My NaPoWriMo: Update

Just so you know I'm still working at, I figured I'd better post something on my progress. Not sure this was a good idea, a poet-a-day. It reminds me of those survey courses in college where you didn't mind breezing through some minor/minor poet you'd never read again, but also had to breeze through that poet you really wanted to bed down with. But it's becoming useful just to work through the pile of poetry books I've accumulated recently (& not so recently). & I've actually written a few drafts of poem, having nothing to do with the poets I'm reading.

Sonia Sanchez, February 2000

As I've already reported April 1 was Adrienne Rich, April 2 was Robert Desnos. April 3 was Sonia Sanchez, her book Wounded in the House of a Friend (1995), that I bought at Busboys & Poets during Split This Rock. I also found in my archives photos of her taken when she read at the Writers Institute in February 2000, & actually read a couple poems that are in this book.

April 4 was Quraysh Ali Lansana who read recently in the Frequency North series at the College of St. Rose. I read his They Shall Run: Harriet Tubman Poems. But due to traveling on April 4 I actually finished his book on April 5, when I turned to Dorothea Tanning, & her book Coming to That: Poems (2011). I didn't know about her poems until I read her recent obituary. Check out her paintings & soft sculpture at her website. So she got a day & a half. April 7 is devoted to ee cummings, reading the late Ted Adams' old hardbound copy of 1x1.

Here's the poem:

Poem

I am walking downtown in a hoody

a beret, a leather jacket, not

a fashion statement, just practical.

I need to check my Mega Millions ticket

buy this week’s lottery, continue dreaming.

A woman at the bus stop is wearing

a fur coat, variegated white, tan

brown ripples in the breeze

this is real – she looks at me, but

I am walking in the opposite direction.

& find a watch in the middle of the

sidewalk, rectangle face, jewel bracelet

I hope no one will step on it, that

whatever this wrist it fell from

will come back, retrace her steps, say

“here it is,”

               & the fur coat will arrive home.