Poetry

July 13

Speaking of poetry, Phyllis Moore paid me the high compliment of using some lines from this blog as found haiku!

Found Poems: 3 Haiku created from words on Meredith Sue Willis’s blog
July 12, 2006 2006 Phyllis Wilson Moore

Speckled white and brown
Beautiful bean seeds on dirt
Winter’s protein meals

Passover Seder
Gentiles outnumber the Jews
Make matzoh ball soup

Lost in cyberspace
Two large chunks of yesterday
Reward to finder

Then here is one of her own with a photograph by her husband Jim Moore:

On the Frost Line

Sentinel pine trees
Bereft of left branches
Speak to me of loss

And finally, one more Phyllis Moore poem about Sex and the Nineteen-fifties!

ON HER 68TH BIRTHDAY DAY SHE RECALLS HER 16TH

Phyllis Wilson Moore, 2003

Part I

She thinks of the 50s,

those pre-pantyhose, pre-Elvis days.

Marilyn Monroe made it big in the 50s.

Playboy pictured no pubic hair.

Masters had not left his wife for Johnson.

Dictionaries did not contain the F word.

In movies, married couples

slept in separate beds.

Deep in the jungle, Jane

wore a bathing suit.
So did Tarzan.

Virgins didn’t ride boys’ bikes

or use tampons.

Discrete druggist dispensed condoms

from under the counter.

The “Pill” was an experiment

on women in Mexico.

In high schools,
soon-to-be fathers

knocked home runs.

Knocked-up girls

aborted their educations.

Part II

In the 50s
when boy met girl, girl set the rules.

No drive-in movie on a first date.

No kiss until the third date.

No hands beneath the sweater.

Going steady meant parking,

necking, petting, and eventually French kissing.

When the sun went down,

doing it was not an option.

My best friend said girls walked differently

after they did it.

I remember watching the way friends walked,

waiting.

July 10

I'm reading Bill Zavatsky's new book of poetry from the wonderful Hanging Loose Press (celebrating its fortieth birthday this year!), and most of the poems are on the long side, although very readable, but I liked this short one:

Skeletons

What skeletons most want
is to have their lips back
so that they can stop smiling
that horrible bony smile
of eternal dead teeth
and can kiss someone
or something once in a while,
a cheek, a key, a flower,
while they hang around
waiting for the rest
of their bodies to grow back.

Bill Zavatsky in Where X Marks the Spot