I have a zippered pouch
that turns into a daypack
for days when the urge to shop
is bigger than the bag I’ve brought.
I have a drawstring bag
that turns inside out
to become rain pants.
I have a pocketknife
that opens wine, does a manicure,
and saws down trees and makes houses from them.
Now I just bought a purse
the lipstick side of brick,
with so many features, I’m sure
it must be a bicycle.
See, this is the thing:
I need that kind of purse,
to wheel off faster than feet
can run.
I want to create Fire and Rain
and the thunderhead hovering
over the back yard.
I want to create the garden,
tulips where flat leaves
dewlick the lawn.
I want to make purple
but it’s been done
in every black-to-fuchsia tone,
flashing livid.
A spoonful of rice: twenty grains.
Have a spoonful for “pernicious,”
another for “skullduggery.”
How can I feed the world
this way? How can I not?
My view: grass in hillock tufts,
a sagging gate, rusty garage door,
peeling paint. Cherry tree about to burst,
quivering on the edge
of the great orgasm of spring. Look
at those branches,
bulging in their jeans!
The old tin garbage bin, now
rain barrel, haven for larvae
and West Nile Virus.
Remember baby Miles
who got Giardia from his bath,
cried and pooped for weeks.
Rain, as dangerous now
as Fire.
But that purse, with so many pockets
I’ll never find them all -
there must be a bicycle in it
somewhere, a pouch for a cellphone,
and one for a saddle.
A pocket for a notebook
and handlebars.
If you could,
why not wake up one morning,
put on a blue-striped white robe,
and take to the streets
of Calcutta?
Author notes
http://www.freerice.com/
Help me separate the grain from the chaff, or tell me if I've missed the harvest altogether.
Comments
1 - 41 of 41
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without doubt, as much as quite a bit of time passes between my reading here these days, I still realize I can come to your page and find some concept that is completely new to me within poetry. not many I can imagine can do that -- very few indeed.
I liked this concept from beginning to end. I'm wondering if there was a last stanza on here that had been edited out, based on the comments below. As it is now, I do like the piece overall (particularly the bicycle imagery). The last stanza as it is now didn't catch my eye as much as the rest of the poem - still I wasn't disappointed. Not a bit.
It's really another great write by you Zara.
Kim
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I'm back. I gotta tell you that the "my view:" is a little awkward. Maybe there could be a more easier transition to the writers eyes, less forceful. Let us see through your eyes on our own without being told definitively that we are now seeing from them. If I can come up with a suggestion of a change I will send it through IM.
Like how you include the purse again from the beginning. at first I thought the poem had gone in another direction and was going to stay there, but then you surprise us with the inclusion of it again. You can tell it was on your mind throughout the poem and that gives it even more importance when reading your end thoughts. The handlebars coming from inside the purse was a well chosen poetic transition. Especially considering the wonderful bicycle imagery that came before.
It all has a wonderful narrative nature though and you can tell that the importance of the read is to make the little things an incredible find.
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oh and clappies.
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It is 12:13 in the morning here and I will have to return when my eyes are not bulging out of my head with sleep pent up in me like an old swollen tire. I have a fondness for stanza 5 and the 2nd to the last. Prepare for a huge comment when I wake up. Which could be awhile from now. But maybe not and it could be sooner if my insomnia starts acting up.
Bookmarked for laters, of course.
;
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Didn't like the last three lines, so unbecoming of the rest of the poem .. which sounded like you were drunk when you wrote it, and if you weren't sounds like a cool idea.
(cough - hairball)
Um, yeah. Good weirdy poem.
-Nam -
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oh alright alright! Nuff people have complained about that. I haven't been in the habit of revising here - I do that on my own, later - but you're right, that last stanza is just dumb, so now I'm cutting it. Thanks.
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When am I ever wrong?
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I love it.
I'm going to put it in my bag so I can take it out and read it whenever. I could have done with it in the shack.
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Thanks, cous.
I think you sent the snow our way, though. As I type, some of the biggest flakes I've ever seen are falling. The cars in the street are making that shwoosing sound, pushing slush. I was thinking of a walk today, but I may have to put on skis. ack
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oh god Stef is soooo addicted to the rice. I dare not say how many he got up to last week.
anyway of course the poem is Life in all senses. I do cartwheel for you, look.
I cannot see how we miss this.
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I suppose if you're gonna be addicted, it may as well be the rice, yeah? Thank you for the cartwheels on my page; I was needing the entertainment today!
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Well, this poem reminds me of what it might be like if the most popular shopping destination on Fifth Avenue actually was REI. As a guy, I just want it known that I support your efforts for such reform. I would breath a lot easier if the women I know told me they preferred to shop for something from North Face as opposed to Cartier.
I undertook the effort to visit the freerice.com site you reference in the author notes, and I realize now exactly what is meant by the lines "A spoonful of rice: twenty grains. / Have a spoonful for 'pernicious,' / another for 'skullduggery.'" The first word I was presented was "elevate." Now come on -- there's not a guy in the world who doesn't understand the word "elevate." That's a word that even finds repetition in porn scripts, and there's probably less than 100 words that make that grade... I enjoyed the test. I think I went more than 20-30 words before one tripped me up. I hope my efforts helps feed the world.
Anyway, all this is to say you have, in fact, separated the wheat from the chaff. Not only have you produced a topical and whimsical gem, you have done so without straying from your considerable talents as a poet. Supurb work here.
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Monte, My God! Nice to see you here!
I WOULD rather shop at North Face than Cartier. So there. Now you know one.
So ya got "elevate," but did you get to pernicious? And, pray tell, what is "supurb"? Sounds like a supersonic burp.
Cheers, mate...er...I mean, Lord.
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Of course I got "pernicious." I remember Monty Python, and the pernicious kinid (sp.?) after all As for your question "what is supurb," I would have to answer "Paris Hilton's video ideas."
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How did I miss this!
This is a fabulously fecund poem
everything is pregnant...bursting forth...transforming
It only needs a bunny and some eggs
Nice to see you here again!
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if it's about giardia it can't be wrong
helps you separate the chafe from the chaff
why not wake up one morning and find out
people started to get reponsable
and Mr. "insert name here" decided not to give Mrs. "insert the same name" a fuckin dozen of hungry mouths he can't feed
but who am I to mix in this cultural religious right of being stupid dirty and hungry?
I'd better donate rice...
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okay.
first pass at picking off some glue residue:
Free Rice and a New Purse
I have a zippered pouch
that turns into a daypack
for days when the urge to shop
is bigger than the bag I’ve brought.
I have a drawstring bag
that turns inside out
to become rain pants.
I have a pocketknife
that opens wine, does a manicure,
and saws down trees and makes houses from them.
Now I just bought a purse
the lipstick side of brick,
with so many features, I’m sure
it must be a bicycle.
See, this is the thing:
I need that kind of purse,
to wheel off faster than feet
can run.
If you can,
why not tell the world
you have a dream?
I want to create Fire and Rain
and the thunderhead hovering
over the back yard.
I want to create the garden,
tulips where flat leaves
dewlick the lawn.
I want to make purple
but it’s been done
in every black-to-fuchsia tone,
flashing livid.
A spoonful of rice: twenty grains.
Have a spoonful for “pernicious,”
another for “skullduggery.”
How can I feed the world
this way? How can I not?
Remember baby Miles
who got Giardia from his bath,
cried and pooped for weeks.
Rain, as dangerous now
as Fire.
But that purse, with so many pockets
I’ll never find them all -
there must be a bicycle in it
somewhere, a pouch for a cellphone,
and one for a saddle.
A pocket for a notebook
and handlebars.
If you could,
why not wake up one morning,
put on a blue-striped white robe,
and take to the streets
of Calcutta?
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Now than I am starting to detach from this poem, I am agreeing with you more. I do love where you put the MLK stanza - much better there.
I will not relinquish the bulging jeans of the cherry tree, however. Well, maybe for this poem, but but but.
Thank you for this.
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I don't think that My View belongs in this poem. But that's just me. Another -- perhaps part 2 of the wishing the world to dream series.
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complicated/uncomplicated
stretching/learning
always finding a way to make things new
i love your handbags and traveling shows
write more - please
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Ah!
I was led to that wondrous page too and tried with glee! It made me laugh it made me cry ... I felt like an ant walking ten thousand miles in minutes! YAY! To donate rice grain by grain ... is to feel the staggering need of those suffering ...
How wondrous this poem is written. Listing all the possibilities of the have's with the silent message ... there is hunger and there is need ... carrying eyes.
Yes. To recreate to share to give. God, give me please so that I may give! To give in love and in gratitude, is the purest form of love.
Thank you for being you.
Myra
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You are inspiring, so inspiring. (bookmarked)
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Thanks, sweetie
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The harvest is bountiful though I am too weary at the moment to help with the labourious task of the separation. I shall most likely return, perhaps with helping hands. You know, the chaff is sometimes the best feed value.
(I seem to get stuck around level 41 or 42 and wonder if those grains really go anywhere)
hi
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I've been as far as 46, but that's crafty guessing, and I keep getting thrown back a couple of levels. I have an addictive personality (good thing I'm not drawn to self-destruction) and so I've donated some 10,000 grains. So far. What's that, a bowl and a half?
Hi, back atcha.
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They do They do! I did some research before adding it to my page!
so keep gathering!
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I love Spring around here -- there is a natural resurgence of writing -- people showing up who have been absent in hibernation over long, cold winters. Voices that change over that time too. It is just so good.
I just commented on Martooni who is joyfully to my mind back in the fold, and Windhover was the person who commented before me. I feel that old sort of nostalgic stuff return when I see folks like that prowling around and adding to the new. I learn so much from my peers - I miss them when they go quiet.
Oh there are some wonderfully poemful moments in this:
If you could,
why not wake up one morning,
put on a blue-striped white robe,
and take to the streets
of Calcutta?
that is superbly good and I'm wondering why you go on with that final stanza at all. Is that Calcutta stanza not showing us to do what you are again following up and telling us to do?
Plus it seems to derivative, that last stanza of the Martin Luther King speech ( Christ not that that is an awful thing to want to say to the world but I just think the Calcutta stanza DOES that ).
There is too much here to make it one of things we think about sending out for stupid publishing (for me) but you know that and like I said to Martooni, sometimes it all comes rushing out and NEEDS to do that.
I'm starting to see patterns that point to poets having these moments of "rush exhales" that are mandatory for moving forward to the crafting part of the job. Explosions, if you will, that create constellations in which we can go back and pick through for quite a while .
This piece skips like skipping stone across many many ideas. And I know we have talked about building ideas into poems and how it happens naturally sometimes and more directed in others -- but look you have a lot of stuff here. Most of it really good - some a bit superfluous and maybe some out of order BUT this isn't the place for that.
This piece.
It is the beginning of your New Spring Work. The Material so to speak that will allow you to continue or at least that is how it feels to me. And no, not like "you will be making poems out of all the stuff that is here" more, you Began. And without beginning there is nothing.
I don't want to tell you to take this out take that out move this around. I want to say "Fuck ya, Zara posted a poem. She's back. Her mind is thinking about poems again. She's stirring. " And celebrate that for a bit.
Maybe I'll come back after you've written 5 more poems and look at this to see what the poem is for me (though I'm quite certain it is 2 pieces, the Calcutta stanza and the bicycle).
Nice to see you stretching your winter-weary wings.
really.
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I always enjoy your take on things, since they're so different from my own. Often. Here, the author knows how these things fit together, not as disparate ideas, but as a cohesive thing. The trick is in conveying that without gobs of glue sticking out everywhere. Maybe you can help in that regard. Or maybe someone else can.
Thanks, as always.
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made me laugh
made me sigh
love the details
and the imagination stuffed in here
like a packed purse
or "pocketbook" as we used to say in NYC
It is a wandering trail into the garden of the mind
happy spring
kat
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Happy spring to you too, Kat. And thank you.
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lovely .. the first three (make that four) stanzas had me smiling smiling.... fabulous premise .. where do you find em ? ...
why is fire and rain capitalised ? i love that stanza ... dewlick and every-black-to-fuschia tone - yum
i love how you go from the local focus to the global and back again ... luverly luverly poetry ! >>> Gina -
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...and I was wishing I could write something like THAT, ya know?
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I was singing that James Taylor song as I was cooking dinner tonight. "I've seen fire and I've seen rain...."
Thanks, Gina
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ha .. fabulous song ... NOW i have it in my head ... re-reading your piece ...
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Can you believe it, "Fire and Rain" was playing in the grocery store today. How odd is that?
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ha ... eerie ... must be strong in your psyche - you know, things we think/feel/know attract things we think/feel/know ... love reading you ... and its always the kind of reading that requires many visits with a little new kind of enjoyment each time ...
tonight ... its that last stanza ...
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Body is required, or at least a subject.
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Thanks, anonymous sir.
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...a bicycle in every poem you provide us.
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I take that to be a good thing....
Hiya, Falcon
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a very good thing. life would be pedestrian otherwise. thanks for the link as well.
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