Diagramming Won't Help This Situation

It's been over 3 months since I last posted, and I know a poem barely counts as a post, but I really really liked it and identified with it and maybe it'll get me back on the blogging bandwagon. Here you go:

Diagramming Won’t Help This Situation
by Kevin Brown

Grammatical rules have always baffled
me, leaving me wondering whether my
life is transitive or intransitive, if I am the
subject or object of my life, and no one
has been able to provide words to describe
my actions, even if they do end in –ly.

But now the problem seems to be with
pronouns: I am unwilling to be him
and you are unable to be her, so we
will never be them~the ones talking
about what they need from the grocery

store because the Rogers are coming for
dinner tonight; the couple saving for a
vacation, perhaps a cruise to Alaska or a
museum tour of Europe; the two who meet
with a financial advisor to plan their children's

college fund while still managing to set enough
aside for their retirement~and so we will
continue to be nothing more than sentence
fragments, perfectly fine for effect,
but forever looking for the missing
part of speech we can never seem to find.

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In the South, In the North

Here's another poem borrowed from The Writer's Almanac. It makes me nostalgic about New Orleans (despite the fact that I've never actually been there.)


In the South, In the North
by Peg Lauber

The grass here is strange paradise to northern feet.
Stiff, it explodes into green when we aren't expecting it
remembering it as greening up much later.
All over town they turn the fountains on again.

If there's one thing they've got enough of,
it's water. Dig down a foot and you have it,
even though brackish, and in the summer
no cold water comes out of the tap no matter
how long you run it. In every yard there's another
explosion in January, camellias, pink, deep red,
white, and we not a month past Christmas.

But up north the frigid season crawls on, takes its time;
even in April and May it's still snowing and sleeting,
then comes hail as winter turns to summer
in one day: 90 degrees. Here, however, people eat sack
lunches on the dull green trolley with red touches still
bearing Christmas garlands over the controls at each end.
The riders open the windows to put their elbows out
while they take the long ride to the end of the line
returning to Lee Circle and Canal Street,
the trolley car whistling and dinging.

Soon St. Charles Avenue, the regular route, will be filled
with high school bands and marching feet, arms waving,
voices crying, "Throw me something, mister," to those
on the floats, as the lines and trees above are decorated
with gold, purple, and green beads, the royal colors of Rex,
against the blue void we call sky.

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The Patience of Ordinary Things

Since we could all stand to relax a little bit during all the election wackiness, here's a lovely little poem I heard on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac.


The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

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Be Well, Do Good Work, and Keep in Touch

I have this habit of listening to the podcast of Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac before I go to bed at night. It's relaxing. The other day, I heard this poem and I really liked it, so here's a dose of something nice before what will likely be another angry Project Runway post tomorrow:


Maybe Very Happy
by Jack Gilbert

After she died he was seized
by a great curiosity about what
it was like for her. Not that he
doubted how much she loved him.
But he knew there must have been
some things she had not liked.
So he went to her closest friend
and asked what she complained of.
"It's all right," he had to keep
saying, "I really won't mind."
Until the friend finally gave in.
"She said sometimes you made a noise
drinking your tea if it was very hot."

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