KL Monahan's Blog

2007-01-26T15:16:00.000-06:00

The way to bore people is to tell them everything.
--- Voltaire

In This Lifetime

She will not tell you everything, but,
you may consider a bud brooch
is necessary after a rose colored scarf
danced in her hair one Summer’s day

to be an egg’s difference;

a whiff beyond the bacon’s sizzle, or,
a squawk away from a birth not
in Spring or Fall but where
all is cold and harbors sardines.

2006-08-09T15:44:00.000-05:00

Lisa over at Wild recommended Poetry Thursday. I checked it out and Yes! this is a good place to hang, read, and, get kick-started.

Copied from Poetry Thursday:

"Have you had a moment in your life when there were words on the tip of your tongue, yet you chose not to say them? Have you thought about a past conversation and wished you would have known what you know now to say things differently? Are there conversations you have had in your head but have never said aloud? Maybe there are artifacts in your life waiting to tell you where they have been and what they know."

This week's prompt is: Unfinished conversations.

Here's my effort:

The Key

While cleaning out the junk drawer
I find a key I do not recognize.

Something forgotten like a Tinkerbelle cake
ordered for a little girl’s birthday;

the directions back from a store
on vacation; a memory

as significant as a storage shed filled
with boxes of family photos and Christmas

decorations; a bicycle locked to a pole
abandoned like a husband repairing

a pipe in a basement or the door
to a home where I once belonged. I taste it.

The metal on my tongue reminds me
of something I have no right to describe.

2006-08-09T11:21:00.000-05:00

Write a PROSE POEM. Desert Moon Review's Weekly Challenge
I'm the judge. (((smile)))

2006-08-07T17:07:00.000-05:00

Oh! Now, this could be fun. If you could place a message in a bottle and send it out to sea, what would it be? Oceangram (Sometimes it takes a bit for a bottle to show up.)

I'd love to know what you put in your bottle.

2006-08-06T19:28:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Arlene's nagging I suppose I have to contribute to this blog thing.
M, over at Wild Poetry Forum always has a good challenge going each week. Arlene, if you're listening, one of the challenges produced that poem you chose for the nasty issue of Poems Niederngasse. (grin) This week, M demanded we write her a poem that smells, and harder yet, it must smell like Anger. Of course she added limit and form just to piss us off.

Here's my effort:

This Anger Smells Like

Carpet the color of beer old torn
barstool barstool barstool
post-it notes tickets permits
this picture of a faded bitch

who watches this Chanel №5
pretender this one
red ethyl butyl nail held
together by a latex

band-aid that smells
like tequila and lime taste
like a pissy toilet under a chin
the ripe kiwi

from a trash bin sappy
nicotine on her hair his belt
buckle’s cold metallic click
starch bristled skin

dead crickets on a damp floor lavender
soap and this woman
who cheats on my husband
watching me smell her hand.

2006-07-21T13:36:00.000-05:00

The 2006 Worst Woman Driver Award

We're still waiting on Arlene's personal entry amongst others, but, so far, here are the entrants:

***

I really can't laugh at that second to the last one.... I've been there.

2006-07-21T10:55:00.000-05:00

I won the Desert Moon Review workshop challenge this week where Sarah Sloat asked poets to write a “Cento” Poem.
After learning what a Cento was, I grabbed my favorite Norton Anthology and took on the task of organizing a poem.
What great fun! It was a scavenger hunt, or even perhaps a poetic soup.

What I came up with left me feeling a bit inadequate, which is always a good thing for an Aries type personality. I ended up wishing I had written those lines, those thoughts, those descriptions. I wished that all of the actual line inventors were really there at my fantasy poet party where I was the hostess managing, directing, and, assigning seat placements.

Ah, what a dream!

Here’s my winning CENTO:

All Today I Lie in the Bottom of the Wardrobe (Cento)

The spotlights had you covered.
My diadem grew carious.

I am so dumb-looking. And you are so beautiful.

The pig, though I am inoffensive, coughs
with orange laughter lines and nostrils flared.

I know he carries bovine TB;
the bodies of children
marked with D.

I grow into my death,
you hover loyally above my head. I close

two rafters and a cross-tie on the slat.
There is a faint pop, a sizzle.

This is sadness I tell myself.

***
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (2nd edition)
Title “Yoko” Thom Gunn / “A poem about Poems About Vietnam” Jon Stallworthy / “Bog Queen” Seamus Heaney / “To Marina” Kenneth Koch / “Autobiography of a Lungworm” Roy Fuller / “The Kingfisher’s Boxing Gloves” James Fenton/ “Brock” Paul Muldoon / “The Lilies” Richard Emil Braun / “Marked with D” Tony Harrison / “My Life” Mark Strand / “The Wound” Louise Gluck / “Alphabets” Seamus Heaney / “They Eat Out” Margaret Atwood / “Water Wings” Cathy Song

Would have been a great party— don’t you think?

The next challenge is to write a PROSE POEM. Desert Moon Review's Weekly Challenge
I'm the judge. (((smile)))

2006-07-06T23:53:00.000-05:00

Is it a short story? Is it poetry? Is it a poetic attempt to make a story, or a story by a poet? Flash fiction? Nah, just a short short moment.

The Last Thirty Miles

The red rubber sedan is parked where I thought it would be, and Joe Keeper there waiting in the driver’s seat. He’s wearing a black felt beaver, though I believed he’d have his white one on. “How far are we going, Joe?” I know the answer

but like hearing a familiar voice. “Thirty miles, give or take,” I say out-loud in a make-believe Joe-voice while maneuvering my small heavily encumbered frame into the backseat. Once buckled in it’s hardly a minute before

we’re on the highway heading south. Brown bluebonnet patches. I expected to see those this time of year. I remember bringing my children, dressed for Sunday, to the city lake for pictures in the bluebonnets. Real Texans have pictures of their kids. Tommy hated

wearing a tie, what a fighter, what a kicker. And Sue, little Suzy Blue of course, just the opposite. She’d dance in front of the mirror calling herself a princess and yes, what a princess. “Joe, did I ever tell you how beautiful my Sue was?”

Dairy Queen. Always a DQ between here and nowhere, my father use to say. Father’s always say something that sticks or stings. “A dip-cone would be good, Joe. I haven’t had one of those in years.” The last time was before the bluebonnet pictures.

“Got any kids, Joe?” I feel like a kid going somewhere, kind of like an adventure. “Want to play the ABC game, Joe?” Tommy hated that game. “Joe, do you think there’s a heaven?” I think a lot about heaven and reincarnation.

“They say you’re greeted by family members after you die, Joe. Do you believe that?” Hopefully, Tommy and Sue will look just like they did when surrounded by bluebonnets. “If family is there waiting, Joe, then when does reincarnation happen?”

Not angry or scared like they did when I held them under the water. Hundreds of protesters are gathering in front of the gates. I wish it was nighttime. I’d like to see the stars. “Is it true that lethal injection is a lot like drowning, Joe?”

2006-07-06T10:46:00.000-05:00

Some recently published work:
VLQ
Wicked Alice Poetry Journal
Slow Trains Literary Journal

I just heard from SHAMPOO
they are publishing Knock-knock Lemonade in the August issue.

Yea!
(((smile)))

2006-07-06T09:37:00.000-05:00

I think I'm too lazy to have a Blog. I love reading more than writing, I can admit that. Though, yes, sometimes I like what I write better than what I read, so, here I am trying to impress myself with words. I suppose I try to impress myself quite often.

Often, I am impressed.

2006-07-06T00:53:00.000-05:00

Which brings me to OPERATION POEM

2006-07-06T00:49:00.000-05:00

Dear Me,

Today I became (gasp) P O L I T I C A L .

Three Days a Week

Sirs, do you agree it is in bad taste
to bring guns here?

Will we carry them to the table?

I must object, as you can see, my apron
has no pockets.

Will we be given soup?

There are children who are listening,
little finger holes in the rolls
are sure signs of this. Bullets
there are bullets here

the same as burger joints
across the street from burger joints.
What is and what should never be
is the entrée served every Tuesday
there is war.

Are Tuesdays everywhere served such rations?

Funny of you to ask this now
with three days left a week
Soup Du Jour recycles easily,
meals are spooned only to those
without rat-a-tat tongues.

OH! So you are against US.

Is this a question?

You are thankless, Ma’am
we are sure of sour flavors.
Uncle Sam should have your heart
served to him on rice.

This would be your right, Sirs,
but might
I warn you that in ten minutes lunch prices
change and the cost of a good meal is gone.

Do you mean higher?

I mean exactly as once I meant to serve one way
to all ways seven days fresh
yet different. Now, no way
is each day uncertain, and this, Sirs,

is an old plate of chewy heart on refried rice
served two days, then
one day ‘til
no shoes, no shirts, no service.