Off the Shelf Archive ~July

The archivist has been even more remiss than usual in replenishing the shelves this month. Let's blame it on the mind-melting heat. But she has been reading a lot of poetry in her thirst for some cooling and some relief. Ruth Mowry, of syn-chro-ni-zing, posted an excerpt from  a poem by D.H. Lawrence  accompanied by some deliciously cool paintings of  ocean scenes by Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida earlier in the month, a post which got me back into reading Lawrence's rebellious and ingenious poetry, so I've decided to share two of his shorter poems I particularly enjoyed this month while broiling in the heat.

Most know Lawrence (1885-1930) as a novelist, the author of the shibboleth-defying Lady Chatterley's Lover, which in my childhood always had the dubious rider "banned in Boston" following it around, and for which he spent the latter half of his life treated as a pariah by the literary establishment. He also wrote several more ambitious novels, novelettes, short stories, essays, critiques, plays, and innumerable poems, and his contemporary reputation is of a writer whose 
" ...collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct."  as wikipedia puts it.

So without further ado, this link will take you to the Off the Shelf Archive for August where Won't it Be Strange---? and The Gods! The Gods! by D.H.Lawrence are preserved for re-reading.

As usual, the former selection, three short poems by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, appears below for a final read before going into the archives. Feel free to comment on either selection here, as comments are disabled off the main page. (And suggestions for next time are always welcome.)

Three Short Poems by Anna Akhmatova

Lot' s Wife

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.

Everything

Everything’s looted, betrayed and traded,
black death’s wing’s overhead.
Everything’s eaten by hunger, unsated,
so why does a light shine ahead?

By day, a mysterious wood, near the town,
breathes out cherry, a cherry perfume.
By night, on July’s sky, deep, and transparent,
new constellations are thrown.

And something miraculous will come
close to the darkness and ruin,
something no-one, no-one, has known,
though we’ve longed for it since we were children.

You Thought I Was That Type

You thought I was that type:
That you could forget me,
And that I'd plead and weep
And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,

Or that I'd ask the sorcerers
For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift:
My precious perfumed handkerchief.

Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul
Vicarious tears or a single glance.

And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working icon,
And by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you. 

by Anna Akhmatova 

Image: Portrait of Anna Akhmatova, by Olga Della-Vos-Kardovskaya, 1914

courtesy wikimedia commons

Sign of a Storm

Sign of a Storm

The flies are biting.

My grandmother always called that

sign of a storm.

In another town, reason yields her

lifeblood, torn in the mandibles
of locust men.

Pushed, fretted by the exhaust of south wind,

abandoned by north, mad forms

sweat and twist in a dance

for rain but only the dry thunder

of promises never meant to be kept

rumbles through the dark.

The golden cup is filled

ever more full, overflowing

while the deepest well runs dry.

I sit and wish for a charm

more potent than this clumsy

necromancy, a charm

for the living rain, lightning, change

banked in clouds’ vault,

no key in my hand while

on my cheek black air blusters and

rubs its stale breath,

quaking hot as a rat’s belly.

In the distance only a hermit darkness

pinches at the eye, packed inside a shell of night

from whose void the inmate has long fled.

Later the dog wakes me, her claws

furrowing the door, afraid

afraid to the core

of her simple soul

as the far away

thunder nears.

July 2011

Posted for  Poetics  at dVerse Poets Pub

Sheila Moore is hosting today, and her prompt is to write on the subject of water.

Illuminated Manuscript

Illuminated Manuscript

You bring  a finger stuttering down my cheek.

Each jump it makes, a current arrows through

that pierces skin, a blue and burning streak,

a sigil in the alphabet of you.

Invisible these marks but ever true;

imagine if one finger paints so clear

what manuscripts your body’s written here.

July 2011

Posted for FormforAll at dVerse Poets Pub

 

On alternate Thursdays, Gay Cannon hosts a Form symposium at dVerse. This week, she's chosen to highlight an old poetic form, the Rhyme Royal. This consists of seven line stanzas in iambic pentameter. with an ababbcc rhyme scheme, which can be varied in several ways. I've chosen to write just a single stanza, but this form is often used in longer narrative poems.

Image: Page from the Arthurian Romances,
medieval illuminated manuscript,
northern France, late 13th century
See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Friday Flash 55 ~ Runoff

Runoff

All the tales are the same tale
all the jokes the same joke,
every distant woman
the one woman, every
  shadow man the
one man,until
you choose
to see.

The sudden flash,the implacable rain
leave the heart dripping
the mind blinded
the soul scrying;
joy or misery,
both runoff
from the
same
 storm.

July 2011

Posted for     Friday Flash 55   at the G-Man's

Mr. Dickens Almost Goes to Washington

Mr. Dickens Almost Goes to Washington

I dreamt that Marley’s ghost 

had come to Washington
in his grave clothes, pulling his 

account books,

money boxes and chains

across the cold Atlantic,

stumbling up the Capitol steps,

a staring corpse messenger groaning,

clanking, sent to cry out loud enough

to wake the dead conscience  
pickling in its

golden green brine.

Scrooge was playing troglodyte chess

with rocks and clubs in the marbled halls.

He never stopped speaking as the chains
wrapped across his aureate, vibrating throat. 
When the Ghosts of Cataclysm Present

and Future showed him Ignorance,

and Want; his own face in the mirror 

of poverty, his own feet running 

in the stampeding chaos just outside his 

triple latched door,
his hundred million silent children,

he knew his lines by heart:

"Are there no prisons?

Are there no workhouses?"

I woke up alone,

looking back at the dark

chambers where Scrooge,

not Marley, not the Ghosts

nor Dickens himself,

sat writing the ending.

July 2011

posted for  Open Link Night  at dVerse Poets Pub 

Image: Ignorance and Want, woodcut illustration from  
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens,

John Leech [Public domain], via wikimedia commons

Musical Interlude ~ Some Blues for the Music

Amidst all the others deaths this weekend, we lost a singer I'm only familiar with from rehab headlines, Amy Winehouse, at the age of 27. While I can't say I feel a personal loss, I do feel the sadness that comes with waste of talent, and loss of the gift some are able to share before they're gone. So I've put a blues session together here with some songs from my own past, featuring a few of the many who left us early for reasons related to the musical lifestyle.

First, Paul Butterfield, front man and harp solo for his Blues Band, played Chicago Blues in first a folk acoustic format, then electric. He died of peritonitis due to drug use and heavy drinking on May 4, 1987

Next, some classic slide guitar from Duane Allman, playing the old Robert Johnson tune here with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. While Duane, often called Skydog, was pretty well known for being high, he died in that other killer of musicians, a vehicle crash. In 1971 a peach truck stopped suddenly in front of  his Harley, and the resulting collision took him out. He was 24:

Lowell George next, doing Fat Man In the Bathtub(with the blues) Lots of the reasons he died young are in the lyrics here. George died of an accidental drug overdose in 1979 at the age of 34:

I'll close out with a song Amy Winehouse probably never heard but possibly might have been able to relate to, Ain't No Good Life, Lynyrd Skynyrd, with the gifted Steve Gaines on a rare lead vocal as well as lead guitar. Steve was from Miami, Oklahoma (pronounced, My-am-ah) and died in the same plane crash that killed Ronnie Van Zant and several others in 1977. He was 28.

"I'm gonna get myself together/ yeah gonna try or die in the attempt..."

Golden Boot

Golden Boot

Shoeless skinwalking

through a headstone garden

leaves no footprints

one by one disappearing; finds

no peace gravebrought

no bullets chambered in love.

Guns, war

and money dry up

the green earthbound

shadows, the blue springs

welled in the iris

of the single eye.

Forevernight creeps in,

in mushroom shoes

frogsfeet shadows

skull chaplet of sorrows,

with her autumn’s prey

rolling in castoff tumbleweeds

across the broken earth,

the shuffle of

her chaosskin soles

the antediluvian hissing

of pterodactyl wings

rubbing against leathered bone.

The world puts on

a golden boot lined

with nails, eats the stone

from a green absinthe cherry.

Guns and money grow

the hollow tree, steel leaved,

where our barefoot bodies

hang, the red swinging fruit

leaving no trace

one by one disappearing

no peace gravebought,

no bullets chambered in love.

July 2011

Posted for  Poetics  at dVerse Poets Pub

Brian Miller's prompt this week, On your Feet, featuring inspiration from Willie Cole's artwork, is to write a poem about shoes. (Not sure this is what he had in mind, but this is what happened.)

To see the image close-up of The Worrier, 

© Willie Cole, which inspired this poem, please visit

 Willie Cole.com

Friday Flash 55 ~ Pinwheel

Messier 101(Pinwheel Galaxy) 

Pinwheel

Just before dawn
you came across the desert
to  my heart's sill

as I lay heavy with sleep;
a light breeze of life
lifting

the blue curtains,
setting all the
pinwheels spinning.

Your unraveling fingers
tapped my shoulder, there in the
morning of the world.

I sighed and turned,
knowing not
to open my eyes.

July 2011

Posted for    Friday Flash 55   at the G-Man's

Fiction in  55 words for fun and absolutely no profit.

Image of Messier 101 obtained using the Wide Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope, La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain.. Credit: R. Barrena (IAC) and D. López (IAC). courtesy  wired.com

String of Beads; repost for Meeting the Bar: Crit Friday at dVerse

This is a repost of  an older poem that was originally written for the January Challenge at Facial Expressions Poetry Circle on Facebook. It also was a OneShotWednesday selection at OneStopPoetry. I think I am far enough in time from it to benefit from a good critique, as I had numerous problems writing it, as I always do with sonnets. Looking forward to some honest appraisal of what works here and what doesn't. And welcome to everyone from  dVerse Poet's Pub Crit Friday hosted by Luke Prater.

String of Beads

A circle’s string of beads decks out a hook

beside a broken wishbone on a nail,

a mouse’s skull within a warded nook,

all relics hidden from the cyclone’s tail

and given me to make a summer song.

Sharp shadows thrown by arbitrary light

convinced my heart that time had right or wrong,

unlike the void that opened with the night;

that will could make things speak that had no tongue

and days be numbered in a wheel of sense

with grace, like beads so innocently strung

beside the broken bones for recompense—

     but now I draw a breath in quick dismay

     to find the sickly smell of sweet decay.

January, 2011

Meeting the Bar:Crit Friday is an open platform for honing the tools of the writer's craft through constructive criticism in a protected community environment. Be sure to stop by and read Luke's ground rules before linking up, here at dVerse

Love Poem for the Interior Paramour

"Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing..."

~from Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour,

by Wallace Stevens

Love Poem

for the Interior Paramour

Beneath the bald stare of

the filigreed moon we meet

for our invisible rendezvous,

the interior paramour and I.

So malleable, so attuned; so mine

his liquid compliance, fluid flip

of a fish's tail, splashing away

the dusty day, the burned char of it.

He listens solemnly sometimes

to the lilt and lift of my tenderest

telling, sometimes with that laugh

that cracks open the heart

to show a sweet pecan sauced

in dark molasses night,

a ripe peach that punctures

under a passing thumb.

I walk out for him my shadow 

days, my endless nights, I lift my 

glass to him under the moonblinded sky

and feel his lips, warm and dry

take the wet wafer from my ruby tongue.

Then he gives his murmured benison,

heartborne through each stained glass lumenal,

a conduit parsing my promises into light

kindling his ageless face

as he reads the breviary of our love

prayer by prayer in the dark,

each of these saying: this is enough.

July 2011

"Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough."

~Ibid

Image: Lovers in the Country, Gustave Courbet, circa 1844 Oil on canvas

courtesy wikimedia commons

Devil's Dictionary

This is posted for the Grand Opening at dVerse Poet's Pub. Tonight is our first Open Link Night, and everyone is welcome to join Brian Miller, Claudia Schoenfeld, Natasha Head, Joe Hesch, myself and all the rest of us at dVerse to link in one of your poems and visit with the community. Look forward to seeing you there.

Devil’s Dictionary

It’s good

to shut the red

book and be

myself again

after the delirium,

to no longer be

a vade mecum

for obstreperous

demons, tauntingly

misquoted,

a dictionary

for devils;

to see the colors

unprismed from

your illusive illustrations,

random wind ruffling pages

and not your spirit’s soft

secret touch;

to feel my hair

an animal’s satiny pelt

and not a misprinted

text of memories

written across

your hands.

It’s good,

this stillness, good

even to grow old

reading my

next words 

from a

blank sheet.

July 2011

The original Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, was a collection of satirical definitions posing as an actual dictionary, and contains some of the sharpest wit in the English Language. I have used the term here in what I intend as a completely different context, but after several comments, felt I ought to reference Bierce's work. You can read it online here at Project Gutenberg.

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poet's Pub

Also posted for the Last OneShotWednesday at One Stop Poetry

which closes its doors with this final event.
Stop by and say goodbye to a great site.

Image: Still Life with Rarities, Jan van der Heyden, 1712, oil on canvas

Jan van der Heyden [Public domain], via  wikimedia commons

Ragnarök

Brothers will fight and kill each other,

sisters' children will defile kinship.

It is harsh in the world, whoredom rife

—an axe age, a sword age

—shields are riven—

a wind age, a wolf age—

before the world goes headlong.

No man will have

mercy on another.

~from Völuspá (Prophecy of the Seeress) the Poetic Edda,

trans Ursula Dronke

Ragnarök

Death runs on the wild wind

a wolf, a black dog

biting the throat

Changeling child

sleep while you can

Those who do wrong

eat those who do right

flesh is crackling

Changeling child

learn while you can

Brother’s arms

a snare for your raping
bile and black bruises

Changeling child

fight while you can

Mother’s arms

your last bed making

soft under swampgrass

Changeling child

run while you can

Death calls from the wild wind

none will have

mercy 

Changeling child

live while you can

July 2011

Posted for the final   Form Monday  at the inimitable and irreplaceable 

One Stop Poetry

Today's prompt is by Brendan MacOdrum of Oran's Well, to write to a mythic reference. Thanks to Brendan for an exceptionally lucid and living article on myth and poetry, his own particular blue ocean of poetic endeavor.

Thanks also to Gay Cannon, for hosting this series so ably since its inception.

****

Ragnarök, often called the twilight of the gods, more aptly translated as the fate or final destiny of the gods, is the moment in Norse Mythology ordained since time's beginning when the divine Aesir will fight, slay yet ultimately be defeated by supernatural embodiments of evil such as Fenrir the Wolf, and the world as we know it will perish in a great cataclysm, to be reborn purged and new. 

The times preceding it are said to be extremely ill-omened, and so, this poem.

Image: Ragnarök (motive from the Heysham hogback) by W.G.Collingwood, appearing in the 1908 English translation of  The Elder or Poetic Edda, by Olive Bray

courtesy wikimedia commons

Brigid's Song

 

Brigid's Song

Run with me where the moon

wavers in the gloaming

when the spears of the last seed sown

begin to bend their golden heads,

heavy and full in the pod.

Run with me in the dawn's mist,

then lay your head

where it belongs to be

so fine so weary

on the breasts that call it home.

Let the seed untie, let it blow in the wind

between the worlds.

Let your hands pass where

the skin is thin. Let the kite

give her harsh cry unheard.

In the space of a night the field is turned,

sown, and the crop fallen to the sickle moon.

The unchancy cailleach is full stoned.

The fires  flare and  smoke fills the deep woods

from the blaze of the heartwood that falls

but when the snow bites, and thought

and  memory lead the wild hunt

and what's green falls to the white sword,

remember the promise of all things

born to die and watch me go.

June 2011

 Posted for   OneLastShootSunday   at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

This is posted with sadness for the last One Shoot Sunday as One Stop Poetry disbands. Thanks to all who have made the place what it was, and especially to Chris Galford for these always challenging Sunday photo prompts.

Process Notes:

Brigid was the Celtic goddess associated with poetry, healing, and 'all things of high dimension.' She was Christianized as St Bridgit. I have taken liberties with her here and made her a summer goddess. The cailleach is the hag of winter, whom those familiar with my writing have met many times before. Thought and Memory were Odin's two ravens, and the wild hunt is an ancient folk myth prevalent across many cultures, of a spectral group of hunters. You can find more info on it here

Photo by Rosie Hardy

Transition~dVerse Poet's Pub

The crew at the new poetry watering hole, dVerse~Poet's Pub couldn't wait for opening day (July 19th) to start the party, so they're laying down the paintbrushes and inviting everyone to their Under Construction link-in. The following poem is my BYOP* contribution to the festivities. (I have a lava lamp, too.)

Click here to get your hand stamped and enter the Pub.

*Bring Your Own Poem

A Bad Hoss, Charles Marion Russell, 1904

Transition

You graciously fed me

redneck breakfast, 2:00 am

at Jody’s Night Owl Café;

a short stack of trouble,

scrambled brains

on toast and hash

browned  heartache

on a  plastic plate.

You  spent your days with

a hammer in your hand, but

you thought you were

quite the cowboy.

When you noticed I was a

trick rider and a straight shot,

you said I could be 

Sweetheart of The Rodeo.

But I took one look at

what you had racked up

in the chute,

that kicking, twisting

neutron bomb of a bull

you wanted me to ride,

and I decided

to get gentrified.

You got the cold ones, 
the juke joint and 
the sad country song. 
I got a crisp Merlot

on a round table 
with a crimson

cloth, lavender 
candlelight,

Miles Davis on the box, 
and a wild-eyed 
leftist poet

in a bohemian pub,

who says that 
kissing a woman
is better 
than drinking flowers.

July 2011

 Some optional musical accompaniment, in the spirit of dVersity:

Here's the Miles:

And here's the saddest country song I could find

Apparently there was a hippy in the group as well:

Image: A Bad Hoss, by Charles Marion Russell, 1904

Charles Marion Russell [Public domain], via wikimedia commons

Clockwork Rose

Clockwork Rose

The hope was for

a congruency,

match of lacelike cogs

each empty space in one filled

by an organic prominence
in the other, turning both
effortlessly in motion,

combined in purpose,
separate, joined.

Instead two labored

in the workshop where

the scarlet rose peels her petals;

only one came out

seized, tangled and twined,

disambiguated, jammed

mechanism clanking, to fall

finally in the rusting wind,

scrap and dead leaves.

July 2011

Off the Shelf : I Am The People

I'm posting this in response to Brian Miller's final prompt for

Friday Poetically at OneStopPoetry

Thanks for everything you've done at One Stop, Brian. You yourself have done much to speak out and make a difference in this world.

The prompt was to write something about  a movement, an organization or a person who is making a difference. I'm unable to get something of my own up due to commitments today, so I'm using this poem by Carl Sandburg that points out that all change begins with empowering the people. I originally posted it this winter during the Wisconsin protests by those supporting union rights, and the rights of the worker to live decently by the fruits of his labors. The Union movement that began during the days of the robber barons and continues today faced violent opposition. Many were murdered, injured and jailed in the protests and struggles of the early 20th century to Unionize. Nonetheless, they fought on, and eventually brought an end to child labor, established more equal employment opportunity for minorities and women, brought us the minimum wage, the eight hour day and the 40 hour week, worker benefits like medical care, retirement and vacation, and everything we take for granted about the modern workplace. 

The men and women of the early Union movement fought and won for us these things with their blood, sweat and dedication, so that's who I 'm highlighting here for this prompt.

 

 

 

I Am the People, the Mob

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

Carl Sandburg

Last night, using a procedural gimmick, the Wisconsin GOP stripped union workers of their collective bargaining rights. The right for workers to bargain with their employers for safe and fair working conditions was won with the blood, protests, patience and suffering of tens of thousands of workers in this country over many years, and in one night, the public workers of Wisconsin have had this right taken away. Meanwhile, wealth in America continues to be funneled upward to the top, profits are privatized and risk and loss are socialized. Forbes magazine today released its annual list of the world's billionaires and states : "The 2011 Billionaires List breaks two records: total number of listees (1,210) and combined wealth ($4.5 trillion). This horde surpasses the gross domestic product of Germany..." As of 2010, more than 44 million Americans now live below the poverty level, and the income gap between rich and poor has reached historic levels.   Does anybody see anything wrong with this picture?

Image :  Wisconsin Protests, AP, courtesy of The Voice of Detroit

Friday Flash 55 ~ No Other Gods

No Other Gods

except for that big gold thing over there…

Don't know much

about religion,

but when I was 12,

Mama got a crush 
on the good-looking preacher

at the Calvary Baptist Church,

so for six months,

we all went to church.

Three times a week.

Today everybody's 

butt's in the air,

worshiping the

Almighty Big Buck.

Wasn't there

something in there

about a Golden Calf?

Posted for Friday Flash 55 at the  G-Man's

fiction in 55 words for fun and absolutely no profit.

  A young hedgewitchlet,

dressed for Sunday School

       

Image:The Golden Calf, as in Exodus 32:4, by James Tissot
Illustration, circa 1900, courtesy wikimedia commons

Summer Night Dyad

In honor of the last One Shot Wednesday hosted by the team that has brought so much encouragement and growth to so many writers, myself most of all, I'd like to dedicate this entry with the thanks of a full heart to 

Brian Miller, Adam Dustus, Pete Marshall, Chris Galford, Claudia Schoenfeld  

& Gay Cannon.

You will be missed.

Summer Night Dyad

I.

The Night, The Moon and The Lovers

Up and above in the swinging night,

far from red walls and flying knives,

the kestrel flies with a mouse in her mouth.

The scorpion wags her tail in the south.

The firedrake sleeps in his sulphurous cave

spooned in the high cliff above the wave.

A flickering lantern orange and brief

still fights the moon in her silver sheath;

two lovers sail in a boat of breath

and love till they have nothing left.

When the heart is spent and hollowed like clay,

it becomes a lamp to light the way

Skybluepink lips of deepest night

cup the moon in an overbite;

she’s a melting scoop of vanilla ice cream

 tipped in a cone of clouded dream.

The flame persists though the wind is sharp;

The faeries come out to dance to the harp.

II.

Shooting Star

The beating heart of night rocks

the star cradle on her breast gently gently

in the warm southern wind,

but still every so often a star falls out

bright and sudden, a streak thin as a broom straw

scratched off against purple floor,

a white chip on black china

a match that lights

and is blown out.

Oh to be in that cradle rocking, lulled

with the whistling of constellations,

the voice of a mother, vast and mild

caring as much as she can

for her brood of legion,

at the edge of

the ear

humming

lullabies;

to rock

and sleep

then

to fall,

a

brief

light

in the

dark

to 

wish 

on.

July 2011

Posted for   OneLastShotWednesday   at  OneStopPoetry

Process Note: Sky blue pink is a color my grandparents used to tease me with as a child. If I complained about wearing something, they would always say, "What do you want, a sky blue pink dress?"

Photo: Blue Moon with Skybluepink Clouds, by joy ann jones, july 2011