My Gibbet

My gibbet is a fine and private place

where a lady may tarry of a summer afternoon

elevated and untouchable--

an ideal love just out of reach

like fruit for Tantalus, all pointless sweetness.

Allen Ginsberg appears from out of the crowd,

pink as a schoolmarm, fat as a Christmas goose

carrying his harmonium

singing about plutonium,

barefoot as any angel, toking on the Golden Blunt.

He looks up, mistaking me for a caught kite

dangling above the street in my gibbet

making other women's children

point and cry

demanding candy or weather reports.

Someone climbs up and ties tin cans

to the bottom of my gibbet

in an atmosphere of giddy holiday.

I die and begin to stink

pieces falling away like confetti.

Here I sway to this very day, high above 

the Emily Dickinson Parkway

a paragon of virtue and demure reserve,

dead as hell

black as a bowling ball

ring still on my finger, an ingenue of the afterlife, 

until gentrification when they'll take me down

because gibbets are out, they're upsetting,

like poetry, 

like dead dodos

like buskers in the subway, beautiful, buried, irrelevant.

_______

for Word Garden Word List.

Word Garden Word List--Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl

 

Hello my little repeated themes! Welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt which features the same author--Diane Seuss-- as last week but a different source book. This time we zoom three years beyond last week's collection and land at Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, from 2018. 

Chick just won't leave and go home

Everyone seemed to like her, so I figure if something was fun once, do it again, right? Pass me another piece of that cheesecake mmm, remember (I say while chewing, holding up an index finger), moderation in all things is my motto! 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own (and don't try to squeak by with a haibun). Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then paint a lovely still life involving birds and bowls of fruit. This prompt remains active through next Saturday. Enjoy!

And now, your List:

aura

blur

barefoot

cattails

charmingly

colonial

flock

gangplank

Ginsberg

holiday

levitated

mallet

minks

nobodies

peacocks

pilgrimage

schoolmarm

smuggled

spangles

tabernacle

Espantajo

 Espantajo,

I kissed you

but my lips knew no remedy

for you, standing cruciform

  in a desert wind.

Espantajo,

wrapped in

  cornhusk feathers,

no sky knows you.

Espantajo,

I could not move you

from your place in the night.

   For you,

all things rise in the west

sleep in the west

make love in the west

and die in the west.

   You married a northern woman

like un espirito muerto

   appearing in a photograph.

Espantajo,

Face away from my house now. 

I have green glass

   bottles sleeping 

in the branches all night

   to snare spirits.

Espantajo,

The same old wind

rattles you

   and you call it talking.

Silencio, damned scarecrow.

If you can't love,

can't move,

can't hold a woman,

   what good are you?

_________

For Dverse Poetics "I Have No Word In English For..." hosted by my friend Dora.

The formal word for "ghost" in Spanish is fantasma, but espantajo, while literally meaning "scarecrow," also colloquially refers to a ghost or apparition. 

Word Garden Word List--Four-Legged Girl

 

Hello my little extra appendages, and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt. Step right up, because our source this week was a Pulitzer finalist in poetry--Four -Legged Girl  by Diane Seuss. It's impossible to describe except to say that reading these poems is like stepping through the looking glass while high on some powerful hallucinogen. It is amazing stuff, and not just long on style, but substance as well.

Find information about Diane Seuss and a selection of her poetry HERE. It should open in a new window. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then wander down the midway as the spirit moves you. This prompt remains active through Saturday.

And now, your List:

absinthe

costumes

dollhouse

flock

flying squirrel(s)

helium

henhouse

horse

jazz

jump rope

lily

ossuary

Papal

porkpie hat

rainwater

tornado

tuna fish

umbraculum

vernix

wig

Weebles

 

Remembering my dollhouse,

full of thalidomide Weebles, armless, legless

and sleepless as well--always upright,

awake all night wandering the rooms.

No use locking the doors or pulling the shades--

the entire back of the house open to flood and tornado.

The whole place an ossuary--urn your keep, Weebs.

And me, Queen of the whole shebang, a six-year-old Persephone.

No surprise, then, to find me in new adulthood,

still covered with the vernix of near-innocence,

living on tuna fish and rainwater, perched

in the henhouse on my hope chest, waiting.

That was when you appeared, rising like a helium balloon,

floating in place beneath the crude umbraculum

with a censer in one hand and a lily in the other,

in full Papal costume, my real-life Weeble-God. 

We fed each other party crackers and absinthe,

le fee verte, "The Green Fairy," faux artists in our henhouse garret. 

Our flock all turned from Rhode island Reds to common crows.

We are a House that cannot be toppled, like Weebles ourselves,

though the giant half-grown bitch beyond the open back wall

keeps trying to poke us, smoke us out, or otherwise tamper

with our great love and legacy--hers if only she would pause,

consider, and accept us as deities. cast in plastic and immortal.

_______________

for Word Garden Word List--Four-Legged Girl

Music: Van Halen Little Dreamer

 

Detroit

 

Detroit is 

sun shining off chrome

Detroit is 

my heart my home

Detroit is

MCDC going  for it

Detroit is

done burning now it's lit

Detroit is

Motown and Greta Van Fleet

Detroit is

Greektown where the people eat

Detroit is

grit! that's right!

Detroit is

Detroit vs. Everybody fight!

Detroit is 

coney dogs from Lafayette

Detroit is

what you work for is what you get

Detroit is

the Freep, DIA, this poem,

Detroit is

my place, my heart, my home. 

_______

for What's Going On? --"ruins" which mentions "the precarious condition of Detroit."  Aw hell no.

Music: Eminem Detroit

Word Garden Word List--Calling a Wolf a Wolf

Kaveh Akbar

Hello my little canids, and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! For our source this time, we have Kaveh Akbar's poetry collection Calling a Wolf a Wolf. 

In it, he writes about addiction, recovery, being gay, and his Iranian background. It is powerful poetry, as honest and demanding of attention as a sandpaper massage. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then, simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then stare at a wolf who stares back at you, as this author does in one of the poems in this collection. This prompt remains active through next Saturday. 

And now, your List:

blue

churches

crow

fumble

fur

goblets

gravity

hammer

hourglass

mail

moonstruck

orchids

parrot

pink

ribbons

saw

soapy

sugar

windmills

wolf