Happy New Year, writers and readers! I hope your holidays were festive and that the year is off to a good start. Poetry for Strangers will come out every even Friday in 2020 to make way for other projects, including a film based on Fear of the Beast and a tiny house memoir. Onto this week’s stranger…
“I may or may not be a criminal,” Jason said when we met. His face looked calmer than I could imagine mine being in such circumstances. He was sitting at a pub with a mutual friend, awaiting the results of a jury trial about a shipping container in Garden City. Jason, I learned, had a vision for a shipping container park—affordable spaces for artists, startups, and small businesses—as well as a green central courtyard. Though the jury didn’t ask for my opinion, it seemed a reasonable thing to create. As a tiny house dweller who believes most lives and projects can be conducted with ease in under 300 sq. ft., I think it’s a brilliant idea whose time has come. The jury disagreed.
The Stranger: Jason
The Word: Flippant
The poem I wrote:
We tipped our water.
We spit out our food.
We laughed when bread
landed on your hair.
We skittered the floor,
the worst behaved
we could be, until you
lay down crying.
Sorry about our skit.
Sorry we were flippant
even after you cried.
We just wanted you to see
that even with our age,
we are exactly like you.
The Challenge: Do you have a poem in you on this word? Write one here.
January 10, 2020 at 2:15 pm
Listening to The Crescent City Joy Makers
Think blue, velvet-lined cases,
primed with a nickle, dime, dollar,
the sniff of oyster and andouille, mixing
in sweaty June.
Drum set crashing, rising, laughing
at the bland and serious hour ago.
Kegs rumble in,
flippant skirts twirl to smiles,
silly and sly.
Horn men agree to something
suspicious, maybe hidden
in that trumpet case…
maybe not.
Hot grease speaks
hush puppy code
so spicy close
to the soul
of La Vida Dance Hall.
Blatt, squeak, sizzle, crash, dinkle, slam.
Why not shimmy?
Shimmy like your sister Kate.
January 20, 2020 at 9:28 pm
Flippancy
I don’t mean to be so flippant
Or, perhaps, I do.
I’d be satisfied to flip you off,
Your hurt feelings, I eschew.
You think that I’m impertinent
But I call it Schadenfreude.
It seems I find myself the happiest
When others are annoyed.
Some say that I am frivolous,
Thoughtless, and superficial.
I suppose it’s my irreverence
That’s making it official.
On the face of it, I’m facetious
With facets flip, glib, and rude
But know I’ll never suffer
The spoiling of my mood.
I’m accused of being flighty.
Mercurial, I flow.
With wings found on my feet.
I’m here now, there I go.
Sophisticates have labeled me.
They say I’m insouciant.
I don’t even care what that means.
Defining it, I can’t.
Call me irresponsible.
I sing my favorite song.
I’ll not be accused of
Accepting any wrong.
Call me unreliable.
I’ll not give it any thought.
My pathetic apathy
Is all you will have got.
Buh-bye and farewell.
That’s all I’ve got to say
I am, now, quite through with you.
Shoo now! Go away!