She feels her arms too long, her legs too short
To reach the stars, her desired goal for answers on
The questions that wake her at midnight. How many doses
Of moonlight will awaken her dead mother and
How many sprigs of belladonna will feed the dreams struggling
To strangle her? Will Orion hunt down her demons to
Feed his hounds? Is it Virgo or Hydra who will deliver
Her from Nature’s womb? She submits to the universe, to them.
source: Short on Doses and Struggling to Deliver Them
Her spirit rallies while she sleeps under trees, with
No limits. Reality jimmies the lock to her dreams,
Glaze of light bursts borders, crashes onshore, making sport
Of wishes that juggle for attention, nowhere near
Satisfaction. She’s reprieved for a moment, huddles in a
Corner, gathering allies and strategy and tactics, critical
To overcoming reality. No gods rescue her at the crossroads
Of hope and despair, yet she holds close a nostalgia
For the time before birth, when all possibility reigns.
source: With the Sport Near a Critical Crossroads, Nostalgia Reigns
source: For Struggling Familes, a Tough School Year Risks Becoming a Lost One
The abandoned schoolhouse stands sentinel for
Children who left long ago, struggling
For jobs, for food, for worth, for dignity, whose families
Could not support more children. A
Family of horses take over the tough
Work of managing the fields surrounding the school.
They step delicately into a year
Of your dreams, gallop triumphantly, nuzzle risks
You would not take on your way to becoming
An orphan, a genius, an addict, a
Scholar. Horses cannot bring back the lost
Children, whose lives unravel one by one.
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I’m continuing to use Terrance Hayes’s Golden Shovel poem format, as proposed by the Sunday New York Times "At Home" section, for 30 Poems in 30 Days during National Poetry Month.
Take a newspaper headline that attracts you.
Use each word in the line as the end word for each line in your poem.
Keep the end words in order.
Describe the story that the headline is for.
The poem does not have to be about the same subject as the headline that creates the end words.
I’m reading a novel in which a horror dream version of New York City's West Side coexists with the waking version. The night after discovering this facet of the plot, I had the following dream.
I’m asleep in bed, face down, my nose barely free to breathe. People are gathered around wondering if I am merely asleep or actually dead. I can see myself from above, and the sleeping me in bed wants to wake up to prove that I am alive, but I can’t seem to move. The voices talk around me as I try, try, try to move, to wake up in the dream. Finally, I wrench myself awake — and wake up in real life.
In the novel, the protagonist in the dream-city allows herself to be shot point-blank so as to wake up in the real-world city; as she explains to another character, “It’s like a dream—die in it, and you wake up.”
So, was I dead in my dream, though unaware of that, and that is what woke me up? My real waking up felt unexpected, almost violent, a visceral tearing from imagination into reality. Very unsettling.
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I’m participating in the 14th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 4 of the 31-day challenge. It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about. Join in!
