Before the poem, News x 2: First, my website is down due to a domain switch, so please save your “Red” poems and post next week.
Second, for Sept-Oct, I will be Boise’s Bown Crossing Library! Writer in Residence, which means that certain Sundays (9/16, 3-5pm is the next one) I will be at the library writing poems on a really cool typewriter called Vox Poplar. Boise people, feel free to stop by. The majority of my fall poems will come from interactions at the library, written on the typewriter and transcribed here.
Onto this week’s stranger….
Erica, whom I met at the grocery store, is working on a creative writing degree, which she discovered by accident when at semester’s end she found that most of her classes were in that field. She writes, she says, “quirky poems.”
The Stranger: Erica
The Word: Red
The poem I wrote:
In the center is red:
vicious color like sun,
far too alive to trust,
and such brightness:
how it lies inside
reminding us
that stories begin
in the wild wood
of ancient memory
and keep spilling
out their blood.
September 17, 2018 at 4:53 pm
Out of the Caldera and into the Fire
Deep within its mountain lair, the dragon begins stirring
Deep within her throat, banked fires begin burning.
Villagers are taking notice. Feeling trepidation, they all tremble.
It’s helplessness they feel. With false courage, they dissemble.
Kīlauea (Key la way ah) has awakened. Her anger must be known.
She’s always been a cranky bitch as olden times have shown.
The priest says, “Perhaps, a sacrifice may save us from our doom.
She likes to eat young girls, unsullied and in bloom.”
They try to keep her calm by sending her some virgins.
When more cannot be found, they dispatch some other versions.
Kīlauea is not satisfied. She doesn’t like the food.
Maculate gals are too chewy. The subterfuge too rude.
And so it begins, a time of great corruption…
Flows of molten stone, tephra in eruption.
Bright red lightning flashes against a darkened sky,
Acidic smoke and gasses, we must flee or we will die!
Down onto the shore, we get aboard our boats.
We must flee the island with our children, sheep, and goats.
Perhaps, we may find refuge on a nearby isle.
Let us travel north and west to Maui. Stay there for a while…
It seems that we are safe here at our temporary home.
We can enjoy some respite. No further need to roam.
To the north in a caldera, Haleakala (Ha lee ah kah la) stirs…
September 19, 2018 at 6:04 pm
Red is my favorite color. What adult has or needs a favorite color?
Silly.
But I reach for red, lifting it up from its polychromatic neighbors.
Red shoes, red car, red cell phone cover, red toaster, red door.
In the heart (what could be redder?) of my home, a black and white kitchen brags with its spots of red.
But lately my mind is on black and white and
its trail of fractured red.
cardinals
priests
churches
martyrs (we feel better because you died)
popes
spirituality trust god loves us priests
Boys holding candles,
praying for forgiveness
for sins inflicted.
Father Paul or Pere or Padre — nameless thousands.
No problem.
Black robes with white collars shuffled to other children.
Cloaked with safety.
Dispensing forgiveness and red.