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