Why my poems use rhyme and meter

Free Verse

Each time I try to write my head,
I end up writing feet instead.

--originally published by cellpoems.org 11/29/09

Traci as the Blue Nude

We went to the BMA to see The Cone Collection, but Blue Nude (1907) wasn't there. 




Matisse's Blue Nude Model Looks in the Mirror

He made my scars
look like accidental flicks of his palette knife.

Mismatched nipples
are swirls he pinkied on. They still look wet.

He didn't veil
my scoliotic hips but stretched them out.

My map of veins
is gone, but he left the tint all over my skin.



--originally published in Ekphrasis

Wire Hangers

He hates them. It's not just a British thing. My mom hates them, too. And I don't think it's a Mommie Dearest thing. A dumpster in the UK is called a "skip."

Cast

Into a dumpster of wire hangers, I drop.

The ripple reaches the metal walls and bongs

like someone threw a rock against the side.

I wriggle. Rustling noises soothe, like chimes

beneath the water. I’m submerged in depths

of copper, gasp for air through metal gaps.

Hooks snag my forearms, seeking to reel me in.

My neck is ringed, not wrung. They inch down, clamp

my shoulders, shackle ankles, elbows, wrists.

My hair is tangled up like fishing line.

The twisted hangers taste like licorice,

the stale, black shoestring kind. I eat my way 

towards the surface, and in my struggle there,

I wonder if I’m bait for something else.

My Biggest Fan

Two for Brendan on his birthday. 

New Arrivals Sale Clearance Free to a Good Home

I’m giving them away. Today,

my words are free, as in, no charge

for you, nor any cost to me.

What’s changed is that I know they’re lies.

It’s nothing new; the same old words

I used before but called them true.

Last year, I could’ve sold you in-

sight by the pound—some sage advice

or rule I’d traded for or found.

It’s not false advertising if

I bought it, too. The boldest lie

I sell myself? That there’s a you.

Span           

After “Untitled (No. 49),” Leonardo Drew, 1995.

Because sometimes art is more important than 

the freckles beneath his jawline—the same shade 

of rust as this sculpture. 

I cross the rope

and touch the paper, cotton, metal, wood.

I memorize each texture, every freckle.

My Boobs

Topless Beach, Normandy The stones should hurt but don't. The tide's been rough enough with them to smooth them out. I drop my sandals by a stylish group of top- less 40s and their kids and turn off tourist tough. I shake my towel over the rocks, sit down and lose my dress, exposing a giraffe- print two-piece number that I bought in town. I used my card to dodge exchange-rate math. The act would change if you were here with me, it'd be a joke, like flashing for a beer, or it would be a tease if he were here, more sexual. Instead, I can just be. With eyes on the horizon line, I reach behind me, squeeze the clasp. My back is bare in a flash—then shoulders, sides, and chest. Breasts stare at the other misshapen spheres along the beach.

Accents

Last night, my pal Brendan Joyce asked for a poem that dealt with accents. While this one doesn't mention accents, every time I read it, I imagine Paul Muldoon reciting in his Irish brogue.

Paul Muldoon Reads “At Least They Weren’t Speaking French”

His eyes, all dark, appear to have no whites,

like a bird’s eyes—all iris and pupil. Large

glasses magnify the blinking. His suit,

dusty heather, matches his hair, and he’s

Nabokov’s owlet in "A Bad Day": “brown,

white-speckled, kept shifting this way and that.”

“…mummer-stones…mummery…minimum…,” he recites,

spitting feathers, pauses, looks up, then left.

Not just the TV owl you know and love—

peppering his peers with sage or not so sage

advice, he’s also the creature that’s surprised

you in the wild, or even caged. Beneath

the blinking eyes and fluffy feathers wait

a beak and claws to tear their catch in half.

This poem originally appeared in Mezzo Cammin.

Earthquakes and Volcanoes

A 5.14 magnitude earthquake hit the BVI last week, so I revised this poem which was once about San Francisco, into an island poem. It was originally inspired by Venice in Jeanette Winterson's novel The Passion.


Volcanic Island

This island’s peaks and valleys often switch,
depending how the plates beneath us drift.
I’ll park uphill when I get home and find
my car downhill at six a.m. Some nights,
a sunset fills the window in our room.
On other days, a boulder is the view.
Kaleidoscopic turns change right to left.
Roads start, hairpin, dead end, then start again.
No moss can grow: shade’s never in the same
place long enough.
                         It’s our own fault, you say,
for if we left, then we’d be more mixed up
without the shift and slip. We’re better stuck
within the island rolling us around,
content until the day it moves us out.