DAY 1: HAIKU
Hey there Delilah I hear his hair is magic What do you need more? DAY 2: COUPLET Heart, you gnaw at my lungs, unable to form the words to keep you from starving. DAY 3: ACROSTIC Diderot believed in passions Reveled in a blanket of wished-upon stars Extended his arms until fingers were Airplanes and nothing flew higher than their Motors. He thought someone else's love was reason Enough to love himself. Reason had no place in passion. DAY 4: TERZA RIMA The sleep that paints my face grey is weighted down by a laundry list too long to do in a day I'm dirty socks; days un-kissed an uncharted route from the lines on my wrist. My forehead marked by shapes of doubt Forever aching to figure me out Arms open, shouting, "I'm here for the taking!" Piece by piece; a person breaking. DAY 5: RONDEAU Blueberry picking on an upstate farm a wicker basket on the crux of my arm hands blue, lips blue, tongue too. even the sky looks sadder without you. don't sound the alarm. Wearing two sweaters but still never warm legs sticky-sweet from your blueberry charm When the fruit rots, what's left to do? Blueberry picking. Winds shift and bees start to swarm buzzing around the fruit on my arm lips blue, hands blue, shadows you once knew everything reminds me. blue drenched soles on an upstate farm Blueberry picking. DAY 6: EPIGRAM An unfinished cup of tea is a waste of a perfectly good Saturday. DAY 7: FREE VERSE Back when knotting maraschino stems was a sign of womanly ambition I learned to twist my tongue inside out to present my lover with a gift. The equivalent of seven goats this proof of my femininity was constructed to speak volumes from a tiny piece of earth. Aren't we all searching for that which proves our worth? DAY 8: GHAZAL DAY 9: SESTINA My mother cleans teeth for a living a smattering of dentures and baby whites whose owners have nothing but stories from Lego-building days; lives smaller than the pieces they put together to lives cemented in tooth decay. Rooted. Uprooted. They all talk about life like it's already happened. From the lines on a face, we can piece together what's happened or else, how their hands had once imagined living: pulling life from the ground, rooted and faded like my tea stained window sill, off-whites jumbled together like what becomes of our favorite stories If we are all just stories in the end, who will remember what happened long after we've danced at each other's weddings together? I contemplate the importance of living while the color in my eyes scatters against the whites. My toes rooted in the ground--rooted to past-stories of too many egg whites and healthy mornings where nothing happened but we were living alive together I'm keeping it together ripping pages from my Book of Life, rooted and bound so tightly, I forgot what it felt like to be living. I yearn to be bigger than my stories; to know more than what happened but how it felt in post-Labor Day whites. Throwing caution to the wind; staining all my whites until the colors tie dye together shock, hope, now-or-never, rooted in a life that hasn't happened yet. A slew of bedtime stories, dreams for the living. My mother is rooted in calcium-deficient whites that piece together stories of dreams that happened; from living too cautiously before they put the words together. DAY 10: LIST POEM The Four Questions, Passover Morning 1. Will your extended family like me? 2. How do you expect me to show up empty-handed? 3. You ready for a lifetime of this? 4. Why is this night different from all other nights of the year? DAY 11: CINQUAIN Soup comfort warm dripping steaming stirring the best part about a rainy day in Midtown Soup DAY 12: TANKA made for sunny days prospect park, union square mart hat and sunglasses light peering through the window hand in hand in shorts with you DAY 13: QUATRAIN When moving the dining room table don't get nostalgic at all. Remove all that moves, if you're able otherwise, watch your things fall. DAY 14: SENRYU I met a woman who asked me about living which I'd hardly done. She sang heartbeat songs looked back on 93 years-- promised I'd regret Since I believe here I am dusting off the dreams I tried to forget Since I believe her I am rewriting promise refusing regret. DAY 15: SOUND POEM (called Let You Down) (stacatto) tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk (legatto) booooo booooo boooooo (stacatto) tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk (legatto) booooo booooo boooooo (stacatto) tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk (legatto) booooo booooo boooooo ughughughughughughugughughugh DAY 16: EPITAPH She was quick, curious, playful and strong. A voracious reader, wanna-be ballerina, she saved old snapshots and her emails piled up because she never wanted to forget anything good.
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