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.