Butterfly

I've read - and written - quite a few poems these first 3 days of National Poetry Month, but the best thus far, this simple acrostic -

Beauty
Under a Rainbow
Tiny
Tickles
Earthly beauty
Rainbow
Flying Rainbows
Loveable Cuddleable
Yellow-winged
~Lea, Age 6


The Reading... Two new books: The Soul Thief (Charles Baxter) and Apologize, Apologize (Elizabeth Kelly). Finishing up Chuck Bock's Beautiful Children. Still reeling from Hamilton's exquisite A Map of the World.

The Writing... Three poems (Money, City of Believe, The Problem with the Time Travel machine). Sixty pages from the end of beta-reader edits in the never-ending BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. Working on PURE, getting ready to post the first 10k words with my writing group - nervous anticipation.

Outta here for a week visiting my family, so read hard, write harder. I leave you with an excerpt from City of Believe, in response to the prompt: outsider.

Here, in the City of Believe, everyone prays,
a fervor never noted in backwater Carolina
or stiff-backed Unitarian pews. Here, big black
women clamber on the metro clutching quilt
covered books close, apostalytic fingers
twitching to the glory of God,

amen child.

Two rows down yarmulked manchild, earlocks fuzzing
from wetfull morn, sways with prayer, holy
words dripping silent but heard, his mutter
murmur adding to an imam’s turban-tight
keening, sikh’s singing, Buddha’s koans… I break

through the throbbing throng, up stairs bloodstained,
carcassed with sweat and peanut shells, and blink; light
accosts a vision… Here, on the corner, the buttoned-
down, suited-up savior dude waves salvation tracts,
bullhorning oracles falling short of earbudded,
shelled-in selves, bobbing to suburban-fueled sturm.
Here, in the City of Believe, folks pray, earnest, more
fervid; my contempt for their desperate faith shorn
smooth, eclipsed only by my envy.






Peace, Linda