Poetry Thursday

A Hand
Jane Hirshfeld

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb. Nor is it palm and knuckles, not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow, not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins. A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines with their infinite dramas, nor what it has written, not on the page, not on the ecstatic body. Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping— not sponge of rising yeast-bread, not rotor pin's smoothness, not ink. The maple's green hands do not cup the proliferant rain. What empties itself falls into the place that is open. A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question. Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs. via the Academy of American Poets image via JosyDoodle

SpamBot Poetry

I love these. From a spambot message I got today:

Forms of life. In the natural world there are need such a
woman for his wife. But that sting and depending upon the
utterances contained in like a circle of fire, and was,
o king, seen sometimes by the civil powers so this church
seems to have and suras, together with the best soldiers
of will cease to live.' sanjaya continued, 'yuvutsu joy
of the real blazing june! Tell me about it? Assuredly protect
you. Ye srinjayas, entertain in the center of the building,
does not contain it's a cool evening and the creek is very
wet, his works both dogmatists and sceptics appealed,.

Calling Home

Don't know why I am only now alerting my 15 readers to the presence of this book in the world.

Full disclosure: I am related to the author, Rebecca Flowers, though not by blood (just incredible affection).

So, but anyway, in the interest of perhaps alerting one perfect reader for this perfect summer confection of a story, here goes.

Our heroine, Prudence Whistler, is the kind of person who likes to have her life all planned out, and when we meet her, pretty much everything she'd worked for has blown up in her face. Fired from her job, then unceremoniously dumped by her wimp of a boyfriend, she finds herself with no Plan B.

Luckily, Prudence Whistler is also the kind of person who finds clean pajamas and a DVD of The Godfather to be the perfect spiritual solace. She's tough, tougher than she ever imagined. And she becomes the unwilling companion to a spastic, ill-tempered cat. And her single-mom sister shows up, pulling lots of baggage behind her. Then there's the cute but gruff guy who owns the coffee shop up the street...

The book is witty, often wise, always warm, and definitely a lovely way to unwind.

Yes, it's summer, people. Escape.

Poetry Tuesday

Persephone, Falling

by Rita Dove

One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
flowers, one unlike all the others!  She pulled,
stooped to pull harder—
when, sprung out of the earth
on his glittering terrible
carriage, he claimed his due.
It is finished.  No one heard her.
No one!  She had strayed from the herd.

(Remember: go straight to school.
This is important, stop fooling around!
Don't answer to strangers.  Stick
with your playmates.  Keep your eyes down.)
This is how easily the pit
opens.  This is how one foot sinks into the ground.

[poem via poets.org and the Academy of American Poets. Image via Special Organic Soils]

Hearing-Apparated

If you know me, even a little, you'll recall I have this, um, thing that happens pretty frequently, when I hear the right words wrong, or hear the wrong words right, or...whatever, it just happens a lot, okay?

Some examples are in order:

There was the Bagel of Doubt incident;

The Avril Lavigne "Promise me you've never gonna find your blanket" moment (all right, that was Mona's moment, but I take credit for Mona so I will take credit for the moment);

and the "Disappointment Only" moment.

Now has come this:

I am, on a late Tuesday afternoon somewhere in the recent past, in charge of three noisy tired children who are playing a noisy tired game of Harry Potter and the Omelet Afire upstairs and probably bringing their fake wands within centimeters of their precious eyes, but whatever.

I am tired too. I will deal with the eyes-poked-out issue if it becomes one.

So I am downstairs getting dinner when I hear my daughter shouting, in her best Harry Potter voice:

"It's Smelly Armpits! It's Smelly Armpits!"

Hmmmm.

I'll send a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com to anyone who can decipher what she was really saying.

Ah, now you're reading, aren't you? Cheeky monkeys.

Babel Babel

Last week I picked up a charming reader, poet Marcelo Valdes from Chile, which in turn has inspired me to dust off my Spanish grammar and head south in search of information on a Colombian poet I'd admired, Luz Helena Cordero.

Seeking her, in turn, led me to this excellent blog, El Libro de Isaías, in Colombia.

Perhaps I will actually speak proper Spanish one of these days. One can hope for miracles.

Or one can work around them, thusly.

[image of the Tower of Babel by Hendrick van Cleve]

Putting the "Real" in Real Estate

Apropos of nothing.

I had another one of those moments today.

You know the ones. "The Brie is in the roadway" moments. The "never leave your pizza burning" moments.

Those moments. These seem to be most prevalent at the end of the month, which is good, because then I can find the permalinks quickly when I go through my archives.

Anyhoo. This one went like this:

Passed a house for sale today. Nothing unusual about that.

Took a doubletake at the sign, though.

Because for a minute...

I could swear...

that right above all the information about the agent and company...

it said...

"Disappointment Only"

[image via shipoffools.com]

Bagel of Doubt

That's what I thought I heard said this morning on a perfectly ordinary radio commercial. I have already forgotten what was being flacked, but I will never forget this phrase.

I have spoken before in these pages of my peculiar connection to some commercials. But I haven't divulged all my peculiarities with respect to the interaction between various media and my head.

What happens is, I frequently hear an important phrase or term differently than intended (i.e., WRONG). It's the Pompitous of Love syndrome (a malady not to be confused with the 1996 movie of the same name but different spelling).

Like all conditions, this one has its merits. I mean, some writers would kill for a phrase like "bagel of doubt." It's so evocative for that, uh, bready but empty-in-the-middle feeling of, uh, doubt.

Anyway.

The best mis-hearing I ever committed was a few years ago when, wakened from a dead sleep by the radio blaring one of its conventional truck-jackknifed traffic stories, I could have sworn I heard the announcer caution that "the brie is scattered across the roadway."



(graphic via toothepaste for dinner)