Tonight is our Sitzfleisch Poetry Hour–the first of the New Year.
It’s the one night a month a group of poets I know (all sorts! they might be different every month!) gather for a silent zoom and dedicate that hour to writing poetry. I’d love to make it a weekly occurrence, but maybe this is what I can manage for now.
I just drafted a very early idea for a poem called “The Victorian Hair Metaphor” longhand in my journal. Now I think I’d take the rest of the hour to type out here a poem I drafted long-hand in my journal last August. There are a few things in it I like.
And… I’m thinking of both my grandmothers today.
We had news last Thursday that my father’s mother passed away. There’s probably a poem in there too, but not now. And maybe not here. In fact, I will pause and text my papa here, just to let him know I love him.
Teasdale in the Mist
I read a poem today, too quickly
a Teasdale, on Sappho
no lines remain, just a fragrant mist
I retain no elegant mechanics–
nothing of what worked on me
until my heart turned puppetry
the poet, some Geppetto
next, my mother texted a self-portrait
all lines and shadows in her face engaged
all grays and rainbows
and that shocking crone’s corona
awesome as platinum
dark eyes her own mother would recognize
from her cradle days
my mother, today, is a poem
her mother might forget tomorrow
the mist is seeping, the matriarch sleeping
her long mornings through
and though the books she reads are fewer
and her birthday cards are in my mother’s hand
all is not lost, all is not yet lost
her past is deep, will disappear last
our well-documented beginnings
safe in their dusty boxes
our origins and old photographs
her daily prayer
a year from now, I will have forgotten
writing this
encounter it abroad, in some online mist
count myself lucky, perhaps,
to read that old Teasdale poem again
(started August 2023, finished(?) January 2024)
C.S.E. Cooney 