So National Poetry Month is also NaPoWriMo, that is to say national poetry writing month, which,I discovered late in the game, has dozens of people writing a poem a day for the 30 days of April. At some point I'll look them up, maybe even link to them. I'll be lucky to pull a full 30 out of the hat. I'm still aiming for something more like a regular practice, and currently am looking to poetry as lifeline. When all else fails, the imagination throws down some thread to grasp, weaves it into a world, offers shelter.
Spent the afternoon with the Grains of Sand, just a few of us today, doing riffy writing off each other's lines, delighting in the beautiful strangeness. So this one is dedicated to Brett, who offered the title and said "Go." There's probably another 14-line stanza that would complete this...
#11. Eve was framed
The tree was only blooming then, the wasps
not yet inside the fruit, the asp bent
round her gorgeous bicep like a vine.
She had no need for more, had long since
dreamed the names of every living thing,
slipping the libretto back to God, who
sang it—crib notes—for his lowly man. Not
that it sat well. A smart girl can be
insufferable. So you ruin her with
whispers, spill red wine on her unstained rep.
Perfect knowledge is no guarantee of
bliss—that she understood. Still she was shocked
to be duality’s queen. Good/evil?
She didn’t lust for that. No. She spat it out.
4/15/07
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