“…Some Act Like Salt, I Choose To Be Ointment.”

I love when the whole poem fits in the title box. I had a different poem I was trying to use but I couldn’t figure out an excerpt that made sense. Go read the whole poem, you’ll see what I mean. Plus, it’s a terrific poem!

The author, Pattiann Rogers, is great !

Abundant Beauty

The roofs are shining from the rain./The sparrows tritter as they fly,/And with a windy April grace/The little clouds go by. by Worriedman

Sara Teasdale – “April” Read on Substack

The rest of the poem-

Yet the back-yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree–
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.

Sara Teasdale is a great poet!

Melting snow and cold March rain bring the April flowers.

Daffodils,-

Crocus –

This lovely lady was at the stable yesterday.

She stayed 20 foot away from me for quite awhile, then finally decided I was worth a visit –

The first clematis blooms –

Mandevilla, also known as rocktrumpet or dipladenia ( it’s not a dipladenia – the two are often confused – I can’t remember the difference)

A cat for Caturday!

That’s all I have room for – Thanks for dropping by! (snip)

2 Diverse Poems by Diverse Women

As always, click on the titles to see more about each poet, and why she wrote her work posted here.

1951, Brenda Hillman 1951 –

Was it odd to be born?

Was it odd to be born
when women wore rick-rack

& the sun was a bracelet of yes?

When wind bent dandelions in puffy winglets,
& wisdom did raise her voice & not say weed &

when the toad did raise its spikes at the same time
as federal codes
& the try-to-be-perfect raised its voice?

Did the clang of copper collectors & the too-many lawns
begin in Arizona

while peel-paint steeples rose over dirt for the prism
of progress,

minerals torn from mines with no mouths
but you had a mouth & sang early?

When nuclear testing began north of love
& the Remington computer was placed in office use,

when there was just as much beauty & sex as later,
while some lay down at drive-ins in Chevies on seats
the color of crushed
berries & phone calls went up to a dime?

When Congress loaned money to countries because their grains had
ancient fungus claviceps purpuria that caused
visions & swelling
under the silent claw of the predator?

Was shame in you born before beauty?
Was beauty was shame was beauty?

As white gravel spread under the white churches
as silver sequins on danceless
dresses tacked on each
“hanging by a thread”

like drops of sweat on horses at the city’s edge

while downcast daisies were mimicked on sisterly aprons
catching sugars from women making pudding from boxes
under swamp coolers

with slightly mildewy pads in a breeze
created for doing housework by yourself?

Was it odd to be born when two
types of purslane in the west were called weed,
even agave used to make soap,
though it was home to the yucca moth, central & sweet, its

terminal clusters piercing thunderheads over red pick-up trucks,

& lowly dogbane hiding from developers with sibling roots
     of fungi with “no downsides to pesticides”
            & florets like diamond periods on certain fonts
                                    also were called weed?

Was it odd to be born near hillsides with radars
        like baby ears of question marks

     under the silent claw of the predator,
when mountains shook toward sabino canyons

& there was Jello salad at picnics?

Here from this century can you say
was it wild to be born?

Was there anything else like this, anything at all?

———————————————————-

Failed Poems, Jessica Abughattas

will crawl out of the drain and try to kill you
like some 80s horror flick. The picture of us at the Santa Fe
Railyard, foreheads glistening. The black widow creeping
from the mound of linens still warm from our bodies. Mechanical
hum of crickets when you push into me in the middle of the night, when
I can’t sleep and the years replay like a foreign movie, a terrible one
where the voices sound underwater. Failed poems will steal
your breath when you wake parched, hungover, emptied
in a room full of the steady buzz of the refrigerator.
When all that excites you is momentary, an earthquake in which
all the books shake in place, and nothing falls. No one ever reads
failed poems, but they follow you home in the dark and tuck in
beside you. Failed poems are cute grim reapers that live in cartoon snowcaps.
They’re midnight döner kebabs that give you heartburn.
Once, in Zurich, we were served rabbit paella at a party
celebrating an exhibition of an artist from Venice Beach
who used to be homeless but drinks $25 Erewhon smoothies and paints
hundreds maybe thousands of happy faces with his feet. His canvasses
go for $25,000. Toe paintings are better or at least significantly
more profitable than failed poems. Failed poems won’t help you
earn a living. You will probably have to do freelance marketing
to sustain the creation of failed poems. Failed poems accrue interest.
They seep into dreams where all your friends line up to blow
your husband. They cost a monthly cloud subscription to maintain.
Failed poems are injected into your father’s veins when he ODs
for the second time this year. They’re shared to infinity
when you’re canceled for fringe political views. When you’re six
feet under, a failed poem is written on your head. It’s a prayer
in the form of a failed poem, the last words
you hear on earth