Day 50 through 55 of #the100dayproject

Hello all!

I've been working hard on many revisions and then submitting them to a couple call for submissions and contests. As I wrote in my last post, I am using days 50 through 60 to take time and revise poems everyday that are either from the last 50 days of #the100dayproject or older poems that I have been working on. So far I was able to submit a group of poems to Granta by the 26th; I submitted my trio of poems "Eating Practices". Also, I just submitted to the International Bridport Prize in poetry. I submitted "Manifest Destiny, East" & "Aperture" to the Bridport Prize.

Back on 4/15, I submitted to the Ohio Review's poetry contest and will be waiting to hear back from them still for sometime. Around the same time, I submitted to the Kay Snow Poetry Contest held through Willamette Writers.

The oldest submission I'm waiting on is from Rattle Magazine. I expect a long wait from Rattle, well, because they're Rattle...I submitted "Janitoress" back on 1/25/2020 and I am still waiting to hear back from them.

From day 55 through 60, I will continue my path of revision and then begin writing a poem a day starting day 61.

Day 48 & 49 #the100dayproject - Revisions - Eating Practices

Hello all! I've been taking the last two days to revise a series of three poems called Eating Practices in time for my first submittal to Granta. It's a long shot, but wish me luck. I will be looking for other journals and lit mags for my poem trio and my friend and fellow poet Kathy S. is also on the look out.

Day 50 through 60 will be focused on revision for pems that I have previously written. Revision is more than one aspect of the writing practice. A poem rarely is written perfectly. 99.9% of the time, poems take years to revise. Poetry is a artistic form that is dependent on time. Poems written 5 years, 10, years, 20 years ago finally make sense or come together based off of what we, as poets, experience.

Poems change with us. Only when they are ready, will they reveal themselves to us.

Eating practices has been more than a year in the making and has finally come together. Even with this first submission, it is possible that I will review the poems again and again and find new meanings and new ways to convey what I'm trying to say. Until then, I will be brave and send them out into the world.

Day 47 of #the100dayproject - Gatherings

Gatherings

Even in the heat of summer,

With its abundance of sunshine

promise of flowers and fruit,

the squirrels still gather

Their food into themselves

As if winter were a close

Companion, waiting behind

The evergreens, the essence

Left deep in the squirrel’s nests.

The grip of it so tight on them

That they would eat themselves

Dead, rather that feel the bite

Of the tundra or the emptiness

of a body without the warmth of food.

Day 46 of #the100dayproject - Ritual

Ritual

And so he prays behind me,

Completely bare, naked,

In his purest form

A statue of vulnerability.

His skin itself a prayer

His body the body of god.

Elevated by the vermillion

And the nutmeg nuts

Painted with grains of rice.

Each one of them a planet

Orbiting his body, his nakedness

The center of a humble husk

Of bone and blood, his hair

Curling outward, a universe

In each inky strand.

Day 45 of #the100dayproject - Sight

Sight 

The scent of flowers would hold a soft tone,

A music, a humming that captures color

Behind my eyelids.

Even when I am blind,

The world will be visible in flashes of light,

An aura that is beyond sight, only seen

When I close my eyes.

Day 44 of #the100dayproject - Shame, Shame

Shame, Shame

The weather is titanium, clouds unbreakable,

the tops of the evergreens cannot puncture through

the day’s armor. The monotony of sleep and breath,

building up like the scales of soap scum on

the brushed nickel faucet. Everything can be made

into a guise of protection. My words can move around

you as if to keep you safe, but they are the horse

outside of Troy, a mane made of driftwood and nails.

I am not what I say, I am what is inside, a sword

that hungers for so much undoing.

Day 43 of #the100dayproject - Old Flames

Old Flames

I am wheat leaning with the wind, the untouched earth, waiting to be opened like a zipper.

Root and burrow, the tunnels and network maps of creatures inside of me.

My scent like the big sky, tastes a cold glass of water;

I am all of these things. I never had old flames

that fanned out to torch the prairies of my body, scar me burnt or sad.

I want only one man to wonder my vast spaces and move through

my endless fields, his hands touching each tassel of grass

gentle, coaxing as if to draw me out and tame my infinite fervor,

to quench my wild thirst.

Day 42 of #the100dayproject - Moon as Aged Cheese

Moon as Aged Cheese

The moon is milk curdled with a couple

drops of lemon. It once sprawled

like the milky way; a spilled bucket

of milk across the sky. A squirt of citrus

brought it together into the shape

of a curdled globe, a head of cheese.

I raise it out of the vast vat

of space, that black ink brine

of salt and meteorite. I take a bite

from it, ripe with gravity. The mass of its

flavor, floral, ribboned with silver mold,

bitter, creamy. I will pair it with andromeda

in my stemmed wine glass, swirl the galaxy

and sip its aroma, the taste of black holes and

rolling the fragrance of deepest space, silence

casked and barreled, the universe a cellar,

cool and damp, storing away the flavors

of earth, planet, and shooting star.

Day 41 of #the100dayproject - Internal Labor

Internal Labor

I am a stethoscope of hearing,

My ear curved internally to listen

To the sound of my neck muscles

Stretching, relaxing, creaking

Like the sound of evergreens

As the wind sends them listing

Against themselves. I can hear

The sound of ear wax as it cracks

And pops, the pressure like

A release of a soda can tab,

Suction and bubbles, or plastic

Packaging, taking a whole mass

Of it in hand and wringing

Until every cell bursts at once.

All the sounds move to the rhythm

Of my blood, pulsing. My heart

Beat overshadows any other sound,

Even the engulfing wave of vibration

From my throat swallowing, the ripple

Effect of my vertebrae clicking

In my neck. My internal motions

How red and endearing, to listen

To my body glisten through its

Daily work, expanding and contracting

Itself in a routine of janitorial work

The cleaning and healing,

The endless hours of upkeep.

Day 40 of #the100dayproject - When I Take Another Form

When I Take Another Form

I am baking in my kitchen,

the heat from the oven pinching

my face into a sourdough loaf.

This day is a type of lynching

where the hot element glows,

a brand that can alter my skin.

Written words are too much

some ingredients are missing

inside of me, inside this body.

I am comprised of fiction

and if proofed and baked

I will turn to stone,

my heart encased

in my body’s prison.

Day 39 of #the100dayproject - Matunuck Beach

Matunuck Beach

Any time I walk towards the ocean

I feel the sand buff and

peel away the layers

of my armor. I want to be raw

from the salt in my wounds

taste the grit in my teeth.

When I lay myself down onto

the beach, my body is a letter

written to the ocean, tucked away

into an envelope of sand,

stamped by a beach towel,

addressed to the tide, sea foam

and conical shells that house

a body of a creature, not unlike myself.

Day 38 of #the100dayproject - Road Work

Road Work

They ripped up the road, but the road was still good.

A long crack had formed a fissure where small tufts

Of grass rooted themselves between the asphalt.

The steel grates, rusted well, held up to every foot,

Tire and storm. The water drains painted sky blue,

The paint peeled and chipping. It grew cracks,

Just like my eyes started to show lines like start bursts.

A sign of experience, the middling age, hints of pain

And gray come subtle, but can still be hidden

as if old age can be tucked away, dyed, stuffed

in a drawer, forgotten until an earthquake sections

a road like how a surgeon cracks open a sternum.

It’s better to bare a white flag of surrender,

Relieve ourselves of our weapons and useless armor.

Day 37 of #the100dayproject - Spring

Spring

The diaphanous lives of plant

and tree, their desires,

their pleasures, mysteries.

Rose, lilac, magnolia, cherry;

they mingle with one another

their cocktails of pollen,

fibers and molecules of sex,

genitalia and fragrance.

Of course it’s all a dance,

a language; the wind

a carriage to give them

speech. Attempt

to reach out, touch

one another, entangle

their branches and bodies

as if they could lift

themselves and be free.

Day 36 of #the100dayproject - Hive

Hive

A paper brown bag stuck in the branches of a tree

                                                                                      Or

Old bark curling off into muslin pearls

                                                                        Maybe

Dead leaves gathered into a bunch, stuck

                             In the intersection of trunk and branch

Instead

The fine walled architecture of a wasp’s nest

                             Blending in with the bark of the tree

The wasp, with its segmented head, drank

                                           From puddles and mud,

Spit its nest into a thin form, paper clay

                             Such craft from its mouth

The entrance to the hive like a gaping hole

                                                            O, surprised

                                                            O, humming

                                                            O, screaming

O, mouth that licks the hole, the buzz, tongue and mandible,

O, chews the meat of the earth, carnivorous

                                                                       

Day 35 of #the100dayproject - A Poetry Reading

For my day 35, I was working on reading three of my poems for a video. I uploaded this as a request from The Heartland Review to share with their poetry community. "Black Hills Gold" won first place of the 2020 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize and "Portrait in Gray" was a finalist.

Day 34 of #the100dayproject - Just a Thought

Just a Thought

I want to be forgiven

For the parts of me

That continue to unspool

And fray. I want to be

Forgiven for the raggedness

Of my edges, the imperfections.

Sometimes I want to be

Forgiven for being me.

But I sometimes want

To be the one forgiving;

I’m not the only one

That is on this earth

struggling to find my way.

Day 33 of #the100dayproject - Skykomish

Skykomish

The snowmelt river

Submerged boulders,

Funneled into

The depths of the

River bed. White

Is the color of its

Rage and what

Else can I do

But attempt to ride

Its anger, kayak through

Its emotions,

Move along its surface

Like and oak leaf,

And break through

Its rapid heartbeat,

Deposited in the smooth

Glass of its calm waters.

Day 32 of #the100dayproject - Antiquity

Antiquity

a person thins to a point

where even their bones

move beneath the flesh,

strange animals, dolphins

and monsters under

the ocean of skin until

the person winnows away

and all that is left are

the animals picked clean,

butterfly and fish, beautiful

collections, the museums

hidden within us.

Day 31 of #the100dayproject - Silhouette

Silhouette

a crow lands outside my window,

insect in its beak, swallows and parts

the morning with its caw, caw, caw.

a crow never wants to be a rooster.

a crow is what it is, it never dreams

of anything else. all of our striving

we are hungry for the carrion

of our bodies, to bring us closer

to our untimely death, and the crow

will be there, not to wake us like

a rooster, but to crow as a crow crows,

to warn that worms will bite,

that even the flies will sting.

a crow knows what we taste like

without pecking our bones clean;

we taste like a grub, those cut-worms

that burrow into squash roots then

shed their old body into a new body

leaving the remains mixed in the earth.

a crow knows the smell of us

when we are close to that border,

the in between when we are

no longer a body, but not yet its food,

but when we are moving from human

to ylem, our atoms shifting into

our next phase.

Day 29 of #the100dayproject - Phase 4: We Are Not Ready

For the past four days, I've been writing a series of poems based off of a Washington state #covid-19 policy that was flowed out by Governor Inslee. He wants to use a four phase approach to reopening Washington which he outlines here. I used that PDF as a prompt, trying to visualize how reopening will look, how it will feel. All the while, I feel the tension in the air. How can this plan work when so many people, so many states are disregarding the gravity of this #pandemic ?

Phase 4: We Are Not Ready

I sit in an auditorium, sounds amplified,

the building shell-like, the shape of an echo.

People file in, sit with friends and family,

a cacophony of conversations, each person

wants to be heard. There are no distances

between us.

Again, I am the fish tucked

and laid neat into a can.

Again, I ride the bus,

and stand in a cramped elevator.

Again,

the awkward silences and squeezed lines

outside of coffee shops. We are many

and each one of us a host, a vector.

No one will forget this time, when we stood

apart, our lips and nose covered up until

none of us could decipher what part

of us is human. It is the purpose of a virus

to move into and through us, change us,

like how a river carves its signature into land

with canyon, gorge, marsh and delta.

So too the virus has embellished us

with its marker, and yet, we don’t know

if it is indelible or not.

Day 28 of #the100dayproject - Phase 3: Gather in Numbers

Phase 3: Gather in Numbers

It's been so long since we saw

each one of our faces, our faces,

not the pixilated RBG version

of our faces. I have spoken

with your simulacra for hours,

listened to the garbled sounds

of you through laptop speakers.

I’ve looked at your face as a flat

screen, your picture in picture,

only to realize the camera lens

is you, not the picture of you.

I could not look you in the eye,

nut now, here you are, a body

moving through the world.

At one point in the distancing,

I believed that you stopped

being real, I imagined everyone

else was not real; quarantine

became the truth. Now I can touch

your hand, hug you close to me.

The atoms of your body comprise

you of you. Atoms are like pixels

and my body is made of atoms;

I think I am what I am, and you are

what you are. Even the stars

are like millions of pixels;

the night sky a screen lightening

as if the stars, too, must shelter in place.

Day 27 of #the100dayproject - Phase 2: The Eyes See New

Phase 2: The Eyes See New

I move my magical thinking outside

The container of my body, into

The open air for all to witness

This collection of treasures. Ideas

Can become so powerful they

Solidify like water into ice, transform

Their intangible selves into objects.

So too does the idea of us sleeping

Outside, our bodies content with

our sleeping bags, the sky as our tent.

So too does the idea of setting camp,

The methods of pitching and staking,

The wrangling of poles and herding

Of waterproof canvas. So too does

The idea of building a fire with

Newspaper, kindling and branches,

Creating the orange throated roar.

So too does the idea of placing

Our chairs, popping the tab

Of a beer and warming

Our feet close to the fire pit.

So too does the idea of

Our conversations over

Campfire, how our voices

Wonder and weave through

The night as if our language

Grew legs and moved through

The dark. So too does the idea

Of being outside, so too does

The idea of being; the fear

Lifting as if the fire could burn

the virus, turn it to coal and ash;

we could use the light of the fire

to guide us to the next parts

of our collective turmoil.

Day 26 of #the100dayproject - Phase 1: The Slow Reopening

Phase 1: The Slow Reopening

Stay with the couches and carpets,

The wood floors and vinyl. A home

Is a home to stay at home. Brick

And mortar, we all have time

To lay on our floors and look up

At the ceiling as if we are laying

In grass, looking at sky and cloud.

We have the time to memorize

The shapes we find in the popcorn

Ceilings, find the images of our desires.

Then we go upstairs and memorize

Every creak and sigh of the steps.

Through our bedroom windows,

We view the street below, a scenic

Display of asphalt, concrete, trimmed

Lawns, and the parallel line of cars

Each one of them parked, not a single

Space open. All of us going nowhere

Fast.

Day 25 of #the100dayproject - Keys

Keys

We hide them under door mats

and beneath the stairs of our deck,

under the toad stools and sculptures

of frogs inside of our garden.

Brass, silver, steel, and sometimes gold;

they’re inside my coat pocket or

in the slit of your wallet, but we forget

and leave without them, lock

the doors. All of our plan Bs not

where they’re supposed to be,

so we open every screen until

we find a window to open like a door.