Finally, a poem!

I've been doing the poem a day thing, but I haven't wanted to publish my drafts.

In This Dream, The Sky Signifies Memory

I’m standing in my blue flannel nightgown
at the window. The tops of the California oaks
shimmer below me in the wind. I’m walking barefoot
down the center of a gravel road -- I’m sweating
and my nightgown pinches at the armpits, the neck.

I am getting a baby out of a drawer. The baby
is the color of fog: he is sleeping or dead.
He is too heavy to carry, so I leave him
by the side of the road. I am spitting out persimmon
seeds into the cup beside the TV.

I am climbing a ladder over a hedge made of old
keyboards and kites. I am waking up; I am not
wanting to wake up. Someone is calling my cat.
My cat purrs and spits into my eye. She has
gathered tigers around me. I put on my pointed
leather slippers and climb on to the back
the biggest one. We go searching for my baby.
The sky is the color of water, falling.

This makes me love Alanis a ridiculous amount.

I wrote a blurb for this guy, Michael Wells, for his fantastic chapbook, File Folder. You should ask him to give you a peek; I'm not sure when it's coming out.

Here's the blurbification:

The poetry in Michael Wells' File Folder takes the mundane, spins it around on a fingertip like a magic basketball, and elevates it until it shines above us. Wells’ poetry represents the apotheosis of Americana; in his work, the quintessential American highway stretches up and out of this world. He takes catfish and pool cues and coffee, and does something subtle with them, something just beyond the periphery of your vision. Suddenly they are limned with a quiet light. His poems are understated and sly, melancholy and plain. They’re beautiful like old horses out in a gray empty field are beautiful. When you close your eyes, his images still burn there.

This is a semi-fictionalized account of my mother's family. It's been cleaned up a bit. The title (which I'm not sure works) refers to the fact that shoes were very hard to come by.

in the corner, saved for winter

The clouds sometimes look like eyes. On the back porch, Ruby washes lettuce in a bucket, her apron damp from splashes. Her mother falls, sprawls in the furrows, gingham skirt over her knees, stockings dark with a wet rush. The baby, another baby, is coming. The younger children shriek like crows, stuff dirty fingers in their mouths, clatter into the house. Rachel, the youngest, grabs her mother’s hand, tells her to get up. Her mother calls for Ruby. Ruby plucks a lettuce leaf, sticks it in between her teeth, tasting snow and rust. Her mother yells, Ruby, Ruby. Ruby shakes out her skirt, goes to the pump to rinse her hands. She remembers the elephant she touched once at a carnival, skin as big as the sky, wrinkled like a map, dark eye fixed ahead.