GRAMPUS

Tomorrow’s Poem

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Category: Alaska, Day to Day, National Poetry Month, One Poem One Planet, Poem, Poetry, Sea Monster, Walking, WritingTags: Alaska, Anniversary poem, April, Bear poem, bears, Global Poetry Month, National Poetry Month, poetry

One Poem. One Planet. April 17, 2017

17.

Spring Haiku

The world did not end
in war. Dawn pinks the mountains
and the brown bear wakes

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Category: Alaska, Day to Day, Dreams, National Poetry Month, One Poem One Planet, Poem, Sea Monster, WritingTags: Bear poem, Global Poetry Month, Haiku, National Poetry Month, War Haiku

One Poem. One Planet. April 16, 2017

16.

Portrait of the Demi-Goddess as a Child

There came a day when my father, a powerful and wealthy king
(he was a butcher)

Lifted me up to set me high atop the back of a gleaming black mare.
(It was a Huffy banana bike. She was pink.)

She cantered and tossed her head. I smoothed her neck. Her name was Sheila.
(Her name was Sheila.)

My short legs were barely long enough to hold the curve of her ribs
(I couldn’t reach the pedals)

The King declared me confined to an Empire the breadth of a day’s ride in any direction.
(Our driveway and the street in front of the house.)

But Sheila’s mane was silver and her tail flowed like water when she ran.
(silver handlebar tassels)

Along her spine, my velvet cape flared like a blue wing wherever we went
(I tied a dishtowel around my neck)

and wherever we went we galloped. Headlong. Breathless. We ran away to Ghost Mountain
(To the top of Deadman’s Hill)

where highwaymen beat their horses and turned them out on rocky cliffs.
(mean boys always drop their bikes in the dirt)

Braggarts who blocked the way of any traveler, tested themselves against all comers.
(You know, a guy really died on this hill.)

Together, Sheila and I made up a single body of will and speed.
(Bet you’re too chicken.)

Sheila was the best of horses, she’d always done whatever I asked–
(I pointed my front tire downhill)

So, now I asked her for her cherished legs, her roaring heart. I was fearless.
(I was fearless.)

–Arlitia Jones, April 16, 2017

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Category: Alaska, Bicycle, Day to Day, Friday Night Writes, National Poetry Month, One Poem One Planet, Poem, Poetry, Sea Monster, WritingTags: Bicycle Poem, Global Poetry Month, National Poetry Month, poem, Poem-a-day

One Poem. One Planet. April 15, 2017

15.

Eleven days ago a hostile tribe captured our myth
and replaced it with their own version

of our voluptuous Eve, our great goddess, our life-giver
who, we now believe, fell to earth from a hatch in the sky

to transform an entire mountain into an appalling blossom
of rock and fire blooming into burning air

a giant peony of smoke opening to the sun
o’ mother of the sacred boom and incinerated corpse

(whose love we now know weighs 10,000 kilos)
protect your children in this garden of misery and shame

two miles away the enemy’s child turned to see
her flash of light and felt his eardrums shatter

and five thousand miles away another tribe, despised and motherless,
is rebuilding yet another myth for their own retelling

-Arlitia Jones, April 15, 2017

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Category: Day to Day, Friday Night Writes, National Poetry Month, One Poem One Planet, Poem, Poetry, Sea Monster, WritingTags: Afghanistan Poetry, Eve, Global Poetry Month, Great Goddess, MOAB, Mother of All, National Poetry Month, North Korea poetry, poem, poetry

One Poem. One Planet. April 14, 2017

14.

Before and after have places.
—Lao Tzu (604-531 BCE)

Between fear and hope
now is where we are

now is the weight in the hand of ripened daylight
or it is the agile joke where laughter leaps from the tongue

now is the bright notes of a robin’s song spinning
inside the tornado, it’s also the mangled lawn chair

now is the blank ceiling that shelters us
when a star drops its gold coins from so high up

now is the disappearance of the moth vibrating its wings
same as it is the brown bat banked in careening flight

now is the bridge with missing slats
between birth and death–deliberate faith or folly

in between before and after, that coaxes
our first step onto the water’s back

–Arlitia Jones, April 14, 2017

Tomorrow’s Poem

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Category: Alaska, Friday Night Writes, National Poetry Month, One Poem One Planet, Poem, Poetry, Sea Monster, WritingTags: #onepoemoneplanet, Before and After, Global Poetry Month, Lao Tzu, National Poetry Month, poem, poetry

One Poem. One Planet. April 13, 2017

13.

The walls of the cathedral in Lima are made of stone mortared together
with a million egg whites from the sea birds that to this day
nest in perennial multitude on the nearby rocks elbowing out of the Pacific.

The workers used what they had to hand, our tour guide tells us.
Over the mountains, for instance, where there are no sea birds,
the workers cemented their cathedral with the blood of oxen.

It’s easier to crack a few eggs, than to slaughter the ox, no?
A few eggs and the leg bones of believers for bedrock under magnificence.
I raised my eyes to the domed vault. I looked a really long time.

God’s not up there, I thought—but what I say is: what did they do with the yolks?

In the catacombs it’s immediately obvious that cracked skulls
without their lower jaws, stacked one on top of the other
resemble punctured egg shells shucked of their gold.

–Arlitia Jones, April 13, 2017

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Category: Alaska, Dreams, Holidays, National Poetry Month, One Poem One Planet, Poem, Poetry, Sea Monster, WritingTags: catacombs, Lima, National Poetry Month, One Poem One Planet, Peru, poet, poetry

One Poem. One Planet. April 12, 2017

12.

She draws the outline
of Africa
in the air between us
My country is here

the tip of her finger
taps the space where Senegal
would be

I’m about to ask
if they have lions?
and if there’s tall grass
for them to stalk through?

We were the first
democratic country
in Africa

In the air between us

is her smile and a population
40 million Muslims and Christians
who catch buses and ride bicycles
in the striped shadows
of tall spires

I see her younger self
carrying shopping bags
on the street, calling out
the names of her neighbors
above a shining river of traffic.
Bonjour Bonjour

Later I google the lions
of West Africa–
only 16 left
in Niokola Kobe National Park

in the country of Senegal
in the air between us

–Arlitia Jones, April 12, 2017

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Category: Alaska, Day to Day, Dreams, National Poetry Month, One Poem One Planet, Poem, Poetry, Sea Monster, WritingTags: Lions of West Africa, National Poetry Month, Niokola Koba National Park, poem, Poem-a-day, poetry, Senegal

One Poem. One Planet. April 11, 2017

11.

Who can see?

After
bombs
falling

the clatter
downpour
of debris
dust

on jagged walls … … smoke climbing
the ladder of wind

to furl and hook
into the lungs
of the next city

over

every throat
seared

the wide-eyed stars
in first contact
people on those worlds
a thousand years
from now
screaming

-Arlitia Jones, April 11, 2017