I feel like a river
so full I might overflow my banks
for years, so dry, now I am water, falling—
falling like the ginkgo leaves,
that lie scattered like footprints on the sidewalk,
so rain-slicker yellow, they are wet, oh
I had such a fever, once
I was empty as an old Halloween pumpkin,
scraped, drying, dry inside,
dying I was dying, I was lying
on my back, floating on the current
so hot the water sizzled when it touched my skin
I floated so long
hypnotized by love and the sky and
the fever’s fire
Once I was a wound, bleeding
Now I am welling up vivid as blood—
maybe I could be that red rose, blooming,
trembling in November’s
sharp teeth
I am a leaf, falling,
surrendering,
I will not cling,
like a mitten on a clip—
No, I’ll flutter like a bird
float through this
dizzy blue forever
fall freely
letting go, or
winter will never come
and if winter never comes
spring will never bloom
I am a leaf, falling.
River curves away Blue sky sweeps above, cloudless iphone memory
I am trying not to feel like I have to pin beauty down, like a butterfly to a board. But I can’t seem to stop.
Another haiku?
Haiku #2
Captured river, caught Pinned down, like a butterfly iphone memory
I’m thinking so much lately about what is precious, and how scraps of precious things live in my phone, collected there like when Hermione Granger charmed her beaded bottomless bag in the last Harry Potter book, so it could hold everything that was essential to battle Lord Voldemort: a tent the size of a house, books, food, clothes to take the chill off, life-saving medical supplies, anything she needed to move the story ahead—what magic, that story.
Magic like iphones are magic, in their way. My iphone: I resisted getting one for so long, after reading in horror about the Chinese workers who made them—probably still make them, who am I and Apple’s PR machine kidding? The workers housed in gray dormitories in smoggy cities where poison air stings throats and eyes, workers—flesh and blood people—harnessed like plow horses to relentless time clocks.
Down another time-ladder, I slip to another century, another magical book, Little Women—the March sisters and Marmee refusing to wear silk dresses because of the child labor that went into making them. No, the March women wore plain Poplin, unfashionable, virtuous. Except for Amy. Selfish, vain Amy — and guess what? I’ve become Amy, haven’t I?
To assuage my guilt, I use my iphone to collect tiny bits of the world, to fashion a beautiful mosaic of songs I love, of my two daughter’s text messages, of hundreds of photos snapped when the light! THE LIGHT! Stuns me, as if maybe I might someday be trapped in a windowless dormitory, a joyless world where my pictures of nature and cryptic messages from the past will be the only things that sustain me?
Maybe that’s the fear. That if I don’t somehow bottle it, it will all vanish? Is that why I’ve recorded the songs of crickets and cicadas? So in some deep cold winter moment, I can hear summer again? All those notes I make, poem fragments and angry rants and ideas and books I should read, want to read, all the flotsam and jetsam of life flowing past like the mighty Ohio did this morning, when I captured it in my iphone. Snap!
Pinning it all down, like a butterfly, pinned. A picture Lydia texted me, of her, smiling, hugging that pretty Border Collie in her college apartment, if I save it there, and look at her smile, will that keep her smiling, always?
I pour over my collection sometimes, find beauty, pain, insights and treasure: those notes I when I wake and can’t find my journal, tip-tip-typing instead of scrawling, frantically recording those recurring dreams of ice and glaciers and endless winters, mixed in with sunshiny sunflowers in a vacant lot.
Their maracas shake in dark trees: even indoors, windows closed, fans on:
they thrum, thrum, a constant presence, insect-induced tinnitus
I like their cascading drone, insistent announcement—we live!
Humans, greedier than any insect, haven’t killed them off, not yet,
unlike the passenger pigeons, once so plentiful
flocks of them darkened the daytime skies for hours
went from most populous bird on the planet
to extinct in a century, a blink of time.
Martha, last survivor, died alone in captivity
a hundred years ago last Monday
just a stroll from my house,
in a cage at the
Cincinnati Zoo—
it’s still there
on display
empty.
This is very belated, but I’m thankful and honored for the mention over at michaelalexanderchaney.com! Great site, packed with literary advice and reviews. Check out this post for flash publication ideas.
The flash markets on this list include the best around. They’re not impossible to break into. Not as much as say, Willow Springs, whose editor informed us recently here on this blog that only one out of a thousand pieces gets picked for publication from the slush pile. One out of a thousand! That’s roughly the same odds as Bono being the next pope, of sneezing with your eyes open, or [ gulp ] of asteroid 1999 RQ36 smashing into Earth.
While these magazines are not so apocalyptically stingy with their acceptance, they’re still selective (and I’ve got an asteroid belt of rejections from them in my in-box to prove it).
You might think of this list as as continuation of an earlier post on the very best, since these magazines are more challenging to break into than those on the other two lists I’ve compiled: Top 10…
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