We Are The Pocketwatches

Lemons are growing where the bunnies have been

In the black hole corner of the yard where the dragons crept

Through the fence, then around the cypress trunk,

Then dug the pool – now slumbering beneath it, waiting for the days

Inscribed on the plaster to imprint themselves into the dirt.

There are treasures with ideograms rising sharp

From the undersurfaces, a bowl of moments thick as years

The dragons lick them, dream in flavors of language

While here, the clock spins down, skips seconds

Snags a string in the orchestra’s viola section, a sick twist of time

Dizzy on the tuning.

Sour and then salty and then there’s the oil, the polishing

Cleaning the days from her screens, dusting the seconds from their fingers

All of it falling into the sun, pouring into the root vats below—

Where the rabbits might have gone, quick as myth under the tongue

Once upon a platter, once upon a picnic basket, once upon

An afternoon, plastic tablecloths shredding around the tape

Wind from the shore falling exhausted upon the lowlands onto

Slumbering dragons underneath the buffet table

Constantly smoking the treasure, constantly devouring

Their cotton-tailed dreams.

Sharing with The Sunday Muse, who kindly provided the image...this probably should have made me think of the upcoming year...but 2020 is low-key terrifying me and I'd rather think about lemon trees and rabbits and swimming pools and whether or not it's too damp to go to the park (no, but I've left it till too late in the afternoon) and iced tea...because it's Texas and the cool front won't be here until tomorrow and if I can just hold all of this in my head (along with the adventure story I was brainstorming earlier) those dragons might stay sleeping. At least for a little while. 

-- Chrissa

Christmas Day 2019

There are myths about cars that are haunted
By the bullets and cruelty within;
This rusted car is full of spirit
It flashes wings like the fog, the clouds
Wide as the highway sky.

This morning it sits up on planking
                     In the emptiness of a side yard
And what you can't see in the bright winter sun
Are the sunflower seeds below.

This car remembers how different pain and birth
Anneal
Next summer you'll find every window
Full of yellow and birds
Singing to the baby who's now
Eighty years down the road.

It's Christmas where snow isn't falling
Where sunlight is flooding the plains
Families are remembering their stories
In the wake of the holiday.

Once Upon a Horse

There is winter where the snow is sifted thought

Caught in the instant of forgetting, falling

There is winter where ringing reindeer run

In a myth of jolly light beginning

And there is now, our winter woven between

Running, remembering, and going

I will tell you of the fields, the way they spring,

The way they taste.

You will tell me of the sky, of the pine trees

How they birth shade.

We will tell of the seasons in their roundelay

Dreaming in this chilly glade

Winter is for stories.

And here is an excerpt from this year's Christmas ghost story:

There's a court at the end of the street with all the Christmas lights, a court that was never built out. No houses, no signs of life. No street lights. I don't know what they use it for during the rest of the year, but it allows people looking at Christmas lights to turn around, easy.

It's just dark. And I'm sure there's water just off that downslope. Houston's a swamp and we're not far enough out of the city to be out of the slough. So that's where Remy sees the rabbit. He yells out "Giant rabbit!" as we're turning but I don't see it. He's driving, so he slows down. I get antsy in this area, all the big houses...and we don't know anyone. I tell him to keep driving.

He does. The first time. But we get turned around. There's an inflated snowman and and an inflated Death Star and we laugh about ice and revenge and Remy makes a turn and then--there they are again. We have to make the same circuit. Then we're back in the dark and the rabbit is there again.

This time Remy stops the car. Insists on the rabbit, and on how big it is. How fast it moves.

He shifts the car into park, reaches across and opens my door, which is nearest the curb. He asks me to see if I can get a shot of the giant rabbit with my phone. Maybe it'll hop back now that the car's off. He rolls his eyes when I don't immediately climb out of the car. It would make a good picture, he insists. Like that time we took pictures of the rabbits in the fields by the airport, that one summer we went to a local scifi convention. Remy is convinced that it must be a tame rabbit, probably gets fed by "all the kids in the neighborhood." He imagines that they probably have tea parties in this court in the summer. I assume he associates tea parties with the balconies and columns we've just seen festooned with Christmas lights and inflatables.

I want to get back in the car. It's not a rabbit holiday and it's dark. Dark and chill and, with the car stopped, I can smell the nearby creek. I can also see a slight trail. No rabbit, but I wonder, with all the floods and what not...why a trail?

And that's it for now. Will she follow the trail? What's with the giant vanishing rabbit? Exactly what kind of Instagram story is this going to be? The new year may bring resolution! (wait...was that a joke?)

Hope this finds you at the beginning of a marvelous holiday and that good things are resting on your doorstep, waiting to come in and curl up. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and see you in the new year!!

-- Chrissa

Angels

I've been chasing angels
Whirling, crashing angels
Flying sharp across the ground

I've been chasing angels
Scraping through the grass
Come out, come out, they call

The angels crinkle
Underneath my claws
Still chasing, still flying

And I leap
And I pounce
And I bite

Such a serious looking kitten. :) Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets United. The latter half of this week has found me more or less flat on my back for long stretches as I try to recover from a little bit of impatience earlier in the week (lesson learned--just wait for help, don't lift in annoyance), so this will be short. 

Me, recovering from my own stupidity

Hope your week will be creative and festive! :)

--Chrissa

Pipes

Even here, where memory itself is iced with dust,
Frosted with webs; even here, I am thankful for the pipes
Clean water from wherever it may have run
Underground, creeping and pressing through stone
To fall out here, surprised.
It will be exhausted when it's touched dishes,
Counters, cabinets and this floor
We will both tend toward the cooler tile
Stone enough, I guess.
If the last thing I will be grateful for,
Here, is water...
Filling the baths and the spigots,
The hoses and the plastic pools,
The sprinklers and the showers,
Then I will be clean
And I will be
Thankful

Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse...maybe in honor of the holiday or in honor of no longer having water dripping like madness from the ceiling or just because. Hope this week finds everyone recharged and creative as the new year slips up, party frock ready. :) 

-- Chrissa

Questions

"After the Rain" by Cyril Rolando

What I want to ask is why my jasmine has turned brown
Where the green
Blooming
Reaching became sallow

What I want to ask is why my ideas are infestations
Why what if
Marred,
De-sanctified,
Then stunted these fairy hills and trees

What I want to ask
Is why should I
Take your word
For any of it?

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets United. So...this week finds me a little burnt out. The NaNo novel was drafted--but I find myself souring on it, feeling guilty about that, and then remembering that this is why I seldom finish NaNo anymore. How many unfinished novels will safely fit under one bed?

-- Chrissa

It's Just a Short Walk to the Post

She knows things that I should know--she's generous
There's an offer; she can feel my fear beneath her arms
While she calms horse and passenger at once.
Calls the motion, tells me to breathe.

But there are things I don't want to know.

I prefer the image to the motion; prefer to live
In the kind of harness that stables never keep polished
A dream that broke some years ago
That I've taped carefully together.

There are things that I don't want to know.

Greetings and good wishes, fellow poets/poetry readers. So...hoofed animals and my fear thereof. Let's call it the irrationality of the contagiously anxious. I'm generally happy to see cows, horses, donkeys, deer as I'm driving by, preferably well away from the road. Once we're in close proximity, I'm convinced a {{{Stampede of Epic Proportions}}} is about to begin. Probably with me. 

-- Chrissa (currently not stampeding)

P.S. -- NaNo updates next Sunday, after the Festival of  Lights. On a totally unrelated note: Is the rider a wizard? Is she contemplating the creeping developments she can hear beyond the edge of the frame?  Also, sharing with The Sunday Muse and with Poets United, both of which are excellent places to find more poetry and stories and to see what other writers have discovered in the past week. Come, share. Poetry stampede!!!!!!

Conjure Path

Photography by Sarolta Ban

View website HERE

A master's garbled voice uprooting the thinner stumps
Music swells like acorns in the crackle of the leaves
Let the deer be silent as the old rebirth squeals.

Beneath the waxy spirals we have found the conjure path
Slip up, down, contrary; wake the boars by the nose
Or settle anxious hooves upon the softer grass.

You can't see the land or the slope spun underneath.

Thanks to Carrie & The Sunday Muse for the wonderful prompt for this week's poem which I am also linking to Poets United Pantry of Poetry and Prose #3.  And it's Sunday, so it's time to take stock of the previous week's writing. I am on track for my NaNoWriMo project and yet...completely frustrated. Although I enjoy the community of writers that NaNo brings, I'm not competing for a word count or intending upon something that is immediately consumed at the end of the month. This story is something that has to grow steadily, as makes sense for my longer writing in general. As a result, I'm finding the emphasis on word count and on working faster than I normally do is getting under my skin. This is far from a bad thing--it lets me know that my writing has changed over the years as I've started a more consistent practice. While I'm always up for a small group of friends meeting to reinforce each other's productivity, I'm not social enough for large gatherings and competition over extreme word count. Looking forward to seeing where I am toward the end of November--will there be a beginning, middle, and end to rework?

-- Chrissa

Nothing Through Me

 Photography by Oladios

"I can't see the end of me."

Photo source

Fear is a sight, the sight--the one that scans horizons
Where the monsters lurk in the brightest depths of day's end
Where I will sail, where I am going, where I fade
On that line where the day cascades so deep you see the rays
Flatten and melt, render the water unswimmable,
Thin.

I've been sitting on this edge until I can't feel myself!

Fear is a sight, the one you catch of yourself, gone
Down, into the pool of ended days from a cotton bedspread
Legs hanging over the sides as if into that water
Feeling the cataract of all that light, splaying out heavy,
Shaving me away, rays gaping wide, cloaking,
Bent.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse. Also, using this space to vent--NaNo didn't start all that well for me. My characters and I don't get along and they're not all that confident that I am capable of handling their story. And unlike most of my other drafts, this feels uncomfortably close to Not My Story To Tell. Which is totally weird, because I would have told you before I started that it wasn't based on anything in particular save for some oddball YouTube obsessions of mine. Seriously, someone needs to convince me that dead malls aren't something you need hours of content about. Or, someone in the Houston area needs to point me in the direction of a group of the nearest local enthusiasts. Anyway, I'm also trying to read The Library of the Unwritten to guilt myself into stop creating yet more unfinished manuscripts. And if writing and reading aren't provoking, there's always the need to  keep Arthur from chewing all Merlin's tail ruff off.  Not that he's the type of dog to do that...see totally innocent face, at right. That dog takes a better author photo than I ever will. :)  

On the very, very plus side, cool weather has finally arrived in our part of Texas! Open windows! Candles! 

As you can tell, I'm a little scattered this morning. Hope this is a beginning to a lovely week of writing for you! 

-- Chrissa

Some Other Light

I almost get the picture but my brain and thumb
Are out of synch, one dreaming, the other balancing stuff.
It's an old dream in a new-ish city, oil leaking skylights
Across the entire dome of tomorrow until we see
The universe and the blue sky in the same puddle;
Until the flight that carries and the flight that punctures
Are the same thing, explosions and ribbons
Ripping and lacing the sky open and whole simultaneously.
We are dreaming in gloves and calipers, only a little
Star stuff and gunpowder before the colors rend
Our sight from darkness and give us light.
Daydreaming in the city already smothered
By creeks and bayous and rivers dreaming of salt depths,
Of the deep darkness where islands are born,
Some other current, some other light
One facing the heart, one facing the heights.

Sharing today with Poets United for Poetry Pantry #498 (sorry it's not a Halloween poem!) and with The Sunday Muse for Sunday Muse #79. 

NaNoWriMo is coming up and I'm going to be going for the 50K (words, that is) this November, so I might be erratic in my poetry. While November looms before me, I'm thinking of a writing class I recently attended and how I want to approach the project this time. There is a piece that's gnawing at me, asking me whether the other pieces are dodges for the things I could say but don't. Someone claimed today that responsibility was restricted to what you do...you can't be responsible for something global (like pop culture) or for sins committed in the past...but I'm feeling like writing has become...something that shows more blindness than insight for me. And so, perhaps, this November, I'm going to pick a project I don't like and remember what it means to write about the things that bite. Or...maybe not. See you on the other side of November, when I know what I've written. 

-- Chrissa

Where is My Answer?

There should have been a beginning:
There never is, of course
There is edge of darkness, sight of the ceiling, settling of the spine
Before the motor catches, deep like a breath.
I've never believed in anything like this,
This road that narrows and drops, its skinned edges,
Pinched asphalt leading to places
You're going to have to leave--sooner,
Faster.

There should have been a moral;
There can't be acidic crystals below
Titrated sharply from all the mistakes, flickering live cave paintings
Because it ends abruptly, interrupted
As if it isn't a story and I'm not warning
Myself that there are turns ahead on this
Path.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets United. I've been putting notes on paper for November's NaNoWriMo draft and thinking about places that become more and more placeless and that restless undertone of "time to move, time to move." Love the way the picture chimes with the idea of movement without any of the mundane needs of going. Where would we migrate if our dreams were geese and we had to chase our flocks? 

-- Chrissa

My Whole Body

My whole body becomes chest and throat; October raises me, like a forest sliced and glued and soundboarded, to his neck. He will bring the wind, the last heat, and the sudden fall of night. Until this concert, I had always imagined my ghosts drifting in robes. I am varnished with a formula only necromancers and beetles know. Everyone says the instruments are electric now; we are cyborgs so that you won’t fear when the night breaks into inhuman traffic; we are all electric shifts, spots of shadow and cold. Or that is October. In his tuxedo and with those dark shoes polished so that I am looking at the limelight below...or a streetlight, beyond which the stars are blank and silent.

My whole body is chest and throat—you think he plays a special effect. A game of wires and electronics. A game of hunting for the soul in the buzz of a human house, humming to itself and letting its doors drift open. Like the game we play listening to the static of the stars, already turned between channels. Too much light pollution on the stage to see them in the midnight leather, they are only pieces of all of us, in the dust.

My whole body has become chest and throat and it is my voice that threads your nerves, plucks your stomach, and seems, almost, to form words in the goosebumps trailing beneath your formal attire. I sing in muscle. I linger in the drift of honey-crusted pine sap scraping across strings you’ll never quite see. I sing in the taste of the forest October remembers like an old score, long settled.

My whole body has become chest and throat. A song moans in the rafters.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and with Poets United, provided this passes their threshold for prose. :) I'm glad that October is here and I'm hoping that the rumors of a cool front next week will prove true.

-- Chrissa

We Forget So Much

My grandparents tell me about the scientists, late at night
When the heat sighs under the door
About how the world believed that thinking and caring
Could be given over to others
But that world drowned and we play on the floor
Of the ocean that was
All of us, while the adults polish the last bright dish
Filling with hope from somewhere
Else.

The scientists knew about water, about oceans, fish
But none of that belongs to us
It was paid for to be hidden, to be resold to us
By the hope whispered
Into the dish we keep clean...as if there were gods
Say my grandparents

My parents say that we need to be careful, to walk
The sands with them, slowly
That the water will come when the disk is perfectly cleaned
Like a sun rolling down to us
It will shine a path directly through our eyes and wrists.
Height won't let them forget, nor will they abandon us
To the myth of scientists.

For me, poetry isn't a full conversation. It's the spark that will land upon what tinder exists in the reader. So what this isn't is a full and careful philosophical proposition that a certain thing is good or bad and what we should therefor do. Maybe it's something that worries me.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets United.

-- Chrissa

Magic is Malleable

Mercer, Roadside 9/23/2019

Above, tiny, white-bellied planes sail silent
Across the evaporating crust of the moon
Into clouds that might be all that remains of her light
Steaming above us, day-blown

Here at the edge of the over-baked asphalt
In diamond paint splotched like an iceberg
Melted into plastic and crumbled into the weeds
She winks at me, and dreams

It was a good, cool morning and the small toad who was waiting by the table where I ended up this morning stayed nearby as the tree specialists cut down a few branches and then a few trunks not far away, inside the thin puddle of woodland that grows between the parking lot and the picnic area. There were an inchworm, minuscule ants, and a tiny jumping spider, all small as if we're starting over from scratch after the rains of last week.

No deer today, only bunnies and one squirrel and the sense that the rain was lurking in the puddles and waiting to breathe wyrms to coil among the pines once one's back was turned. It's the end of summer by the calendar and the rains are coming to wash away the dust and to bring the green to the backs of the trunks, like a rising crest. It's a delicate time of year, like a mushroom cap that's perfectly frilled and susceptible to the least drop of water from the branches above. Will the heat leave a hardy growth of story behind or will the fall knock it back to the ground? 

Too soon to tell, really. 

-- Chrissa 

The Apple Tree

There's still a house there, and before the house
There was that apple tree
And it's dusty and full and the fruit's growing old
But its still, probably, sweet

And that apple tree blooms and then sets it fruit
And we drive through, eyes on the street
And the families keep changing but not just there
But we think we still see their sheets

I don't know where that first garden grew
Not right down my street
But abandoned gardens and houses left behind
Are all I know of Eden

I'm older now and this is the yard
But where is the green?
All I've got left are the souvenirs, relics
Of the garden we've seen.

The apple tree brings the fruit to the scheme
And the snakes are brought by the weeds
I'll bring the guileless, wisdomless teeth
And rumors can flame through the screens

Hope y'all are having a good week! We had a surprise...hurricane? Tropical storm? last week, which really doesn't seem like it should be a thing but is, apparently. We were fortunate to just receive the rain and none of the flooding on my street while the it felt like the city was drowning once again. Which, I suppose, when we were able to get out and run around again, gave me fresh eyes, checking to see where water lingered and what made it through, checking the creek obsessively and worrying about our local library, and noticing an apple tree full of fruit in an abandoned (or possibly just temporarily deserted) yard. And then the image above. And there's a story there more than a poem...there's a power who's just pulled a relic from a flood and the land is drying all around but the music isn't playing and the birds aren't flying and there's just the sun and the smell of wet sinking down around the foundations and the way you think you remember something but it just doesn't break through the present haze. Or maybe that's just me.

-- Chrissa

Unawake

Courtesy of The Sunday Muse prompt

The best parts are the dark, gentle rewrites
Faces spun up to reassure you that old friends remember,
& old lovers are just a summer's coursework away...
Too obvious a mix of living and studying, but messier
Your brother's old carpet and legion of toys
Cityscaping a dim-lit dorm room beneath
Cerenkov string lights, blue underlid fluorescents
Setting your books among them, in the darkness, unread
Before you head back to the unlit auditorium
To be told by shadows the lecture was bad
But this row of unexpected friends will keep you
And your old boss apologizes in the form of a TA
Forgiving you for not doing the reading
Promise seeps back, like water in dry grass
Rising dark, cool on your toes and unreflecting

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets United for the Sunday verse round--poetry is an excellent way to start the week. I started this week with a round of writing in the arboretum, as the mornings are cooling nicely and I'm not crisping around the edges by 9 am. There were deer this morning on the drive in but none, thankfully, near the benches. Deer are the spirit animals of anxiety & I tend to imagine them creeping through the underbrush (because squirrels and birds sound fifty times their size when you can't see them). And because maybe I've watched too many bad 70's movies in which nature is definitely out to get you. And because of that one time I didn't see a tiny herd before it ran in front of me on the opposite side of the park. Anyway. Totes not obsessed with both seeing and avoiding deer. That would just be weird. :) 

Hope you have a good week!
-- Chrissa

New Minutes

Three dark-haired boys--wavy, curly, skull-cap straight
Walk out into the bare crosswalk;
Five in the afternoon, a slant of shadeless light;
These thick, flat streets are too new for trees.
That building's stone cladding is dappled by car shadow
And the second story--where the plastic tooth dressed as Santa
Grins down upon this river I'm driving through
Casts its form, tidily, to the back.

Sharing with The Sunday Muse for the Wednesday prompt "boketto." While the definition provided (gazing at the distant landscape with an empty mind) seems to refer to contemplation in nature, I find that this sense of openness also occurs when I'm in the car, particularly when it's a longer drive or we're heading somewhere along a new pathway. The piece above was prompted by my choosing an inefficient route on the way to pick up my husband, shortly after realizing I would be late. Traffic and road repairs/widening have picked up around us, lately, and earlier that day I'd found myself startled to be diverted onto a new road that swept up, bypassing the familiar street-level route.

Even if it is the car-infested landscape of an exurb growing with all the charm of a buckling lava flow...this is still my landscape. 

-- Chrissa

But You Misread My Meaning

Will I listen? Will you?
There are doors
Growing in my rootways
Tunnels
Like crypts and throne rooms
Lit by liquid albumin
Where heat crushed stone
Into crystal
Wicked from foundations
Sweating,
Birthing the world
I have brought dragons
Into the arms of their mothers
I am not fear or meat.
Will you listen?

Linking with The Sunday Muse and Poets United. This week is a bit of a mix in terms of the story; I've lately found myself at odds with several books I've tried to read and that's souring the writing a bit. So making nice with a grumpy lion? Relatable. :)

-- Chrissa

Just Another Nail

 Had the phone vibrated? Hannah squinted; twisted away from the window to focus. She tilted it and then gave in and brushed the screen. It was just past nine in the morning  but the glass was still dimmer than the oyster bone white of the table. No new messages.

She shifted the phone closer. The dark window glass interceded, but didn't block the sunlight. Sweating iced coffee slimed her wrist. She dragged her arm against her skirt, pulling it closer to her knees in the same move. She had over an hour to get to the interview. 

Deep breath, open another useless article full of petty revenges and annoyances.

A woman at a table near the wall started explaining how the assisted living facility hadn’t been able to schedule a tour and now she was going to have buy another plane ticket, fly out, and move her great aunt. Hannah could feel the tightness in the seams of her hose and skirt. The plane trip was going to cost the woman a place at her daycare.

 Hannah picked up her phone and went outside, leaving her bag and coffee. She could call and reschedule. The coffee was wringing her stomach. This side of the smoked windows, the coffee shop looked like a boutique, the interior silver-masked. It drank the sun.

White gravel caught Hannah’s eye. She bent to scoop it up for a worry stone and gagged when she realized it was a fake nail, still caked with glitter. Hannah turned to find the trash and the nail sank into her palm. She shrieked--too thick for a nail.

Something huge shimmered around her in the window. Her hand was only half visible, already caught in the maw of the daylight. It tugged her, she felt the jerk all the way up to her shoulder as her body slammed against the dark glass.

Linking to this week's Telling Tales with Magaly Guerrero:  Gothic Fiction. Thanks for forcing my brain into fall, Magaly. :) Well, forcing my brain to work according to theme, length, and schedule. Hope everyone is having a good week and a happy holiday, should you be celebrating Labor Day. 

-- Chrissa

Captain, Why?

Photography by Svetlana Belyaeva click HERE for website.

I've made myself

walk the plank,

Leap--

Let the ocean rise to meet me

Let the land rush beneath to the sands

I believe the plastic will catch me

We have built a new continent

A safety-coated landmass

Of bath toys...we've always

Been afraid of the water

Even when it was us.

I've made myself 

walk the plank,

Leap!

Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse & inspired by Ms. Belyaeva's lovely image, above...there's more joy in the image than the poem, I think. It's been a long time since I did something for the reckless joy of the fall. :)

-- Chrissa

His Glory

I could be wading along these paths--the air is thick,
Moving against my skin as if the water is being worn by the heat.
In the library (converted from the old showers)
There's a book on hold and a room-devouring stroller
                                            --A minor boss
Before the gingers and the ants
Take me down paths between leaves swelling
Above me, deep in green, in sun.

I make a circuit, see the ponds, kumquats, columns
Wavering as if late morning evaporated at midday's sigh.

It was in the shadow of the porch,
Before the two-years-since locked doors:
A red tablecloth
Crisp, bright letters--
Commissioner Cagle's name gleaming
From the dimness.

It's his glory, I suppose.
Continuing that magician's trick
A vibrant cloth swirling
Over nothing but promises.

She Is Kind and Unwelcoming

She was, for a second, there
Elbow on the shag counter in the band hall
While it was briefly orchestra rehearsal
Curious if I was a twin

And I remember that--
That teenage disgust with a mistake
You feel so obvious
Until the shock of rumors pass

That one conversation
Leaning into our narrative
Before she drowns
in her own

I was rude;
Sarcasm was the only power
I had and the dregs of the 80s
Were bitter beneath my tongue

Nostalgia pretends kindness
Come sit with me and share
This memory before
She knifes me, nameless


Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets United. I can't believe there's just a week left in August...and although I'm hoping fall brings some relief from the broiling days and the allergies and the wheezing I'm also not sure I'm ready to close out this year. Hence, the threat of looking backwards but not finding exactly what one expects. I love the idea of the prompt image as a kind of goddess of nostalgia, pretending to paint herself in lifelike colors but always subtly changing them, welcoming you in before the things you didn't see or know at the time ambush you as she opens her eyes to hindsight. Hmmm...this might be something to file away for a later story.

Hope you're having a good/creative/present week and that all your puppies are housebroken!! :) 

-- Chrissa

The Story of My People

I am sitting at the table and the days

Are falling warm onto the ground like strawberries;

If I reach out I can catch them, hold them

Almost warm as skin.

Kiss them, debate tasting them…but I have

Devoured them and remember them sweet.

A lion’s mane rests on my sandals

Scratching my toes. His breath is on my shins.

Tell me the story of your people.

There was Wyndigo the First, whom we found

In a suburban backyard off the Loop.

He walked the sidewalks, rode shotgun in the Sundance.

There was Baron the Golden who found us

Before the remaking of Memorial City

When it was sleepy and had a cafeteria and an Eckerd’s

And a pet store. He would climb into your lap;

Overspill the affections. There is Merlin the Peskie—

Our fairy of fur and roundness, whose snores

Are the stuff of long afternoons drifting at the edge of twilight.

There was Varda the Beautiful, whose midnight coat

Called the stars into her embrace. Her holt was the space

Between the computer and the desk

Or the bathtub when it thundered, or someone knocked.

And there is Arthur, who has come to learn

The litany of his new peoples.

A velvet paw covers one knees, a rough tongue.

Go then. Take a taste of the garden with you.

I breathe the flavor of strawberries across my tongue.

This is the story of my people.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets United. Today is our second day with Arthur (or Wart), the new pup. He was an unexpected but not unwelcome discovery as part of yesterday's Operation Pets Alive! Clear the Shelter event. This would be him, sleeping in the car on the way home. Another car dog!! Also, I suspect he might be a water dog. Guess we'll find out the next time we're in Lake Jackson. :) Sorry for the dog-dog-dog post...my brain is pretty much set on Puppy right now. As in "Where is the puppy?" "What is he finding that I didn't think he'd be interested in?" "Oh yeah, I forgot the puppy yowl." 

Hope everyone is having a good week and finding inspiration, especially as the seasons sneak toward change. 

-- Chrissa

Cicadas

Skin--like brooches--clings to the roof
Cicada's songs are clipped to the visor
             But summer takes the roads loose places
Pine trees remember elves
Shoot fletchings of needles down around me
Summer wavers like a mirage, just above
The leaf litter, breathing songs
Half smoke, half resin
We cough stanzas after the a/c
Fades from our skin

Sharing with The Sunday Muse's Wednesday Muse Cicadas! prompt. Summer is hanging on with both hands and all ten fingers here--however, yesterday's rain made today's morning writing session a lovely lagniappe of fall to come but that lasted only until the empty park and sounds of unseen squirrels got the shivers going and me constantly looking over my shoulder. Usually I'm not as on edge, but there were cars but no people (probably they were further along the paths) and I guess it's close enough to fall that spooky thoughts are close to the surface. 

Hope everyone is having a good week!

-- Chrissa

Another Repetitive Origin Story

What if the ocean doesn't tell him where it came from?
He lives on the remains of a sea shallow and toothy
Large enough to float giants and catch their bones
In a basin down below the edge of the horizon
Where only the pinnacles of the oil towers show.
He'll know the rumors of where his parents were
As he slowly came to be, the years when they
Were small, when they lived along this coast
Where their dads worked among the pipes
Separating chemicals from the sea.

Nights roll up behind him, forgotten.

What if the ocean never tells him
How deep the past can sink, how the mud can grow
Into both blood and stone?

Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse and Poets United for their Sunday poetry. I'm grateful for being able to spend time in a community of poets, particularly in those times when my own writing feels as if it might congesting into a solid lump of silence. I'm hoping the cooler weather sets in rather sooner this year (I've been watching British gardening shows with naked and blatant envy at the delicate snowfalls in--what, April? May?) so that I can take my notebooks back outside, among the ants and beetles and mushrooms and...well, the spiders can stay over there. Really. Like, waaay over there.

Hope your writing and reading week is going well!

-- Chrissa

Sanctuary

Summer over the sward

Is a helicopter ballet

Dragonflies in the laser heat

An explosion's aura

Behind my closed eyes

Stunned

Instead, follow lemon-lime

Sun flakes to the gingers

And shade

Into the scent of dirt and water

Splaying my fingers

Like the lizards

Surfing the widest leaves

Sulphur butterflies

Limelighting the shadows

Cooling the ashes 

Of the dance

With each breath

Sharing with The Sunday Muse for Wednesday's "Butterflies!" prompt. We're entering the Heat Advisory portion of the summer here and I'm looking forward to fall and being able to spend more time among the butterflies. :) 

-- Chrissa

Embracing the Canvas

It's the purple heart of an amoeba
Devouring the map or the grey edge
Billowing white; stalking toward us on slant legs--
Thunderclouds leaning into their drift
Bullying the fences down the block
Chill rumors of the time they shoved the umbrella
Down the side yard in a crumple.
I'm hugging the umbrella, fumbling
For the ties, whispering that it'll be okay
The storm will slope off down the block
Ignoring the secured.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse for the Wednesday Muse "Summer Rain" prompt. Merlin is snoozing like a teenager across his pillow, waiting to see if any additional fries casually appear upon the desk or perhaps daydreaming about the car and the possibilities of magic food windows. I didn't bring him to the park this morning, where the ants and the deer were out in the early morning heat and the writing was deferred to this afternoon and an indoor desk. We're in the season of brief, strong afternoon thunderstorms and watching the weather for creeping tropical depressions that might weave themselves into hurricane spirals before coming ashore, hence the bullying storms above.

After last weekend's local author event, I've been thinking about how much I'd like to visit a poetry convention, tables full of poets and at least one room for reading, for poets to share their work, for those who write about poetry to share their thoughts on poems, and for readers to talk about where they encountered poetry, at first and now. Poetry can be protean, any genre, any language, any style. We use it to castigate ourselves, to pray, to sing. This feels like something that you could celebrate over a weekend, that you could share with an entire community, that you could turn into the kind of festival/convention that would spark more poems, that would inspire people to write and to read, to listen and to speak. Perhaps someone could bring one up here to the north side of Houston.

Hoping this week finds you well and well-inspired,
-- Chrissa

Fledged and Flown

Wall like the back of an oven in the middle of summer

Waiting for the soles of my feet to catch the heat shimmer

Stride like a mirage through the city breaking open

Fold my hands not in prayer but because they will fledge

Catching the thermals of my passing, stirring the air

Until the street is batter and rise, bubbles and ocean

Salt burning the edges of my eyes and sinuses

Screaming over the pulse, shoved upward

Into the sky.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and with Poets United. Today's gratuitous picture of Merlin is to the right...the temporary reprieve of heat & humidity is over here on the outer rim of Houston and he's back to finding the tile ever so much friendlier to his belly than the pillow. Little does he know today is going to be another episode of Riding in Cars For No Reason...we're trying to get him to be a better car dog...there may be pics of that in upcoming posts. Sorry. Meanwhile, there was more inspiration yesterday to get beyond this ridiculous bout of no writing--we visited a local author fest at one of the hotels near the airport. It was a good example of what kind of good sanctuary writing can provide--nondescript hotel exterior, iron gate, tight parking lot...and then a tucked away, cool banquet room filled with friendly people telling interesting stories. I may have come away with too many of those stories, but I was struck by how many mother/daughter writing pairs there were, how many people write within broadly local settings, how many poets are re-imagining metaphors. I'm grateful for the opportunity to visit with others who do this much more bravely than I do. :) 

-- Chrissa

Asphalt and Time

Sitting close enough to the night that it whines
Just in the mouth of my ear canal;
Starlight streaming through the twilight in the hum
Like oil in the water, soothing ripples
Covering up the restless heat lapping at my arms
Sunburn like streetlights, a felt illumination, memory.
Night will leave its bites to rise among the burn--
My skin swelling and crinkling like the roadbed
Universes and days and hugs have traveled.

Sharing with The Sunday Muse for The Wednesday Muse: Night Sounds. Today was the day I decided to get back on the horse, as it were, with my writing. Merlin and I spent part of the morning out on the back porch (thank you, mid-summer cool front!!!!!) and he's sleeping on the tiles behind me, now. He came with me on this morning's bagel run, proving that he understands the concept of drive-thru pretty well and is a fan of windows through which people hand you food. As am I, I suppose. Here he is, enjoying the morning, belly full of croissant (not a whole one, just a bit of one). Thanks for being patient as I edge back from last week.

-- Chrissa

Meatball

The dragon of the Spaghetti-Bowl Forest
With the ragtop trees, to the northeast of Houston
Where the highways swerve and fly--
Let's call him Meatball, a spicy flame
Hidden among the leaves and trunks, his breath
Inaudible beneath the susurration
Of all the fire-bellied cars. Let's say
Dragons sometimes find a patch of leafy heat,
Warm, bright shadows, and nap.
Meatball has slept three years
Since the waters made a moat around, washed
The city down these highways,
Now, opening one eye to dreams
Receding quiet; Meatball finally wakes up
One restless, cloudy Saturday
Hears the highway groaning,
Cars growling like a row of hungry dragonets
Crying in the nest.
And there's something new
In the forest. A couch beside the road, empty.
One talon pokes at it;
A long slash releases the smell
Of old water, of maybe--people.
There's a couch in the highway wood
With a dragon crouched behind. There are stories
Racing through a fiery nostril
Like cars, like thunderclouds
Lightning in the dragon's neural highways
Where dreams condense like breath.

So this is weirdness and oddness and written while one of the dogs calls for someone to come lay down and keep her company while her arthritis acts up and the clouds clotted from too much heat and a hurricane a state away pile up outside the windows. This particular couch might be perfect for the kinds of the stories that keep all the rest of the swirl and storm quiet, for a moment. Linking with Poets United and The Sunday Muse. 

-- Chrissa

Away from Home

She lies down, underneath the desk, curled around the chair, back to the warmth of the computer, face to the fan. My feet are perched on top of the box--where they shouldn't be, also resting on the warmth of the box. We're within arms-length, easy to check on each for snacks or a soft scratch. And so I'm home and away at once, online and inside myself, writing flitting like dragonflies beside a railroad track. Phrases catch the light despite the rush of what happened everywhere over the past weeks. What might happen next November, next Friday.

She's sleeping quiet. Varda doesn't snore, just whines through running dreams. And I'm wandering further afield because I've turned on the music instead of the current run of podcasts. I'm back in high school, back on the Lake Jackson sidewalks, back on a trip in my grandparents' van, back in the shock of a different music store, looking at a stack of the stuff we didn't get as frequently or easily in Lake Jackson. Briefly, I'm back where bookstores and classrooms seemed like waiting for a ride on those tracks, the one that go somewhere else, through cities and apartments. They carry explosions and ideas.

Those tracks once spared my Dad, carrying a runaway reaction away from him, letting him pass into one of those big coastal plants safely. Or maybe that's just a rumor. Maybe the only thing that ever moves are commodities. We run in our dreams and stuff travels.

Fairy Tale

We are both staring at the horizon;
I feel his gaze drift by; I'm used to the dream-wake
So I glimpse sunset, his face, and then the head
At the edge of twilit skies, where the clouds have faded
Against the bright line. I can feel the wish, gentle as the pulse
Of the wings against the glass beneath my palm.
Soon, I think, I'll have jelly the color of the dark sky,
Of gothic, purple, Halloween eyeshadow.
I have to let the butterfly, go, first.
But something will have to sparkle in that sweet
Dark sky of starlight and myth juice and wonder.
They let us simmer babies' dreams because our eyes,
Our brains, the tips of our fingers
Have weakened, have filled with wool, have roughened.
Babies' dreams are vivid, thick as sunlight in the womb
Where warmth and heartbeat and light are the same.
You can't stew them properly unless you can
See past the vividness, to the glass, to the spoon.
Unless you can press it into the wing molds
When it's still hot.
I don't gather dreams for the old, but I feel his,
The memory of horsehair and glue, the feel of horn,
His fingers smooth on the carving knife,
The darkness and lamplight
Until a unicorn's head or a mule's head or talking
Horse head perched on his table, for the festivals,
For the school, for the church.
He's dreaming of the eyes, bottle glass eyes
Reflecting a twilight the color of the jelly
I've got to boil in the summer wind
Leave this to set on by the window
Where a unicorn will grow, a smooth
Moonlight plaster skin, from old memories and new sensations
The way a butterfly came from a caterpillar
In this self-same glass jar.

Sharing with The Sunday Muse.

-- Chrissa

Day and Dream and Breathe

There is no way to explain the heat

That is breath and force

Slow, humid. Bullying. The way the air 

Ripples over a grill

And you know you're melting 

The atmosphere, there's too much water in it here.

Cool isn't a thing you do

A thing you find

Cool is stasis, the way water holds you

The way you stare down toward the bottom of the pool

Letting your body finally lay in the heaviness

Rigid and almost sinking

Caught between one thing and another

Daydreams hatching feral at twilight

Heat pinching you to keep you awake

Water drifting you over concrete

All the pale concrete

You're like a thought on a heat wave

Your toes pointed, arms submerged

Gasping for inflation

Eyes stinging in the blue

Drifting over the concrete

Sharing with The Sunday Muse for the prompt on things to do to cool off. I'm partial to finding a pool and floating around with a good book, but will settle for a glass of iced tea, a quiet corner, and the book. 

-- Chrissa

You Think I've Come in Judgment

Breathe the rhythm in the world
I've been walking through it, a pair of lungs
For centuries
And you think I've come to
Weigh you, but these scales I've got
I use to breathe

Posting with the Sunday Muse and Poets United. It's been a bit of  a drenched weekend here in almost-coastal, definitely swampy Texas and I've been reading avidly, catching up on the 1001 first chapters downloaded and thinking about snap judgments regarding titles, book summaries, and the like and preparing for Camp Nanowrimo (starting tomorrow--working on a poetry/short story collaboration)...which means that there's a jumble of other people's words in my brain and I, too, need to cover my ears and listen for the chords I'm trying to make. 

-- Chrissa

Like a Rumor

Photo prompt courtesy of The Sunday Muse, Photo Artistry by Erik Johansson Master Photo-manipulation Artist

It came like a rumor, through the Gilley's backyard,
Drowned the Rasner's pool, and then it took our fence,
The azaleas. And then it washed through Sandy's house.
The realtor's letting the man leaning over the fence
Tell her what happened; why she should keep looking.
But she can imagine all the blues the house can now hold:
Tiles, wood, Sheetrock, sills, baseboards, doors, ceramic.
She knows how hungry the waves are;
Feels her own stomach growl.
It's been redone, they'll still insure it.
It's still a Good Neighborhood.
And if you stand in the middle of the living room
You can hear the sea calling all the creeks and rivers,
Telling them they used to be an ocean, a gulf;
They used to be clear and beautiful as salt.
She stands in the emptiness and listens.
Hears a cry of Land! But not yet.

Sharing, in the middle of a rainy Sunday afternoon, with The Sunday Muse and with Poets United, while waiting to see if the coals will be extinguished by this sloppy weather. It's a good day for staying in and reading. Hope this day finds you in a good place for reading, without the sloppiness. :)

Leavings: A Cat Story

I have come for the hearth, you see
Every hearth has a cat space, a brick that gives
From the branch, from the fence, from the empty
Harbor where all the eyes of the house gather
Waiting for me.
And I have come for their ears with a tale
That slinks through outer spaces and is unafraid
To claim its path through these peopled rooms,
Lurking by the edge of floor and wall and web,
Waiting for fate.
You never come to clean the dusty selvage
Where lives flit swift through the sunlight
And slow by the vents, where the shadows
You imagine as fuzz pull their legs tight
And wait for them.
You leave the leavings for me.

Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse and Poets United.

-- Chrissa

The Age of Essay

Photography by Carlo Pautasso

I have reached the age of essays

Home from the quest years,

Beyond the fairy tale lacuna, 

And so, restlessness catches my eye.

A wake of impatience in the bookstore,

A boy standing on a dark, wooden bench

In front of a window, which is also stained

With whatever lining blocks the sun--

He bounces his soccer ball against floor and glass

And asks

Whether his mother played soccer?

Whether she was any good.

Perhaps he's seven? Eight?

We've been listening to essays in the car

Driving down to see my nephew

And I pause, wait to hear the answer,

Even though I don't know either the boy

Or his grandfather. Who tells him yes,

She played soccer, year-round, indoors in the winter

And that she was good, at least in his opinion.

The boy asks another question

But impatience has caught us,

My nephew has perused the robot kits,

We've already had lunch, there's an upcoming "next"

He's well into the age of quest

And, for him, there is still the possibility 

Of someone to get lost in the stories

He brings back.

So...how on earth, the poem from the picture? And there's not a good answer. The tulip lying in the light filtered through the water just seems like something that has been left a bit too long as someone does something else, an absence indicated by the full glass and the thirsty bulb. And absence in the midst of care struck a note and the poem was the memory of that note, hastily written. 

-- Chrissa