Unsettling Found Poetry – Sitting on a Book Shelf

lillian6 Comments

It is a wicked time.
Pride and prejudice run amok
fueled by devices and desires.
Politicians play the confidence game,
endangered values center stage.

The dreams from my father
seem so very long ago.
Sunday drives in the family car,
unlocked doors, porches with swings.
That used to be us.

Today I watch appalled.
Certain trumpets spew vitriolic words.
In cold blood stories litter newsprint pages,
stained red in televised image
too often unseen by too many.

Let us pray for a still life
with bread crumbs for everyone,
hope we are not racing a timeline
to the end of [y]our life book club.
Amen.

books

Created from book titles found on a Chicago book shelf:  Wicked by Gregory Maguire, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Devices and Desires by P.D. James, Confidence Game by Christine S. Richard, Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama, That Used To Be Us by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, Certain Trumpets by Garry Wills, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Still Life With Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen, Timeline by Michael Crichton, The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe.

Seth and June

lillian43 Comments

He lived in the pink house, she in the white. They grew up together laughing, climbing the hillside, riding the school bus. No one was surprised when he proposed. It was quietly assumed. Seth and June.

Just days after the wedding, his unit was called. She wept and he promised to return.

Eight months of living with her folks. Skyping when possible, through static and frozen image. And now she sat, secret intact. Large belly pressed against the pane, a new life about to enter theirs. She waited for him to round the bend. Promise fulfilled and multiplied by two.

sandra

100 words.  Photo Credit: Sandra Crook — basis for this week’s Friday Fictioneers flash fiction challenge by Rochelle Wisoff.  

Mama’s Refrain

lillian5 Comments

Hatless, wind ruffled hair
winter snow flake dandruff
red ears and mustache icicles.
Iowa snow gnome I am
when I see my breath.
Ninety percent of your body heat
escapes from your head.
Well mom, that’s why I’m so cool!

IMG_0408

Photo: corner of Boston’s Court and Tremont Streets several winters ago. Story behind the giant tea kettle: manufactured in 1873 by Hicks & Badger; a “sign” outside the old Oriental Tea Kettle shop. Signs were common in early Boston to identify shops for those who could not read. On January 1, 1875 a contest was held to guess its capacity and Boston’s Sealer of Weights & Measures officially measured it.  10,000 spectators stood by as 8 boys and 1 tall man concealed themselves inside the kettle. The court was officially measured to hold 227 gallons, 2 quarts, 1 pint, and 3 gills. An attached mechanism produced steam. To this day, in the cold winter months, steam is seen coming out of the kettle. Starbucks made a wise decision to place their store here!
Poetry prompt: final assignment in Fall 2015 Poetry Apprenticeship with Holly Wren Spaulding:  write an “advice” poem — perhaps from shoulds and should nots of your early days!

 

Parameters

lillian6 Comments

You said twenty miles as the crow flies.
On a hot still day, with a tail wind
or through an electrical storm?
Your six minute cardiac arrest,
like a lifetime. Until it wasn’t.
Birthday note penned in blue,
seventy is the new fifty.
Like a wilted brown-edged rose
is a pink rose bud? Hardly.
Sun rays pierce gathering clouds
as blackness sits beside my pane.
Quoth the raven, nevermore.
Or evermore? Never sure.
And there is a world of difference,
but how do I measure that?

stockvault-clock-128824

Motivated by a Fall Poetry Apprenticeship Week 7 assignment: consider a misunderstood or misquoted line of a poem, or something you misunderstood or misheard. 

 

Papa

lillian35 Comments

 

It was too much. I should have known.

He’d worn long sleeved shirts for almost fifty years, since the Allies liberated Buchenwald. And so they invited him to come. This new museum, with its hall of portraits so high you had to crane your neck. A pile of shoes and a boxcar, like the one he rode after Kristallnacht. “Get me out,” he gasped.

We waited outside for the walk light. Construction workers poured tar onto new pavement, near the numbered sewer grate. That putrefying smell. His face blanched as he crumpled to the ground. And I knew he was gone.

ce-grate.jpgFriday Fictioneers: 101 words.  Photo by C.E. Ayr