007 Challenge

PandoraGlitters

Sandy Survivor
Joined
Sep 23, 2007
Posts
2,457
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is seven poems in seven days. You see, sometimes five just isn't satisfying and I seem perpetually to wind up three poems short of thirty. Thus, the double-o-seven: a challenge to post seven poems within seven days. Just like a martini, it can be dirty or clean. You can, in other words, write all seven poems on the same day, once a day, or however it works for you so long as you wind up with seven poems within a week from when you first posted.

Now get your Bond (or Bond Girl) on and write a week of poems! It's dangerous work, but someone has to do it and why not you? :cattail:
 
Week 1, 1

Step out and shadow unscrambles
from light like sorting data
for the first, urgent calculation of where
detonator-caressing mad scientists
might be standing in pools of their own
sick delight. In the city, shadows are hemmed
with slick flourescence, waiting to sweep over my instep
like a heavy skirt. Those inert grays
can be ignored. They are completely gone, later, on the yacht in the part
of the film I don't see yet. I suspect it has already been
edited, and my closeup is not
from the left. Again. I cross the street anyway.
I accepted the assignment. The address is in my pocket;
I don't even have to look.
 
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Week 1, 1

Vertebrae loose as a cat's, he leans
on a lamppost in my memory
zipped into black leather and a DA.
He traded that later for a rainbow
of cotton and hemp, his switchblade
for a dream and sandals, low rent,
and free love, but he was just as bad
in my father's eyes, whether Brando,
Beat, or Freak. It's how that goes.
Though I have no kids, I still know
how my heart now feels, packed
in a spun Fiberglas that deadens
even as it warms. I would have raised
an accountant, or tried to, alas—
that's just how imagination matures.
Or how it spoils, perhaps, as lost
to art as a poorly corked merlot.
 
Week 1, 2

Her little statement of hostility
delivered with a dead fish smack
to his pristine left cheek
(now mackerel marked in red) takes
him off-guard. "But you love me,"
he shrieks, dabbing at his face,
expecting blood, finding none.
"Try that line on Cheryl,"
she sneers, and moves home.
Another love life; bang a gong.
 
Week 1, 3

Oedipus pierced pins
through his eyes, for truth
had already blinded him,
I guess. He left destroyed lenses
and vitreous humor, that dripped
like gelatinous tears
down his bloody cheek.
He wailed misery. Surely,
we can avoid this. Surely,
that I am also fucking Susan
can be just negotiation
and not sharp Grecian knives.
 
Week 1, 4

How can a drunk write
when so many other drunks write
better? Write what you know
is beaten into your head like catechism
but Berryman would write me under the table
and have Henry pour out whisky on my head.
Anne would drink me, write me, fuck me
under the table. I'd be, I mean, like, dead.
I guess I drink like a Laundromat:
a place messy, tidy, boring, white.
Some place where I go at night
out of pure necessity. There the hum
of the round machines soothes me
in a background way and I can sleep
and clean my clothes and wash myself
enough to make it through another day.
 
packed
in a spun Fiberglas that deadens
even as it warms.

wonderful, Zack. Great beginning. Interesting reading in each one. I am enjoying reading your poems.
 
Week 1, Poem 2

Poem about a nightmare, but not the part where I had a penis . . .

The English are so particular
about their tea but not much else,
necessarily. Just tea--the water must be
boiled first. Not just steaming,
completely boiled. So I am trying
to make him tea but fail

because at this altitude boiling is hard
to come by. I'm in the penthouse, man!
I've turned up my modern gas range
hotter and hotter and watch for bubbles
that never come. He's looking away over his
trench-coated shoulder for rain-fed hills
where water boils when it's supposed to.

Here in the thick taste of his disappointment,
this is the part where I stop
in my recollection because it gets even
worse later--after the untouched tea
he unzips my dress . . .
 
Week 1, 3

Poem for Elmo

Can I?
Can I just ask?
Can I just hold your hand against the delicious
. . . early morning warm of wine lacquer, the hum of metal
and can I
park my car in your garage?

Yes, it has suicide doors. But the appeal of a Studebaker on a red carpet curb . . .
you can see why I wanted it. I just didn't
consider the practicality of that bovine elegance
in New York. Can I just
. . . please use the space in which you currently store
the lps you never listen to because you've converted them to CD
and park
my daddy's Studie
in your nice warm
garage?
 
Week 1, 5

Today, at university,
walking across the quad,
I prayed thanks to that God
in Whom I sometimes believe.
I prayed thanks for the sun
and the laser-blue sky,
thanks also for that one missing rib.
And for her sundress, more thanks,
though that gift is not His.
 
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Week 1, 4

In bible camp we retreated
between pine trees, took off
our skis and lay on the blanket
of snow over pine needles.
His knee pinned me to that winter-
green kiss. Until that afternoon,
I thought nothing would pass
my lips but peach cobbler, cocoa,
and prayers to sweet Jesus
whose name I still utter when
my bible buddy's thigh parts
mine like the boulder and we
are reborn from snow, pine,
and the words we do not yet have
spilled in invisible ink over few
new hairs.
 
Week 1, 5

Test Anxiety

On the scurried feet of mice came the perfect mirror
to my online test anxiety (tiene, tienes, tengo?) O
yeah that's me. Keyboard taps below match rodent skitter
above (how do I get the upside-down question mark?)

Nothing in this world is easy, the mice scribe
over dead wood; I must study more next time.
I'm glad you realize that, the wood dryly praises
in my father's voice.
 
Week 1,6

it was when you bent
over the pool table for
that odd rail shot, your leg
waving about like a protest sign,
that I thought, or saw,
how your denimed hips fit
like watch gears into my life
so I didn't care when you blew the shot
because you laughed about it and
 
Week 1, 6

Lonely in the pot of my own words . . .

Dialogue is necessarily narcissistic, for the writer
addresses herself, splits her own voice into prisms.
This is why monologuists make better lovers. Of course
even good lovers become tiresome when boorish.
Dialogue, even narcissistic and overworked,
is a known cure for loneliness. Do not take
with alcoholic beverages; do not try dialogue
when operating heavy machinery. Each
tool has its time.
 
Week 2, 1

We will only take careful pictures
stored on removeable, erasable
cards, only clipped on--no album
pages labeled "Philadelphia" or
leaves pressed against print.
We do not expect our names
to stand side by side in granite
but pixels are something and isn't
it a lovely love? Even if it is all
yak butter, the day is still cool;
clouds hold the sun's impersonal
wrath within marshmallow arms.
 
Week 2, Poem 2

Small square flag
of blue plastic containment
kisses the sidewalk as if to seal
in the memory of the crest of last night's wave
for some poor, lucky wretch.

It is the discarded clothing of ecstasy,
and I long to pick it up, ache with envy
for a split second, then a step past and I'm half
way to the strong woman
shouldering her two big bags of recycling.

Such a long walk from one end of the block
to the next corner bag--even with her hips
thrust forward and seven good teeth.
 
Week 2, Poem 3

What makes you call this a poem
he asked. And I gave a lot of answers
that showed I'd read up on this
sort of thing and I listed its ingredients
with the appropriate warnings
on suspected carcinogens and fat
content. But he didn't answer.
And he didn't bite.
 
Champagne, yes, pussy galore--nothing a little gold finger couldn't take care of, maybe?

Chipbutty, absolutely. Dive right in. I'm about to start again on my week 2 challenge since I didn't finish that one. (Thanks Angeline for answering.) I'd love to have company this round so join at will!
 
first week for me. poem 1

his thoughts are tailored
closer than his suit
those fire-ice eyes
turn away
his voice asks more
than the question he poses

I sit and think of the surf
how the water streamed from
hard flesh, scarred flesh
wonder how he'd taste on my lips

he hands me the glass
frosted and rimmed

a bead of moisture
slides down its stem
I stroke it away
taste my finger, finding salt
he swallows
 
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