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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Red is Not Red Anymore [Today's News Poem, October 21, 2010]

Red is Not Red Anymore [Today's News Poem, October 21, 2010]

You said you could live in my mind;
A house I would share with you—both
Our properties joined with a door:
Unlocked, then unhinged and removed.

I walk to my office and sit:
My swiveling chair and my files
Surround me. The cabinet drawer
Is dented—my knuckles have scars.

I open it—look, there's the snap
You took in Sedona, the curls
In stones that predated the ape.
The redness like bricks in that pic:

Your house in Virginia—I loved
That first home because it was yours.
And after that things got much worse
For you and for us—though I loved

The sanity felt with you—still
There—even though cliffs are a plunge,
No longer a sentinel-call
To make this thing love—to define

It carnally after the minds
Have joined and not prior. It meant—
I don't know what it meant for you—
It's the only memory that mattered to me.

"When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his explosive 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Thomas vehemently denied the allegations and his handlers cited his steady relationship with another woman in an effort to deflect Hill's allegations.
Lillian McEwen was that woman. "
—Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, October 22, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/21/AR2010102106645.html

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Sucker for Succor [Twitter Found Poem, June 2, 2010]

Sucker for Succor [Twitter Found Poem, June 2, 2010]
Tweets+Edits=#twitterfoundpoem

boredom got a hold of me...
I haven't had love for ages.
looking 4 some succor!!!

"it was a love boat...a terrorist operation." he says.
"women gave fake love & fake sex to fake men
for More fake in this world.
Immature men have guidance from brazen idols ... but
Immature women have succor from suckers."
I got on the...terrorist operation... the fake love boat
Anyways. I haven't had sex for ages.
i'm a sucker for succor.

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