Category: #Verselove

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.

April 21 #Verselove – House in the Sky

Denise Krebs

House in the Sky with Darius Phelps, April 21, 2024

Little ones, I will burn up all the guns for you
I will blacksmith them into plow shares and pruning hooks
And we will meet in the fields to plant hope and a future
The rains will come gently and just when needed

Little ones, I will burn up the carbon dioxide for you
I will fashion CO2 catchers to run your car and toys
And we will stop digging and warring over fossil fuels
Green spaces and clean air will fill our world

Little ones, I will burn up white supremacy for you
I will incinerate hatred in the world’s psyche
I will write peace and love in your hearts
And we will live, and we will live

April 19 #Verselove – Holding Hands with Poems

Denise Krebs

Holding Hands with Poems with Stef Boutelier, April 19, 2024

 

On Being Armed in America
A Fibonacci Poem

Here
minds
crush life
Delirious
with fear of losing–
Don’t drive. Don’t ring. And don’t mistake.

 

Things About You I’ve Memorized

  • your enthusiastic exuberance
  • holding you before we sleep
  • your faith grounded in life
  • your life grounded in faith
  • your turning phrases into rhymes
    and making up songs on the spot
  • your hospitality that goes on and on
  • your work ethic and support
  • your self-deprecating sense of humor
  • your healthy ways rubbing off on me
  • growing old together
  • holding your hand
  • this birthday that belongs to you

 

April 17 #Verselove – Why Do You Write Poems When…

Denise Krebs1 Comment

Why Do You Write Poems When…with Andy Schoenborn April 17, 2024

Why Do You Write Poems When Ralph Yarl Was Shot Yesterday Just For Ringing The Wrong Doorbell?

Because Ralph is in critical condition and the world needs to know him. Ralph is in high school, a musician who plays the bass clarinet, loved, beloved older brother. Gentle band member. He’s 16, so a fairly newly-licensed driver, but an auto accident didn’t get him in trouble yesterday. He forgot his phone when he was sent to pick up his two young brothers from their friend’s house. Without the address, he accidentally went to the wrong house and rang the doorbell. A “scared” white man with a gun shot him in the head. (Why would a white man with a gun fear an unarmed teenager?) While Ralph was down, the white man went out and shot him again.

Why Do You Write Poems When Ralph Yarl Was Shot Yesterday Just For Ringing The Wrong Doorbell?

Because the person who shot Ralph walked out of the police station and went home, not charged with a crime. (Did I say that Ralph is in the hospital in critical condition?) Clay County Prosecutor Zachary Thompson (prosecutor@claycopa.com) and law enforcement in Kansas City, Missouri, we’re talking to you: You need to hold your folks accountable for hatecrime hatred and attempted murder—because what else could have been the possible purpose for that second shot?

Why Do You Write Poems When Ralph Yarl Was Shot Yesterday Just For Ringing The Wrong Doorbell?

Because I am white, and my adult children and their partners are white, and my grandson is white. What kind of world is it where all of them as a group, or one at a time, could have rung that wrong doorbell in Kansas City and not have been shot? But a young Black man from his own town, just a few blocks from home, can’t? I write poems because I need to remember that my white privilege needs dismantling, disrobing, demolishing, destroying. I write poems because I can’t stand by and allow our nation to pretend that racism is in our past.