Wrightings

 I hope you are celebrating world poetry day today. If you can write one write a few.  If you can’t write one, read a dozen.

  a line on the palm a line in a poem how many words can one write with a worn nub of a pencil are heartbeats numbered  due to sleepless nights  in games we seek our future  on ouija boards  and rolls of the cleromancy die if you turn a tarot’s noose fate is written in the book  but fortunes folly can lie

 

J. L. Wright Lari Jo Wallace Edwards Sharon Purcell  

Born in the sixties, from a jungle on the other side of the world, body bags on the nightly news were counted. Growing up in the seventies those enemies became church refugees dark skin, smooth voiced, heartthrobs In the eighties, the world was mine eager to explore and learn  ready to make a dent of change Real world crashed the nineties living in a daily grind paying back with nothing to pay forward  The aughts, depressed mortality  paternal loss looking for something  shifting ideas and ideals Teens gifted financial independence  freedom to escape expectations  filling someone else’s dreams Now, the twenties, twist the flesh hoping to be top shelf

  Frost  The new calf lies in the matted grass. Her tired mother stands protective Crisp blades cut the umbilical cord like frost on a wire a bubble of stillness Standing alone The braided wire, taunt a fence between matted grasses mottled with frost bubbles  and frost teeth