Elvis Redux by Nan Dillingham

is Elvis growing up in Tupelo 
in a close-knit family with little money
attending the Assembly of God Church 

music and preaching registering deeply 
moving to Memphis with his parents 
living in public housing and low-rent homes

roaming Beale Street for clothes 
absorbing black blues and gospel 
wearing his hair long 

letting his sideburns grow
roaming the halls of Humes High 
dreaming of singing with the Blackwood Brothers 

working after graduation at Parker Machinist Shop 
Precision Tool then Crown Electric Company 
driving a truck and going to night school 

dropping by Sun Studio
making a demo for his mother 
then later cutting “Big Boy” Cruddup’s

“That’s All Right, Mama”
backed by “Blue Moon of Kentucky” 
rebuffed by the Grand Ole Opry 

officials suggesting he go
back to driving a truck which he does 
but not before appearing on

“Louisiana Hayride,” the Opry’s rival 
meeting Colonel Tom Parker, ex-carney 
refusing his contract

walking into the induction center
speaking courteously 
“Sorry, Sir, I’d like to serve 

but my mama’s got this heart condition 
and my daddy needs me” holing up in his cab on a layover

reading the Bible
listening to pop tunes 
and country music radio

seeing Ann-Margret, Swedish sex kitten
on a billboard 
on a long haul to LA

lusting for a moment, then coming home
to his doe-eyed wife Pris
and daughter Lisa Marie who favors him 

all full lips and limpid eyes 
sometimes sermonizing
in a white frame church 

on Sunday morning
singing with the quartet
letting the sweet, sweet Spirit lift him up

sitting on the front porch swing 
of his doublewide
strumming his guitar

in the honeyed twilight
of grace land 
hair white like Vernon’s 

an ironic smile playing on his face
wondering only once in a while 
what might have been 

an angel hovering

Windchime By Tony Hoagland

She goes out to hang the windchime

in her nightie and her work boots.

It’s six-thirty in the morning

and she’s standing on the plastic ice chest

tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,

windchime in her left hand,

hammer in her right, the nail

gripped tight between her teeth

but nothing happens next because

she’s trying to figure out

how to switch #1 with #3.

She must have been standing in the kitchen,

coffee in her hand, asleep,

when she heard it—the wind blowing

through the sound the windchime

wasn’t making

because it wasn’t there.

No one, including me, especially anymore believes

till death do us part,

but I can see what I would miss in leaving—

the way her ankles go into the work boots

as she stands upon the ice chest;

the problem scrunched into her forehead;

the little kissable mouth

with the nail in it.

Attic by Kathryn Stripling Byer

Not buried but piece by piece carried up narrow stairs into the rafters, her leavings have summered through forty-five seasons of Bible-Belt heat. I can stand only so much of being up here, on this late August afternoon, dead-end of summer in which I come looking for her again. In the usual places. This jewelry casket, for instance.  Inside it she stares from the heart of a foliate brooch that I raise in a tangle of gold chains I don't try to loosen.  She's still here: a face I have used up with wonderings. High cheekbones. Hollows. A mouth slightly open and inside that vacancy, no invitation for me to speak out of it.

The Little Boy and the Old Man by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems
Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the little old man.

An Afternoon In The Stacks by Mary Oliver

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here, the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

The Way You Wear Your Hat by Ron Padgett

Boing, boing, boing
is the sound the exclamation point makes
when it leaps around the page alone
like Fred Astaire in a tux at night
when he thinks that Ginger Rogers
is mad at him and only his toes
will lighten the glumness. Oh!
what a beautiful way to start a dance,
just a slow slide of the toe
along glittering black marble.
And in her hotel boudoir, Ginger
in a white satin gown, arms
crossed and lips pursed —
hey, she is mad. And no wonder:
they are in different films
being shown at different theaters!
And they will never, ever meet again,
for they have tricked each other
out of existence.

My Red Poem (written with my pink pen) by Dorothy Alves Holmes

My Red Poem (written with my pink pen) by Dorothy Alves Holmes
Here I write a red poem, Sophie Tucker red, 'The last of the red hot mama's red' It is a hard Tap Dancing Red, St. Valentine's red... Cinnamon Apple scented red... Georgio sweet smelling red, Victoria Secret Red Morning sunrise red, Red Hot lipstick red The blush on your cheeks red, Happy Go Lucky Red, Written with my flaming Pink Craylo Pen On this October day... Oh you kid!

What Do Women Want by Kim Addonizio and The Red Dress by Dorothy Parker

It just would never do for me to not include these two poems in honor of National  Poetry Month.



The Red Dress
by Dorothy Parker

I always saw, I always said
If I were grown and free,
I'd have a gown of reddest red                                          

As fine as you could see,

To wear out walking, sleek and slow,
Upon a Summer day,
And there'd be one to see me so
And flip the world away.

And he would be a gallant one,
With stars behind his eyes,
And hair like metal in the sun,
And lips too warm for lies.

I always saw us, gay and good,
High honored in the town.
Now I am grown to womanhood....
I have the silly gown.


AND

The Red Dress (or What do Women Want)
by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

Ramona DeFelice Long's 40 Days of Women

Earlier, I told you about a wonderful listing of books Ramona DeFelice Long was sharing with her blog readers, and at Facebook.  Books written by and about women she had chosen from her own book shelf.

And now, here's the final list from her 40 Days of Women posts.

https://ramonadef.wordpress.com/2015/04/08/40-days-of-book-praise-reading-list/

Stubbornly Green by Kathryn Kirkpatrick

Stubbornly Green
by Kathryn Kirkpatrick
              for Susan

Driving back to my blue mountains,
I am less than ever at home.
Another bomb blast in Iraq—
46 dead, 90 wounded—refuses
to recede to background noise.
I turn the radio off.

When I was younger, the future
was all pulse and promise,
but middle-age doesn’t offer
many bluffs.
                    I suppose I believed
in something like progress, ascent,
however gradual, like this ribbon of road
from Lenoir to Blowing Rock,
the way I hardly notice I’ve risen
from the piedmont hills
until sheer rock face on the right side
and a sharp drop to streams on the left
reminds me.
                    It’s we humans
who love the straight line, want
to be spared the looped intercessions
of mourning and grief, even though
all around us--the whorl of seasons,
day and night at each others heels.

I’m not retreating to theories of inevitable war,
but I know the dead have to be mourned.
If we’re going anywhere at all
surely it’s nowhere we know,
the route more like a good conversation,
all give and take, not the hard drive
of the rock and roll beat
our soldiers play during battle.

Now even this road I’m on winds—
an engineer deciding years ago I suppose
not to blast through solid rock.
I wend past rhododendron and mountain laurel,
stubbornly green through each long winter.
Spring takes its time here—
we’ll be weeks behind your azaleas.
Like my saying what you already know,

I’ve grown accustomed to late blooming. Comments (Atom)

An Ubi Sunt for Certain Aunts by Jennifer Horne

An Ubi Sunt for Certain Aunts

by Jennifer Horne


Those enervated, hypothyroidal, smoking southern ladies
clad in crisply ironed men’s shirts, slacks, canvas shoes,
never without a certain amount of frustration, life being
never as beautiful or perfect as they had been led to expect—

their wry humor, dry laugh, yet nothing but praise and charm
for the children: “Oh honey, oh sweetness, oh darlin’,”
as though we were the loveliest confections, too pretty to eat—
saved for themselves the scathing insults:

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” at little mistakes—spilled sugar,
a bad marriage, teaching us young to be infinitely generous
with others. I decided to retrieve their softly dropped r’s:
dinner party, otherwise, suppertime, motherhood,

their language the patois of defeat, a desuetude I rejected.
They mostly died before seventy, their permanent disappointments
turned inward, though nothing as showy as cancer, heart attack,
stroke. Just a gradual shrinkage, the slow flaking of paint

on an old house, its imperceptibly liquid panes.
Oh ladies, I would like to clasp you to my grown-up bosom
(a word you used freely, it used to embarrass me no end),
smooth the puzzlement from the cracked glaze of your faces,

and soothe, “Not stupid. Honey. Sweetness. Beautiful aunts,
aunts of my youth.” I see you, in mind’s eye, sighing back at me,
a chorus wreathed in smoke, languid movements of the wrist:
“Oh darlin’,” you begin, “Let me tell you about the time . . . ”

Lost. Unsalvageable. Lovely.

Easter Monday Riding a Pink Pony

Today was a good day.

I got to ride a little pink pony.

This little pony sits in front of The Incredible Toy Store between Boone and Blowing Rock, NC, and I have wanted to hop on it for the longest time.

Today was the day.

getting on wasn't too tough

However.

When it came time to get off . . . 

Well, that was a horse of another color.

And by the time I did get off (with NO help for Donald, who was busy taking pictures and laughing himself into hysteria), I was so tickled I could hardly walk

Reason 9,782,000 why I love being married to Donald Barley.

Laughter.

Photo by William Christenberry by Kate Daniels

Photo by William Christenberry

by Kate Daniels

Akron, Alabama, circa 1960

This is what it was like to grow up
down there, then. A pretty place
but desolate. The signs that are supposed
to tell you what to do, or be, or buy
are faded to the point of inarticulation.
You surmise people used to talk
about everything you need to know
but have grown silent for some reason.
A black man sat down in a soda shop
to eat a bite, and terrified, it seemed, the patrons.
I was there in that tense silence,
licking my strawberry cone, and it was
just like this picture of kudzu in winter,
the prettiness all covered over
with something growing too fast,
enshrouding the landscape with a sinewy
fabric that lives off the lives of others.
Or this next one of the house and car
in Akron, Alabama. The house is beat-up
and rusty, but habitable. You could live there
fine until something happens – a cross
flaming on the uncut lawn, or your housegirl’s husband
with his foot shot off. That blue car’s
been in the yard forever just waiting
for you to need it, and now you do.
So you head out, past the washer on the porch
and down the walk. You get in and realize
you’re not going anywhere: it’s up on blocks,
overrun by families of mice and birds. Why
did you never notice that before? How stuck here
you are with the blank sky and the fallen fences, the awful
unexplained silences of the South.

"Oh, Kaye!" is talking about fuzzy faces

First Sunday of the month is one of my favorite days.

It's my day to play at Jungle Red, and today I'm tackling the very serious issue of fuzzy faces. 

I hope you'll drop by. You just might see a fuzzy face you recognize, maybe even from the back cover of that mystery you're reading right now.

http://www.jungleredwriters.com/2015/04/oh-kaye-chats-about-fuzzy-faces.html

Happy Easter

Variation on a Theme by King David by L. B. Thompson

One of my favorite poems, and one I post here every year.


Variation on a Theme by King David

Praise to you!
Praise to you my snappy love!

Praise you in clean socks on a Queens-bound
train; praise you
for your famous avocado
sandwiches; Praise you from Brooklyn to blasphemy!

I've called the mayor to praise you; & a third-
base coach; even
that no-neck accountant
who doesn't have the decency to nod hello
has agreed to praise you!

Praise you with bongos and fine fancy
tea; praise you
with rhumba, tango & marmelade; praise
you with your knickers at your knees!

I praise you on Flag Day, & on whichever equinox
allows for the balancing of eggs;
I praise you with eggs!
Brown ones & jumbo & Faberge Tiffany blue!

On the white of your wrist I praise you;
on the vaccuumed throw rug; I praise you full-
page on Sunday! With faxes
& foxgloves & brushed cotton sheets;
with sky-write & timbrel &

wink! Let every soul
in the Battery Tunnel honk
her horn to praise you! Praise you
with ripe limes & wrestling mats;
praise you tax-free with agates and tin foil
& all sparkly things!

Praise you with foggy spectacles and Wisconsin green cheese!
Praise you to the afternoon of orthopedic sneakers;
praise you from poinsettia to piccolo!
Praise you & praise you & praise you!

My love,
from Brooklyn to blasphemy I praise you!

--L. B. Thompson

Memory Has Depth But No Bottom by Al Maginnex

Memory Has Depth But No Bottom

by Al Maginnex

I am not speaking now of the girls I knew
     who babysat and worked at the theater
or drug store, but who in summer saw

     their local glory eclipsed by the girls
home from college and bored with everything,
     their thick paperbacks more weighty

for sitting unopened while they unfastened
     the tops of their bathing suits, to turn their backs
into planes of unbroken tan, and lit

     cigarettes beneath the disapproving stare
of mothers and friends of mothers. If their talk
     of football games and rum punch made them

the town’s fallen daughters, it was a fall
     with a soft landing. Already I knew
the world was cleaved and cleaved again

     by borders invisible and impossible to cross.
The depth and velocity of the scorn meant
     to drive away anyone not invited

into their coconut-scented kingdom of skin and smoke
     radiated even to the deep end of the pool
where we lined up for the diving board.

     Our game that summer was to toss pennies
into the deep end and dive after them, trying
     to retrieve all we had thrown

until we were tossing more than we could ever bring up.
     I waited in line to dive, learned to stay down
so long water’s silence was a keening, then a roar

     in my ears, until my lungs scorched for want
of air. Some days I would go to the shade and fall
     on the wide shore of a book and read until

my fingers unwrinkled. All summer, the daughters lay
     in the graceful repose of the fallen, motionless
as photographs of stillnesses like the Sphinx

     or the pyramids, but stillnesses of flesh,
and of flesh that would not molder as summer turned
     a corner and the reek of chlorinated water

took our skin. The bath-warm water itself became
     a sentence, no longer the enticement of early June,
and stuck in mid-corruption the daughters began

     to stretch and long for the airy cool of a classroom,
the damp closeness of a mixer, for movement
     that would divide them from these bodies

trapped in the town where they had been born,
     where their names still cast a shadow. In the stare
of one afternoon’s heat, the daughter of the undertaker,

     a bent man who played the piano for hours when he drank,
rose and took the narrow, quivering stage
     of the diving board. A short run, and she rose,

arms spread, as close to the shape of a cross
     as humans can come, no longer fallen but soaring
until she turned and entered the water

     straight as a plumb line, barely a splash
to mark her passage. She swam
     slow as royalty to the ladder, reclaimed

the spot she had left moment before. No pennies had been
     thrown for her to find, but she could have
claimed every one. She returned to college,

     then vanished, as some daughters did, in dark
pools of rumor, living in a teepee somewhere in Arizona
     or Canada. Ten years ago I heard she was selling

real estate in Atlanta. Whatever else we are,
     we are mostly unremembering water.
And the twenty percent of her that is

     not water does not remember
how she rose and turned, plunging into memory
     she has become, like those pennies,

more precious each time she surfaces.

Dreamhouse by Mary Oliver

The Possibilities by Beckian Fritz Goldberg

The Possibilities
Beckian Fritz Goldberg


After a wife’s death a man may talk
to his horse with a great tenderness
as if, just this morning, he had tried on
her pink slipper. And if he has no horse
he may crack his window a little
wider when it lightly rains to confirm
the roofs and trees are made
of paper. If there is no rain
he may make himself a meal at midnight,
sweet artichokes and Danish cheese,
a glass of red wine. If there is
no red, then white. He may suck the knife
clean with his tongue. Later
lying awake he may hear the wild lung
of a motorcycle far off on a far road.
If there is no motorcycle, a dog
trying for any syllable in any known
language. Something falling suddenly in
the closet, according to some law.
Nearness in the dark is a kind of beauty
though it is only a lampshade, a shoulder
of the walnut chair. If there is no chair,
then a shelf. A shelf of books with the devil’s
violet fedora tossed on top. Or something
exotic from the sea, manta ray
like the pulse in the ball of his foot.
A man may walk ten steps behind
his life. It may be sorrow of fear.
He may see her back like two doves rushing
up where a boy has flung a handful
of pebbles. If no pebbles, leaves
where a masked prowler hunches, his belt of
lockpicks, his bag of velvet like the one
from which memory snatches. These are
the possibilities, the immaculate
like miracles which are nothing
in themselves, but in this world a sign
of angels, ghosts, supernatural beings
who watch us. Who listen. Who sometimes
helplessly let us stumble on
their pyramids, their crude observatories
or let us, generation after
generation, speak to the broken horse
of the human heart.

April - National Poetry Month

Stop by during the month of April.

I'll be posting some of my favorite pieces to honor National Poetry Month.

Some I've posted before, some will be new.

All have touched me.

Fact

What is happening to this country?! Insanity and hatefulness is rampant

Cover Reveal

Release Date - July 14

I'm Tired

Fleetwood Mac

So - it's off we went to Greensboro, NC 

to see

FLEETWOOD MAC

in concert

Here's a few videos of the Greensboro show from YouTube.com

We drove to Greensboro on a beautiful blue sky day

Harley was, of course, one happy little pup.  He loves a road trip!

We like roadtrips too.

When we arrived at the hotel, some of us needed naps

Some of us didn't

And some of us wanted to check in at Facebook

And then it was show time!

The stage from 10 rows back

+

And there you have it - The incomparable Fleetwood Mac putting on one of the best concerts we've ever seen, and we have seen a few concerts over the year.

Back to the hotel.  Harley was happy to see us, I think.

And the next morning, a drive home with more beautiful blue skies

Harley wasn't quite ready to leave

But Donald and I were - and, we were excited about stopping in Wilkesboro for some delicious bbq at Tipton's

A Perfect Weekend

Life is Good