I can check that off the 2009 goals list

Remember when I commented on the utter gorgeousness of this journal? Guess who’s got a poem in it?

Protected: Of apples and autumn

The end of daylight savings time

Daylight Savings Time Ends

Each morning she sets the clock
back, but at the end of the day
the day always ends in
the darkness of the setting sun.

She tries to write by the light
of the moon, but it isn’t always full.

End of the year sprint

Looking over my poetic output for the year-to-date, I see that I am far short of my goal of a poem-a-week. I have probably written something each week, but I have an invisible line in my head that the work needs to cross before I can call it a poem. It does not have to be a polished ready to go out the door final draft; I’m happy with rough and messy first drafts but they need to have something in them that shows promise, some clue that the poem is, in fact, going somewhere before I count it as one of my fifty-two. I figure I have about thirty or thirty-five of those for the year. If I’m going to make it to 52, I’m going to need to finish the year with a sprint. How perfect, then, that this challenge  starts on Sunday.

Who wants to join in?

Because I need a bit of a boost

I have been having a series of days in which the joys of motherhood have remained quite stubbornly on the other side of the fence. It has been exhausting. A trial. Dare I say, unrewarding? Days with very little in the way of short-term payoff. I need to remind myself that if the cliche “It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon” applies to any endeavor, it applies to parenting. This isn’t about today. It’s about the long, long road I need to walk these boys down, the slow growth into manhood. These boys will be men one day, and let’s be honest: though they very clearly have their own little spirits, will be their own men, they will also enter adulthood with a bag full of gifts they got from me. So because it’s been rough, I’m patting myself on the back today.

This Time The Mother Writes a Poem For Herself

I am golden glitter and Elmer’s glue
and big blue stars on construction paper.
I am thick magic markers on the blank page.
I am beads and bangles, scissors and glue
and autumn-leaves-and pipe-cleaner bouquets.
I am popsicle stick castles and bobbing for apples
and popcorn garnish for the tree.
I am the walk in the park and the bread for the ducks
and the acorn that started to sprout.
I am the stick boat in the creek and the sand in the box
and the lemonade stand on the side of the road.
I am all of the childhood days you will likely forget
but the smell of Elmer’s glue will make you smile
and you will always be partial to blue stars
and you will know how an acorn turns into a tree.
And I will know that I am this,
that I am this and this and this.

Until I Do Not

More poetry, this time at Literary Mama. (Special “Desiring Motherhood” Issue, so that’s the common theme running through the poetry and prose they’re putting up right now.)

A brag

After the yoga week of learning to let go of it all (and a post for another time is how much I suck at meditation) I’m diving right back into my ego. I’ve got a new poem up at Umbrella in which a great white shark writes a letter to the editor. That’s got you curious, right? Then go read it.

Surfacing

Finally, an acceptance letter, like an air bubble showing a temporarily stunned surfer which way is up, an acceptance letter.

3,024

I have nine poems that are more or less ready to go out the door. If I’m remembering my maths right, there are 3,024 possible four-poem submission packages I could make out of nine poems. How is it possible that out of these nine poems I cannot put together a single package? How is it possible that I can’t find three poems that hang together and fit for one of the several journals I’ve got in mind. Three thousand twenty-four possible combinations, and all of them fall short.

In which our heroine experiences a minor setback

One step forward, one step sideways. The first of the month, my poems in ouroboros. The fourth of the month, a rejection letter. It’s how it goes, I know. I’m still learning, I know. It doesn’t necessarily mean the poems are bad, I know, just that this particular journal passed on them. I know. It still smarts though. Even with a little hand-written note from the editor, it still smarts. It still gives power to that little voice in my head, the one that says, maybe I’m not that good. Maybe this isn’t going to happen. Maybe it’s not meant to happen.

But it is what I want. More than that, it is what I do. This is what I do. Put a moment on paper. Find, somehow, a word for the way it feels to walk down the street with my little boy’s fingers wrapped around my index finger while he licks at a cherry dangling from his other hand. A word for the cherry, fresh from the Seeland. A word for the stone that I bite out of the fruit so the Boychen doesn’t choke on it. A word for the pie I am going to make later. A word for the way the last bite of pie tastes, the last pie from the last cherries of the season. Find, somehow, a word.

So first I will be disappointed. Then I will find the word. And put it on the paper.