My daughter questions me about her birth. Did you rip or tear? The color of hair? What did daddy do? The memories are vague and conflicting, compromised with age but still the stories are told.
How the milk came hard, filling the tit and your little lips found the nipple. You were a happy baby, puffed cheeks and budgy legs. Not a crier. A perfect gift!
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dVerse prompt on receiving a gift.
When just a boy
his Aunt Eva sat at table
playing cards with her friends
they called themselves The Magpies
and he crawled beneath
among their sequoia legs
while over head the squawking
of the birds
At the internment of this aunt
one lone magpie
flew into the small cemetery
as if to say
I am here
I am here
remember me
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dVerse prompt to write a corvid poem
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Texting with my daughter
In Sunday School I learned about the big red apple of original sin in the garden. How Adam and Eve ate thereof. Caste out. Ashamed. Hid from God. What I didn’t learn— it was really a fig. They ate a few. Clothed themselves in fig leaf. Hid from God. Caste out. Separated from God. How Jesus went to the fig tree for food and finding none, he said, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” Explanation mark. A curse that lifted a curse. And the tree withered and died.
Jesus new Adam
the sin of man forgiven
reunite with God
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NaPoWriMo Day 29 prompt on curses.
I can’t really say I loved him. Love does not come easy for me. He was my first kiss, a little bit of making out, kind words from his thin lips.
I went on to guard the pool, to save a life, my tanned olive skin a beacon for men. Then one day a man walked through the gate and I watched his choppy strokes across the water and married him.
We vowed to love art. To make art out of our lives. We traveled both locally and abroad but that huge painting on the Getty wall stays with me— Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 by James Ensor.
When will He come?
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NaPoWriMo Day 21 prompt— a person forgotten, a job taken, a memorable piece of art, an unanswerable question
Exterior Afternoon
A baby is sleeping in a baby buggy under an old elm. The sun is shining on the buggy.
Voice Over
Jane There is something heartfelt about being born in Iowa.
A small butterfly flies into the buggy and lands on the baby’s nose.
The baby wakes up.
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NaPoWriMo Day 14 prompt to create the first scene of your life.
Grandmother would read to me
The Little Engine That Could
After all those readings
I thought I could
I thought I could
I thought I could
Chugging along
Getting a poem done
I knew I would
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NaPoWriMo prompt to give yourself a positive pep talk
When I was ten, I learned to swim. To hold my breath, submerge, and move underwater. Only the torso, legs and arms of other people were visible. No heads. I never timed these underwater adventures but swam about like some kind of fish. Eyes open but no gills; just my expanded lungs, increasing capacity to stay under longer and longer. I became an orca scouting its prey. My feet, the fluke, pounding surface with each new breath. My mouth spewing water into the sunshine.
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NaPoWriMo Day 8 prompt to write your alter ego.
to Anna
Yes
you were born
with a birthmark—
red heart
below your heart
a longing-mark
of how your mother
wanted love—
to give love
and to take it
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NaPoWriMo Day 2 prompt to choose an obscure and interesting English word. I used “longing-mark”— a newborn babe’s birth mark said to take on the shape of something desired by the mother. This was an actual mark on my first born.
I am in my mother’s room. It was the kitchen. Here she was the boss. The pots and pans were hers, the dishes, all the ingredients that fed the family. She kept us together with her mashed potatoes, green beans and meat loaf.
She nourished us with sweets made each Sunday. She poured the cereal of life into us each morning and sometimes when it was 20 below zero outside, she called from the kitchen, “Jane, French toast is ready.”
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dVerse prompt to write from a first line of a novel. I used Samuel Beckett’s “I am in my mother’s room.”
wordshophop 