Category: #Verselove

#Verselove 2024 – A Week of Poetry 2

Denise KrebsLeave a comment

8. Zip Code Poem Memoir with Mo Dailey 

Suburban Los Angeles is home
🏡
I never thought I would move
and have
another

I was twenty-two when I moved in

with a friend. Today we live

in wonder across miles

I married you
and for the first time I live in snow–
well, in a house,
an old
frigid one

Iowa farming!
no
🚜
not us, but my
class

One baby and
another on the way our first home
with a yard and
swing
and cuddles, lullabies, and play

girls started school in the desert
Saguaros and heat
home for us
🏊🏼‍♀️
they hoped to never leave

Fourteen years later
back
¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
in Iowa
home

Bahrain didn’t have zip codes, but
One interesting thing is we could get
X delivered to church, school, or hospital with just BOX
1 and Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain

Our retirement home is small and good
two of us
fit just
so, except we can make room for
much company

9. True or False List Poem with Denise Krebs

By Denise Krebs
After Dean Young

  1. I am much younger inside than I appear.
  2. Jury duty is for the birds.
  3. Ishmael is also a son of Abraham.
  4. Guns have no constructive purpose.
  5. The enemy has damaged everything in the sanctuary.
  6. The day you eat it your eyes will be open.
  7. I don’t need a reason.
  8. There is chaos in spilled milk.
  9. You can have too much storage space.
  10. That tiny silver sliver in the sky is still full.
  11. The computer in my pocket rules the day.
  12. Dean Young was an ordinary poet.

read more here

10. Celebration of Yourself in All its Complexities with Joanne Emery

My Life: A Word Want

My life was a word want
It ate, it slept, it haunted
the lexicon and mined for more
It modified its field of study
often always stirring
up another
term
concept
expression
It laughed, it cried, it blurred
the dictionary page to raise its
own little words, like fiff and yit
and whimsical wistful walloping
words of wonder
words of life
Word of Life bringing it light
It wondered, it inferred, it spurred
action in its persistent pupil
My life was a word want

11. Surprising Supplies with Amber

Entrusted Earth Dust

Earth has been entrusted to humans,
But we have neglected our vocation
For the heavy and habitual lust of the
“Ever-expanding consumption of goods”1

Entrusted Earth Dust
can help restore you to your original
anti-consumerism commitment
Curb your buyological urge
with this extraordinary powder
Just sprinkle lightly
On your prefrontal cortex
To ease the addiction
And restore
executive functioning

Made with 100% crushed Amazon returns
Digital delivery sent through WiFi
(No fossil-fuel-guzzling delivery trucks needed)
Cost: absolutely free

Our Mother will thank you

1https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/consumerism

12. An Ode to the Unworthy with Jordan

Ode to the Rock Chipper
You rumble and roar
You don’t give way
to the concrete or asphalt underneath
your dozen rock-hard wheels
You bounce
You heave
You fight back
against the barriers
barummphing to a grinding
halt at red lights
You boom brave and bellicose
with uncovered load
as you roar down the highway
sand and pebbles glitter the way behind you
reminding us that terra firma is anything but
You are the great bearer
of these tiny bits of Earth
in various sizes–
pinheads and pills
bullets and BB’s
gravelly pebbles–
each spilled bit
does your bidding
bouncing behind in your wake
O, Gravel Truck, you have
earned my husband’s
nickname this time–
chipping our windshield

13. The Brain Dump with Barb Edler

Peacock
Featherful eyes fanned out to taunt the world
Staring out at all to flaunt his dominance
Blue-black piercing pupils dot his display
in magic irises of unimaginable iridescence–
meridianroyalcobaltgreenturquoise
Sclera of warm coppery sunshine

His whirled wardrobe
a quiver waving and weaving

Then the early morning
cacophony of peacock’s
screaming shrieking
laughing hahahas
tell us to go home

but we say no,
which is to say
we may look like
weak, scared girls
but we’re not
letting you win

14. If Ever There were a Spring Day so Perfect with Margaret Simon

For Sarah

If you want to be a witness to flourishing,
You are in the right arroyo. Never in
Want of observers, these creatures, down
To their temporal roots in the rock,
Know this once-in-a-lifetime bloom of
Hope is for themselves, and yet
As they share with the animals, the sky,
The sand, and us, we breathe in their life. The
Deepest desire in this moment is to know this
Thing before me. To say thank you. To attend.
Yes, to witness this contribution to creation.
I too have temporal roots, and I
Want this life of hope to always be about
That—thanking, attending, witnessing.

Nolina

April 30 #Verselove – Thirty Thanks

Denise Krebs2 Comments

Thirty Thanks with Sarah Donovan, April 30, 2024

Today was a day to say goodbye until June and write a poetic response to this month of writing poems. I stumbled around for a while, and then I wrote a silly limerick.

There is a sweet group of #Verselove poets
Whose give-and-take melts me, though it
sounds today 
like a cliché
But I still wanted you to know it.

Earlier attempts:

Bandage burns with words
Breathe fresh life into the broken–
Balm of a poem
Drive the poem
a journey of new life
with words you’ll make it
Life is full as the sea
Waiting for your nascent words
A poem to float on
Words rather than guns
Your life, a scope of grace
Shooting only poems

April 29 #Verselove – Rewrite, Redo

Denise Krebs1 Comment

Rewrite, Redo with Scott McCloskey, April 29, 2024

 

What Francisco Oropeza Could Have Said Last Night Instead of Shooting and Killing His Neighbors

Oh, yes, of course, I’ll stop shooting in my yard!
I guess I didn’t realize it was already 11.
I probably didn’t need that last beer.
Yes, yes, your baby needs to sleep.
How about if we sit outside and visit?
I know we’ve quarreled in the past,
and I’m sorry about that.
But I’ve heard you are a kind bunch—
You have a big family, don’t you?
Can I get you a Coke or a cup of herb tea?
Let’s sit on the porch and visit for a while.

April 28 #Verselove – Come, Join My Reality

Denise Krebs

Come Join My Reality with Amber, April 28, 2024

Aging
Barreling through time the steam engine
roars down the track with hope and a
future–the baby, child, teen
never (adult now and
again) thinking
that the track
will soon
end

 

Control

Snap the whip

Grasp the grip

Plug the ear

Do not hear

Break the mood

Feel screwed

Ban the book

Before a look

Don’t lose control

April 26 #Verselove – Borrowed Lines

Denise Krebs

Borrowed Lines with Donnetta Norris, April 26, 2024

I borrowed the last line of Stacey Joy’s genetic cinquain poem for my title today.

Their Heir
 
How else would I know
Where this work ethic came from
Or the demand to be cute at all costs
Or this wide nose

How else would I know
That this desert is where I would take off
Or that wisdom is here in this time
Or that cheese makes everything taste better

I’m their heir

April 25 #Verselove – Genetic Cinquains

Denise Krebs2 Comments

Genetic Cinquains with Jessica, April 25, 2024

I learned the difference between two kinds of cinquains today, thanks to Jessica. Here are the cinquain types with my genetic examples.

American Cinquain – Unrhymed, five-lines with 22 syllables
Line One- two syllables
Line Two- four syllables
Line Three-six syllables
Line Four-eight syllables
Line Five-two syllables

like her
with spotted hands
thin calves, convex middle
help my sister with sewing tasks
i’m Mom

Didactic Cinquain – Commonly used in elementary classrooms (Yes, this was an easy go-to form for my students)
Line One: One word (a noun, the subject of the poem)
Line Two: Two words (adjectives that describe the subject)
Line Three: Three words (-ing action verbs–participles–that relate to the subject)
Line Four: Four words (a phrase or sentence that relates feelings about the subject)
Line Five: One word (a synonym or a word that sums it up)

Denise
diplomatic, empathetic
intuiting, thinking, judging
always wondering about life
me

April 24 #Verselove – Forensic Poetry

Denise Krebs

Forensic Poetry with Susie Morice, April 24, 2024

Keepsakes

I gave myself a drawer to store
a lifetime of toys and memories:
· Precious bookmarks–each with a story
· my Covid diary
· a 50-yen bank note from 1940 (I just used Google Lens to identify that)
· other currency—riyals, rupees, dinars
· coins—including three silver dollars with the birthyears of my grandparents
· a tiny worry doll
· a homemade piano solo CD of my daughters’ playing
· my birth year coin set
· early publications of mine
· Fazal, (a little frog a student made for me)
· a Tell-A-Tale Disney book called Beaver Valley (that my mom bought me in the grocery store in first grade when I learned to read. Mrs. Rhodes had one at school too.)
· a letter from my older brother about my upcoming wedding
· the original Life magazine issue with an “unprecedented photographic feat in color” of the “Drama of Life Before Birth”—from 1965–the same year my very first nephew was born with multiple birth defects from first trimester rubella
· a manicure set my brother gave my grandma in 1954
· 28 peace doves from the hearts of sand dollars
· my first passport
· dried flowers and a journal from a trip across the west when I was a junior in high school,
· Fonzie socks my mom and sister got me (randomly for Valentine’s Day one year)
· my baptism certificate
· my husband’s baby book (holding his only keepsakes, safely tucked into the mess of mine)
· my first letter to the editor (when I finally became brave enough to speak up in public),
· a folder of letters from authors to my students (before the Internet and webpages)
· a tiny wool lamb (remnant of an over-the-top sheep collection I once held)

The drawer is accessible,
next to my bed in the bottom drawer of my nightstand.
I look forward to the day when my grandson will sit on the floor,
looking through my riches,
asking “What’s this?”
and I will give him
whatever he wants.

April 23 #Verselove – The Room Where it Happened

Denise Krebs2 Comments

The Room Where it Happened with Alexis Ennis, April 23, 2024

 

My inspiration for this poem is three-fold–A revisionist history prompt from Amy Kay, today’s #Verselove prompt, and the 2-Day Poetry Contest, where we have to use ten words and write a poem in two days. This year’s words, which some of them undoubtedly stick out like sore thumbs in my poem, are:

quiz, squirrels, concatenate, set, phosphenes, clasp,
abyssalpelagic, brisk, syzygy, and gadding.

Here are links to my 2021 and 2022 2-day poems.

George Washington Carver Goes Back to Iowa in 2023

He didn’t learn the grave import of “1619,”
but he knew McGuffey readers and slates
and slavery. Enslavers killed his mama.
Today’s children have a place to learn
the truth about human enslavement.
And those colors on the murals—
so bold, so brisk, so bright!
The artist shows him modern acrylic paints;
and he longs to clasp and squeeze each tube.

Iowa’s premier middle grade STEM
magnet school has his name out front.
Dozens of Black and brown-skinned children
greet him. He closes his eyes and rubs them,
the phosphenes fire-worked behind his eyes,
deep recesses of memory appeared.

“Where there is no vision, there is no hope.”
he reads over the door of a science room at Simpson College,
where he sees his name on a plaque (And on a building.)
Students set about to quiz the professor
on life and learnings of the 19th century.

Differences between then and now
are immeasurable. Cars? Computers? And NO polio?
The contrasts seem as wide as the space between
the abyssalpelagic depths and the intergalactic reaches
of infinity and beyond. Ah, but the squirrels!
The squirrels gadding about on the grounds
at Iowa State make him smile; they are the same.

What brought him here? What science?
What magic had to transpire to concatenate
systems to form this bewitching syzygy?
In any case, maybe tomorrow
he’ll take the bus to Diamond Grove,
where he grew up with Moses and Susan.
He heard about a National Monument there.
Then he’ll go on to Tuskegee, Alabama,
and spend time in the farm classrooms
and catch up on history.