem per week for starters. I’ll admit I’ll cheat a bit at first. Most of my poems on file are from my days as a creative writing/German/Russian studies major at DePauw University, alma mater 1999. A very few have been published in Indiana-based literary mags.
I’ve not been as prolific of a poet in my 25 years as I think I can be. But that’s going to change.
I’m convinced there’s a book of poetry in my head somewhere. "First Fruits," I’ll probably call it one day. And if those poems in my head do get aired out for money, I’ll include My Brother Zachary in the dedication. All laurels have roots, no matter how humble.
In the words of ST:TNG’s Captain Picard, "Make it so."
Killing Time (1998) (Published in Winter/Spring 1999 issue of The Flying Island)
Josh's watch broke today.
Radio Shack couldn't revive it.
It read January twelfth
on the fourth of October
and tried to convince us
it was midnight
at well past noon.
Unbelievable. Usually
my musician keeps time.
Now he's killed it.
Our daily rhythm disturbed
and our day turned into night
Josh enticed me home
and recruited me
as a willing accomplice
for his next mission.
We lay together on my wicker porch sofa,
his slow, deep heartbeat the minutehand pulse
and my quick, fluttering heartbeat the secondhand pulse.
I stroked his stubble and hid my fingers in the cool
of his three o'clock shadow. Murderers of the hour,
we were not ashamed.
How I Relate to Virginia Woolf (Unpublished – 1998)
I squirm uncomfortably in the waiting room chair
that looks pretty much like how I feel.
Faded, stiff-legged, with a back that
looks padded
but isn't.
I fidget with the edge of my sweater
and feel its fibers rub off between my sweaty
finger and thumb. Oh, God, I wish someone
would pinch me,
make me hurt.
Make me feel.
I get up and pace in front of the nurses' desk.
Pick up a magazine, put it down.
Pick up a pamphlet, put it down.
Time just doesn't satisfy.
It’s silly, when you think hard
about it. I hate pink flamingos. Why
would I want to hoard them?
And I never spend too much money
and I sure don't see purple elephants.
But I do want to be a star on Broadway
and sometimes I talk 200 miles a minute
or so my mother says.
Other times I think too fast
and cry too much
and those chairs
and that pamphlet
can't help me.
Evasion (Fireflies and Waterfalls) (Unpublished – 1998)
My skinny grass-stained legs never tired back then.
They knew the way around Herminie’s hills
like my grandpa knows his polka.
Fifty-One Sixth Street was my summer shelter
from the exhaust of noisy car engines
and the approaching exhaustion of adolescence.
My cousin and I played Chinese restaurant
with two neighbor girls for customers
and Cheez Balls as the main entrée.
We danced to "Stop in the Name of Love"
under the big oak tree, with the birds watching from their feeders.
We still fancied that
our Cabbage Patch dolls could speak,
until one day she dangled my Carol Ann off the porch
and Carol didn’t cry.
I made her put cold cream on Carol’s face anyway.
Young adulthood wasn’t something I surrendered to at once.
There were too many fireflies to catch
in one summer week’s worth of evenings,
fireflies that popped up here and there
in the dark around Grandpa’s birdhouse
like the bright lights outlining Niagara Falls.
I was there once, too.
Eden (Unpublished – 2003)
My Garden of Eden
grew crabapple trees I couldn’t reach
and shaded my sun-smell blanket
In my Garden of Eden
four people, not two
raked leaves, didn’t wear them
wore swimsuits, not our birthday ones
Death was when cousins left
Hope was the last saliva-smear of icing
on an Oreo half that consoled me
God was Daddy mowing in his football jersey
and Heaven was Star Wars on the swing set
Then sadness slithered in like a serpent
slashed through my sunbonnet
sacked me with its curse to carry
and nothing was simple anymore
My woman-grown heart puckers
With the sour-sweet burst of life outside the garden
My Eve wears two faces
The endless day and the darkest night.
As God’s grown-up child
I still call out for Daddy
And I hope my someday Heaven
will be like the Eden I lost
kara n. patterson | 