Tightness

Sharing with The Sunday Muse

Dark runs with the imps, the river, and the ions

all together in the fall, over and over and down;

space expands. It was meant to be a hole

but there are crumbs in the empty.

Dark swerves from the backsplash of atoms

combining behind, above, right through--

every explosion reminds it of the light,

the tightness, then the shove away.

tl;dr: taking an extended break & good luck in the new year :)

Well. The yard is looking much less dead than I expected. Dandelions are super hearty, at least for freakish Texas weather. However, there are still several pots that didn't make it or need refurbishing and, as I look around the office, I feel the same way about so many of my projects from the last several years. They've been potted (in notebooks & on the computer) but, for (possibly freakish) reasons, they've failed to thrive. Maybe I've gone out and gotten too many adorable starts that are now leggy or crispy or sort of staring listlessly out a window wondering what happened.  Maybe that's just me. Only round instead of leggy.

Not unlike my backyard--or my crazy provisional Kindle list (reading the first few chapters of a random lot of books should count for something)--my writing has become starts, random notes, and what happened earlier in the day when _[insert noun here]___  pissed me off. Projects aren't thriving and neither am I. I'm not even sure what the question is--is it how to finish? Whether to finish? What new direction to pursue? After the storm, I know that the plants need a little extra care. Maybe then it'll be time for the stories.

Best wishes for your own projects!

-- Chrissa

Slide

 

Sunday Muse #148

It was empty; wood floors varnish slick

You could turn up the volume 

Slide across the surface like a video

Walls caught you

Limbs caught you

Now--it's empty again, walls

Whiter where the sunlight 

Slides across their face like a video

Chiaroscuro once,

Chiaroscuro twice

Lay the memories out, wrap them

Like the final clinch

Before the click as the lights come up

So. This past week has been--for us--less bad than for others. However. Fine has a finite tensile strength and the fraying has begun. I may take a break for a few weeks and see if things get better. 

I hope you have an excellent week and the words run fizzy as champagne. Cheers and good wishes!

-- Chrissa

One of the Wonders

 

A candle and a thin sliver of slate

through which I can see the sky like a herd of wild horses

all blue backs and tangled manes of white, pink, champagne

behind hills of rock too thick to dream through.

I have blown chalk upon the slate and let it lie

for centuries or tuns or aeons...

Until you came along with your candle,

setting it behind the thin sliver of stone,

already imagining the earth as a great, hollow thing,

a giant now filled with you and everyone else.

Imagine that giant with two great candles

set behind the thin stone that flaked

from the bones of the sky, which was a giant

so large, 

the earth couldn't imagine how small

it was--

X-raying giants with only candles and art. 

Hello and welcome to another poetry blog inspired by the lovely Carrie at The Sunday Muse. We are prepping for what my phone insists is a Winter Storm heading our way, which has already consisted of bringing several pots in and lining them up on the kitchen table:

Which, yes, I know there are weeds among the plants and most of the pots haven't been prepared for spring but that's okay. Also, there's an onion that James handed me a few days ago with question "It's sprouting, do you want to plant it?" Sure, fine, at some point. Meanwhile, welcome to the table garden. Honestly, I've wanted a solarium for years because I hate schlepping water in the heat of the summer (when everything develops a suspicious wilt around 11 am--there is NO SHADE in this neighborhood) and I'm not complaining about a table full of plants. 

And, not to be overshadowed by a mere bagatelle of ice and snow (SNOW!!!! I am stupidly excited for the possibility of it), it's also Valentine's Day this Sunday:

Hope your week is warm in all the important ways and your muse is, like Tom Bodett, keeping the light on for you. 

-- Chrissa 

WordCrafters Wednesday Prompt 2/10/2021

 "It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not." -- Tolkien

Here I am on the precipice.
Already a grey sky thickens winterward
But this is already winter, of a sort.
There is a year gone to ground 
A month ago, burrowing into the past
From which we will find treasures--and dragons--
and great hills of swallowed fire while the trees
put a ring around 2020.
What will that look like?

I add a loop on the line
Pink, no sparkles, like flat sunset
rather than a champagne vision, 
fizzing on a table in an empty restaurant
where we cannot despair
because, of course, there
we cannot be.

I believe that this is another 
stillborn story. I am playing in this journal
at making art--really, I am doing that thing
I wanted to do in high school, 
keeping a diary of the empty days
to remind myself that blogs
and houses and interests and fears
have a lifespan. 

I add a flat link, one letter
to another. A word breaks at the margin;
frangible English or magical
sawing itself 
between meaning and space.
Nearly, but not quite, an end.

Magnificent in the Yard

 Amazing image, Susie! Posting with The Sunday Muse and with Poets and Storytellers this week. 

My neighbor's phone bleats a need for attention.

The wrens have fled; they flew when I stepped out

To check the roses for cardinals.

I pause on the concrete then stab my soles

In the grass just off the porch. There is a single

Bluebird on the fence by the a/c.

It is the suburbs, I murmur. We see a moon

Triangulated by unnecessary chimneys, rooflines,

Fences that rot with each summer.

Still, they sing. Over the gasping shriek of brakes

As the deliveries come. I couldn't have seeds without

packages and the UPS person.

We are magnificent in the yard. A deep grass

Pool that washes weedy at the feet of the fenceposts.

We wade in chlorophyll, pollen.

The phone bleats itself exhausted. I know

That restless nap, the brain mapping a sheer panic

Over imagined emergencies.

That layer, this clear plastic panic, chips

When I am still enough for the birds to return,

Cautious, to the crumbled edges.

Singing, they wear the plastic away.

Good reading moment to you! It's midday here, cool enough for the door to be open but warm enough for shorts to still be de rigueur for in the house. I've been watching entirely too much costuming YoutTube (I have a weakness for tulle that I can't indulge IRL--I would essentially look like Queen of the Spiders with dogs variously hooked to my skirts...although Merlin probably wouldn't mind finding himself snuggled into flouncery...and my brain is now telling me that what I need is a giant skirt full of dog pockets for floofs) A N Y W A Y, this week's image felt like a fairy tale but I am not feeling very much like one, so the poem sort of went in its own weird direction. There's a battle between aesthetics and poetics that is currently being won by a desire for chip & dip. 

Sorry, my brain is still in a draft that I'm reworking. I'm in the process of taking a draft of a story that when first written I took very seriously. As you can probably tell by the stuff and nonsense above, I've decided to take the sense out and substitute interdimensional spiders who are running a subspace station (like a subway, but less practical) beneath a high school. Not YA. Just Why?

And now, back to our regularly scheduled Chip & Dip.

-- Chrissa

SteamPower!

 

They still tell the story, there in the upper lobby
Lurlene and her board and the jungle and the dragon
Which could have been a tiger or a raptor or an ape.
The only thing we’re sure about’s Lurlene.
 
She said her adventure ticket had been punched
At fifty but her trip’d been delayed—by what
She never mentioned. She was tight, that dame.
We’re sure her only hobby was to clean.
 
On that evening, she set up the board—but—
Brought no clothes to iron, not a pant or shirt,
She wore her favorite dress and clambered up…
And set the heavy, newish iron to steam.
 
The wallpaper was bamboo when the mist
Rose hot and the creaking ironing board
Could have been a birdcall—they say she yelled
And fell, but there was no body to be seen.
 

We’ll never know the truth—that lobby
Was redone. The paper peeled, the carpet
Bore a singe and everyone just went to dinner.
We ate well instead of speaking.

But when the sharp-finned dinge begins to creep…
Someone—always joking—calls for Lady Steam.
Our brave , intrepid, ever-fighting Queen.
No moldy dragon ever got Lurlene!

With thanks to anyone who ever mopped a floor, cleaned a table before I sat down to eat, washed a dish or an outfit last minute or Lysol'd a doorknob because one of us had the flu--these are acts for which I'm grateful. Also--this may have been inspired by a family member's joy at receiving the Lysol they ordered from Amazon. Small victories.

--chrissa

Sometimes A Broken Notebook

 

And now, February. January was interesting, wasn't it? 

February. Which means--changing the bulletin board over the writing desk. Thinking about what kinds of goals I have for this month. Taking down the Christmas lights. Continuing to avoid leaving the house. Finishing a book. My brain is no longer able to absorb written media. I've started several books (library, books on the shelves, Christmas presents) and put them in neat piles in various places. I read a few pages, forget what I've read, and pick up something else. This carries over into the writing. I'm filling up notebooks, but they resemble journals with a smattering of plotting.  Also, dog hair, dog doodles, and photos of things that "relate to the story." Sort of a cheating, writer-adjacent scrapbooking. And so, February.

I decided that the goal this month is just to blow off it all off. To pick up an old story that I don't really plan on finishing & no longer fits in with the how-did-things-blow-up-like-this plotlines I've been working on and just finish that story. Or some zombie draft of it. To read, if it's all I can manage, poems and short stories and a ton more first three chapters. To re-read, if necessary. To read more middle grade, maybe. (The reading slump bothers me more than the writing, honestly. When I just stare at pages and then flip over to FB because I'm sure there's a fuse lit somewhere...it's not good.) 

So--the Frog Prince Project. Bottom of the drawer, back of the desk, something to play with until my brain comes back. :) 

Keeper of Drafts,

Prince of Frogs. 

-- chrissa