Tastes of Home [Today's News Poem, April 7 2011]

Tastes of Home [Today's News Poem, April 7 2011]

Slush on the sidewalk
Snow in the doorway,
Beaks in the salad—
A seabird's attacking.

Shells were the home,
Yolk was the baby,
Whites were the mother
Hugging the offspring.

Home: where the flesh
Wraps in a blanket,
Whips to an omelet,
Stares out the window.

Springtime: a woodpecker sleeps in the branches;
White and black beak—its redness its life.
Summer: the woodchuck devours the garden—
Poison its lair and pitchfork its torso.
Autumn: the crows stand on the pikes—call them cornstalks.
Winter: the straggler is freezing,
She shatters the ice on the window
And batters stalactites—
Calling for springtime you flushed after dinner.

"Karen Cooke Phillip keeps the basement freezer of her new Anchorage house stocked with food to ward off homesickness. There is a whole king eider sea duck, including feathers and head. And she has three plastic bottles filled with seal oil: liquid gold to a Yupik Eskimo like Mrs. Cooke Phillip."
—KIM SEVERSON, The New York Times, Published: April 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/us/08alaska.html

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Passage of Fools [Today's News Poem, December 31, 2010]

Passage of Fools [Today's News Poem, December 31, 2010]

I've depleted the winter and gathered its dew
On a pinhead—my pinhead—and watched as it danced
From the tips of my follicles, into my nose
Where it planted the needles, the pine, and the sap.
The survivors are green where it's gray and they burst
In my lungs, where it's damp and it's pointless to breathe.
At this rate, I'll be coughing up blood and I still
Do not think I will notice the seasons with care.
I was born in a village, but lived in the hive
Of our awe—yes, our gardens of dogshit and brick.
In my life it has taken me thirty five years
To have noticed that moths have a cycle, that rats
Are the floorboards—the blame for the venomous cure.
If this year has a meaning, its meaning is year—
It's not time, just a name for this passage of fools.

"Look at the calendar dummy."
—Khakjaan Wessington, December 31, 2010
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Epicycles in the Singular Season of Laughter [Today's News Poem, July 15, 2010]

Epicycles in the Singular Season of Laughter [Today's News Poem, July 15, 2010]

The carousel spins and the children are laughing.
A midsummer idle on playgrounds of plastic,
Which covers the asphalt that smothers the hillside.
A macrophage colony hibernates, waiting
For junctures to cycle; to shatter the casing.
Above them the offspring are leaping from elders,
To slides, and to labor—then diving to meadows.
The lichen corrodes what remains of their markers.
The spin on an axis that orbits the system
That chases the center; in spirals repeating
Forever: a lattice of order, descending
From cackles in morning to silence—eternal.

“Congress on Thursday gave final approval to an overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system, intended to address the causes of the 2008 economic crisis and rewrite the rules for a more complex — and mistrustful — era on Wall Street. ”
– David M. Herszenhorn, The New York Times, July 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/business/16regulate.html?_r=1&hp

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Property Line [Today's News Sonnet, March 17, 2010]

Property Line [Today's News Sonnet, March 17, 2010]
“Armed groups who say they are fighting for a fairer share of oil wealth have also continued their campaign in the Niger Delta.”
--BBC, 19:09 GMT, Wednesday, 17 March 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8573178.stm

The sacred things I've seen involve the dawn
Or twilight's calming rays. I've seen the moths
Of Fall emerge, en masse, the earthly spawn
Of secret cycles. Fog and wings—a broth
Of rebirth: swilled with coffee; morning news
Online. Before my work begins, I like
To note the zeal of life as I peruse
The news to see what makes the markets spike
Or plunge. So many things are on the line:
My stocks, developers, my boss. I work
Until the twilight's near. Beneath the pine
Outside, atop the fence, a heron lurks.
I think it's plastic. New. It turns its head
To me. I smile. It flaps and flees in dread.



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