by Deb Scott
Read Write Poem’s chainpoem, which a few have donated a line toward, is here:
Aunt April
Flowered mesh captures hair floating above sun-glassed eyes
She sneaked the harsh Chinese cigarettes
Striking the match on the bottom of her shoe
Her cloyingly touch caused my brother to seethe
She changed her name and learned to swim
Rolled her hips and shimmied at a club on Calle Ocho.
She’s a bit of a strange old bird
With her nest of curly gray hair
So, three husbands and two dogs later
She still wears bikinis and lays to sun herself in the front yard
Her companions: a highball, a nail file, a romance novel
Her optimism cynicisim in a lesser womans hands
Kindness in her heart, murder in her veins
This woman hides herself from her own view, running frantically
Family secrets too late at night are safe in her hands
For tomorrow will never come and the dark night will stay
But only in her dreams; in the day she’s still smoking
Those harsh cigarettes and my brother is still seething
(And she’s still running around in her bikini)
Being old and one half of a dead couple had made her
thin and wiry. Hair streaming like sparklers in the moon.
* * *
Would you like to add to our poem? Contribute a line and count it as your daily NaPoWriMo poem! Or simply add a line and contribute to National Poetry Month.
Or grab all — or some of — the lines and rearrange them and post them on your own blog.
It’s a free for all.
she’s a bit of a strange old bird
i would like to contribute this line to the poem…..
i thought this line might work next.
“with her nest of curly gray hair”
so, three husbands and two dogs later
Here’s my poem, Former Wisconsin Beauty Queen that I made from the chain of lines.
she still wears bikinis and lays to sun herself in the front yard
I love the way these chain poems build. And I really enjoyed you poem, jimmmmaaa.
Her companions: a highball, a nail file, a romance novel
[...] poetry, National Poetry Month But still did something poetry-related. I contributed to this chain poem over at Read Write Poem. They guaranteed that this counts as a napowrimo/naporewrimo activity, [...]
Her optimism cynicisim in a lesser womans hands
Thanks, Deb. I had fun expanding on the chain. It’s still jangling around in my mind and perhaps I will go back to refine it, although rewriting is not my strong point, yet.
here’s a line:
“kindness in her heart, murder in her veins”
‘this woman hides herself from her own view, running frantically’
Here’s my line:
Family secrets too late at night are safe in her hands
For tomorrow will never come and the dark night will stay.
I would like to add this line.
love-bd
–but only in her dreams; in the day she’s still smoking those harsh cigarettes and my brother is still seething
(and she’s still running around in her bikini)
Deb,
I guess her bikini fell off!
Hey Jan, I wasn’t quite sure it was a line with the parenthesis. I heard it as commentary since you’d donated a line before that.
Will be interesting to see where this might yet go.
Title ideas, anyone?
you really could have left that off…somehow the 2 lines you made out of what i sent was really supposed to be 1 line; and the bikini part was to be the last line in the poem (or in that paragraph). But, when you made 2 lines out of the 1 that i sent, i really liked it MUCH better, and realized that it would have been awkward to use it as just 1 line! so then, i was kind of glad you didn’t use the ‘bikini’ line, and my last note to you was pretty much just a joke, a final comment! now that you’ve put the bikini line as the beginning of a new section of the poem, it really WILL be more complicated! i hope people will continue it…otherwise, you can take it off if you want to:) wow…this is a lot to say…sorry it went on so long:)
if no-one else wants to contribute, i think the poem looks cool the way it is…even with one line alone at the bottom. maybe you could even include something about the bikini in the title? (just a thought…)
Being old and one half of a dead couple had made her thin and wiry.
[...] gives you the chance to add a line and count it as one of your poems! Find the one in process here. January talks about National Poetry Month and asks, “what are you [...]