Slice of Life – A Saturday in St. Paul

23 April 2024 TwoWritingTeachers.org

This year's 10 words are: verklempt brackish fossicking lodestar parrot sickly glossy rag flush pickle

I woke up on Saturday to an email in my box with the ten words I needed to use in a poem for the 2 Day Poem Contest. (If you think you might want to participate, you can subscribe to get their email updates for next year’s contest.) I like to try this challenge because it’s like a puzzle.  A two-day version of Wordle or Connections, perhaps.

I took this screenshot and sent it to our family group. My son-in-law and I looked up the words, and he started making jokes about how to use them. Then we continued on our day: out for coffee in glossy mugs, hiking, out to a deli for Reubens or matzo ball soup, on to a consignment shop fossicking for treasures, then home and out to ie Italian Eatery for the best meal in a long time! I think Minneapolis has some of the best food opportunities I’ve ever had the joy of eating.

Anyway, my poem got sent in without much thought except for the joyful time I’ve been having this long weekend with these dears: my daughter, her hubby, and mine. Today we fly home.

Someday, I hope to write a 2 Day Poem with something more than solving another word puzzle.

A Saturday in St. Paul (Ars Poetica)

Poetry, I’ve always said,
is full of the awestruck
Quietness of emotions
In a verklempt rag doll,
Moldable and mending.

Poetry is best served in
glossy, big-handled mugs,
along with a Reuben sandwich
and a pickle spear on the side.

Finding a good poem is
like fossicking at the
vintage store, most items
ignored for others to mine,
but some long for me,
treasures of life to embrace.

Poetry is a bowl of
matzo ball chicken soup
when one is feeling sick,
and reconciliation for the
one who remains sickly.

Poetry is a nature preserve
wrapped up in the big arms
of a lodestar of grace.

When all I feel I can do is
parrot other poets, it is their poetry
that intervenes and freshens
the brackish tears of my heart.

Poetry is the royal flush
of life and literature, a hand of
beauty and hope among
the high and low cards of my history.


More 2 Day Poems: 2021, 2022, 2023

April 12 #Verselove – A Poet Like Me

A Poet Like Me with Anna J. Small Roseboro, April 12, 2024

We chose a poet from among those born in the same month to inspire our poetry today. I chose a striking line for my golden shovel from a new-to-me poem Rita Dove’s “Ars Poetica”: “What I want is this poem to be small.”

Ars Poetica

What a poem needs
don’t presume to know, but I
want it to brandish truth.
Is that fair to ask?
This fearful world needs a
poem to smack us alive,
to resuscitate trust, to
be a balm for large (even
small) wounds of our soul.

 

Poetry Friday – Ars Poetica

Last summer I learned about the 2-Day Poem Contest. I wrote an Ars Poetica poem with last April’s words here. Then this month I actually signed up for this April’s 2-Day challenge. On Sunday morning I woke up remembering it was coming up. I realized I had 16/48 hours left to get started and finish, which actually worked better for me. I can’t imagine how many changes I would have made and undone over 48 hours!

I didn’t spend much time finding a story where all the words could live together somehow. Instead I did another Ars Poetica poem.  The words for this year were bog, noctambulant, slink, peachy, broadside, spine, wax, mnemonic, cross, toast.

Ars Poetica

After Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be
Stirring me in small hours
For noctambulant awe,
A stroll to revive my heart,
Even a mnemonic to start
To help me remember

A poem should be
Mother Mary burned on toast
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Heavenly, holy tidings
Hitting me broadside
Shivers to my spine

A poem should be
Absent plugs of wax
And corked up feelings, but
Lift my mind’s fog
As I cross the endless bog
Of misunderstandings

A poem should be
Peachy and creamy
And full of dreamy
Waves of sweetness
But not sappy or jejune
A little sour too for my soul

A poem should be
Not a still slink calf
Aborted too soon
Not silent and dull
But one born fully alive
Fragile yet ready to thrive

A poem should just be


Today is Poetry Friday and the roundup is happening at Jone Rush MacCulloch’s blog today. Head over there for lots of good things this morning.