hoe n tell
gallery of work new to TTG and sometime online workshop
Hoe N Tell items are eventually moved into archives to make room for new crops. To those looking for recent favorites please click the theme patches link on the left frame. Or check by poet in the poet's index.

Kathy Skaggs is interviewed on Gordon Roque's website. 
Very much worth clicking over to read. Do come back.

Mr. David Pointer his mother's day poem

Member Local 41

I'm pulling up to the dock
doors of past decades over
learning my mother had
once been a member of
The International Brotherhood
of Teamsters, and two
episodes of disbelief later,
I could hear the labored
breathing of old trucks
and all things mechanical
nearly milling to moonlight
up the Arkansas mountains
down Monteagle steepness
with a wide windshield
vibrating its one chord
verse and chorus while
some terrified trucker's
cornbread cobbler slid
from the post-suppertime
seat to a floorboard full
of cold tools as my mom
in Kansas City, Missouri
shipping and receiving
department had traded a
day shift apron for extended
warehouse hours and a world
of old bridges now mixing with
darknight's unexpressable
divinity basket-mom's rising
as a Mother's Day flower
maybe a snow country lily
or Monet's bluest iris forever
planted by the heart's
mile marker number 74.

David Pointer

Markers
(originally featured in Bellowing Ark)

I didn’t understand it then,

why she clutched that old cigar box

to her chest the way she did

and bit her lower lip to keep from crying.

I said, “What’s wrong, Mom?”

as if a nine-year old could ease

or lend support to adult sorrow.

Piece by piece,

she laid each crumpled scrap of paper

on the table in our kitchen.

“Your father’s markers.”

Markers. What could they be

to make my mother cry?

That night, her tears shone golden

underneath the kitchen light.

I watched them fall,

wishing they would stop and Mom could laugh

or flash that sweet angelic smile of hers.

It always signaled all was well with us -

our family, her little brood.

Next to every marker signed by Dad’s hand

she laid a fifty cent piece or two quarters

taken from my piggy bank

that grandparents or relatives kept fed

for future times, for clothes or treats.

She said, “I’m sorry, Honey. It has to be,”

then laid an envelope beside Dad’s markers

and wrote a simple letter to accompany each one.

“I’ll pay you something every week

until my husband’s debt is cancelled.

It can’t be much because I have four kids to feed.

I’ll do my best.

Sincerely,

Verla Smith”

I asked her why she had to pay my father’s debts.

She said, “Because his debts are mine

and he’s the father of my children.”

Markers. Promises he made to bars

and gambling halls

where he charged drinks and poker losses

or danced with other women

while my mother waited crying in the dark.

I might have been a youngster,

but I knew the price my mother paid back then

and I’ve not forgotten now.

Golden was the color of her tears,

and silver were the coins she eked

to keep our father out of jail

and shame from her four children.

Laurel Johnson

Charles Ries' Mother's day card

THE MOON WAS JANUARY IN WISCONSIN

“Damn, damn, damn it’s cold!” I heard a guy four up from me say.

“Hey, no complaining. If the girls can take it so can you,”
came a muffled reply three behind me that shivered its way
through the frigid air from beneath a parka and a ski mask.

I was in line with the 5:30 a.m. wake up club waiting for the
Rec-Plex to open its damn doors because we (the regulars)
were freezing our asses off.

We’re from the land of No Complaining. Here is where
the weather defines you, molds you, silences you.

As kids we’d wrap ourselves in ten layers of clothes, leaving
only our eyeballs exposed to the snow and the chill. After 30
minutes of dressing, we’d be pushed out the door like
paratroopers being dropped into enemy territory. “And
don’t come back for an hour,” we’d hear our mother’s voice
trail off in the distance as the howling wind became the only
audible sound. The four of us bounded out onto a great, frozen,
wind-swept planet whose landscape we used to call our back
yard. We were Apollo 7. This was our moon walk.

At dusk, as the light grew dim and dinner time neared, we
pounded on the space shuttle door and asked permission to
enter - fearful that our hour had not yet expired. The benevolent
silhouette of our commander appeared, shrouded in a golden light,emanating the thousand scents from the outpost kitchen. She
permitted us to enter the lunar capsule, warm protection from a
frozen planet.

Charles Ries

comments from Laurel Johnson

I finally got around to reading all the new poems in the garden. And what a lovely batch they were! I can't compete any further in the cat-egory cause I only had one cat poem and you posted it. LOVED Reed's poem, and David's. Both were stylish in their own unique way so it's good that I'm a one-pome wonder haha.

Mother poems I do have, but after reading Ellaraine's I'd be too ashamed to submit them. She's exceptional. Her use of humor and irony is quite effective.

Laurel

[Maybe we can talk her into sending a mother poem—KW.

April 29 2008—yr time gardener, aka Klyd Watkins (for you google bots and other searching crawlers) postpones the Jon-Taylor-Baudelaire feature, upcoming still, and turns appropriately to a Mother's Day theme. I start with 3 on the subject by Ellaraine Lockie

Mother by Any Means

She's sitting on my bar stoo
when I come back from the bathroom
Her hand clamping a cocktail napkin
over my cream sherry
Don't I know there are men
who drug women's drinks

She glares across the table
above cups of green tea
Concerned over a man I've met online
A masterful poet who metered
murdering half the population of L.A.
A maniac she admonishes
And don't mail him your address

She's pacing the New Mexican
motel room at midnight
when I return from the grocery store
Where locally grown produce
overpowered me for an extra hour
She's unable to understand
the epicurean pull of sixteen species
of peppers with recipes honoring each
I'm unable to understand her panic
that I was impounded by something
more menacing than a pepper

Until I remember motherhood
when she was an adolescent
and saw herself immortal
Contrary to me now
who knows I could die any day
I elect not to allude to the
charging rhino in South Africa
Nor mention the motorcycle and marijuana
I'm saving for special occasions
Omissions kindred no doubt
to my daughter's when I waited up late
for the end of each date

Mother of Meager

A World War I born baby
with a lifespan of poverty
spread ahead of her
Over godforsaken farmland
that hailed hardships
more often than minimal provisions
Where poor was the norm
But no one knew
the nasty little secret

So she grew into girlhood
Happy in hand-me-downs
shared with six siblings
Mercenary manners for outsiders
became the accepted apparel
Hunger a Christian comfort
As they hoarded in the soft down of it
all the extraneous trappings
tossed away by others

Quirks she carried into marriage
With countless tin cans
collected from town people
who weren't garden dependent
Coal ashes in case she uncovered a use
And every paper scrap ever sent
to anyone within a Montana mile
Idiosyncrasies eventually out of proportion
to a prospering economy
and disgraceful to a teenage daughter

Who was demand-dressed in clothes
homemade from scraps
Humiliated by her mother
who felt-out phone booths
for forgotten change
Arrived first for second-hand sales
And offered toilet paper for guests
while she wiped with washed rags
Hung them by the sink to dry
beside the daughter's degradation

The mother's conservation
now compulsion
Camouflaged by
a sixties' earth mother image
Deprivation disorder invisible
to everyone except the daughter
Dramatic as she grows older
in her defiant disposal of leftovers
And addictive in her own home
with more and more brand new decor
Copious closets of store-bought clothes
And cutting-edge commodities
crowding out creature comfort
Accumulations as incurable
as her mother's flea market cancer
Until 21st century recession
steals her mock security
And re-evaluation drives down
the value of up-to-date
While midlife refurbishing
rubs the shine from new
For the daughter
whose mother of meager
enforces her final recycling feat

Role Reversal

We're car-pooling with the most popular
boy in the fifth grade
My turn to drive to drama try-outs

My ten-year old
daughter said
ahead of time

not to make
my zebra
bracelet talk

To wear a bra
Underpants too

Don't do Tai Chi
in the parking lot
while I wait

No McGuire Sisters'
songs in the car

And don't bring
up the buttons
I collect
for my
gravestone

The list grows with each grade
I'll never get through adolescence
without rebelling

Ellarine Lockey

April 20 2008—yr time gardener, aka Klyd Watkins (for you google bots and other searching crawlers) has a day job now, which has left him without the time to implement his plan to rotate Jon Taylor's Baudelaire translations with poems by the usual gang, one a week for as long as it lasts. That will begin soon but good has come out of my delay. Our cattitude groweth with the following sent in by Reed Richards and written . . . let him tell you.

My cat wrote this poem:

Spring Song

The cat purls at your window:
Your garden grow a rainbow
            That vault the height
            Of morning light
And straight into your heart flow.
The bus you ride safe take you,
The job you work rich make you,
            And when night comes
            The boozers and bums
Bother other streets and not wake you.

To earnest scholars, tuition;
To bonds and farmers, fruition;
            Effusions volcanic
            To the honest mechanic;
To landlords and ladies, remission.
To waitresses courses in kindness;
To cops, in one eye, blindness;
            To bosses who yell
            Just a season in hell,
Or more if they need the reminders.

For birds on the lawn, inattention;
For cat-hating dogs, detention;
For cats who sing
At your window in spring
Caresses too many to mention.

Spud

another car pome—this one from the wonderful David Pointer. Note, one of David's two daughters is named Destiny.

Not Quite Catsville

Destiny
keeps a dinosaur fossil
in her first tooth keepsake
box, and Brontosaurus
comic books between the
white buffalo calf bookends
on the mantle piece. She
also points out that on TV
where dinosaurs and humans
evolved together for micromillions
of episodes that there is less
extinction in high definition
animation. I listen while
washing my grandmother's
old Iriquois oven plate as
two power walking widows
of the nightly neighborhood
who promised nothing yet
delivered two serial burglars
while burning big calories
with moderate meaningful
exercise pass by windows
without a cat unworthy or
otherwise to send to The
Time Gardener like a good
and caring poet would do.

David S. Pointer

note from Laura Johnson

Hi Klyd. I really enjoyed Jon Taylor's cat poem. I'm attracted by the cadence of a poet's words, as well as what they say:

Humors me into acceptance / of a world I cannot change /

and makes me laugh / at the inescapability of human folly

I read those particular lines out loud several times because they were so pleasing.

Thanks for posting Kathy Skagg's review of Ellaraine Lockie's book. My review of it will be in the next edition of Shadow Poetry's Quill Quarterly Review. It was also recommended reading in the latest edition of Poesy so Ellaraine is getting some good feedback on her fine poetry.

A couple poets curious about my work emailed recently saying the links to my poems in TTG take them to a DOT Easy page. Not sure what that means, so I checked and the only poem accessible is "Piecemeal." ( I tell everyone wanting to read samples of my poems to go to The Time Garden.)

Laurel

You bet, Laura. The reasons why the poems were not online are technical and complicated but they are up now. Thanks for pointing out the problem. Klyd

Review by Kathy Skaggs of Ellaraine Lockie's Blue Ribbons at the County Fair

Blue Ribbons at the County Fair
By Ellaraine Lockie
ISBN 978-0-939221-45-4
64 pages at $10
PWJ Publishing
P. O. Box 238
Tehama, CA 96090
www.wellinghamjones.com

Many poets hate contests even as they become more and more common, one way for small poetry presses to stay in business. Entry fees range from $1 a poem to $25 or more for a complete manuscript, and can get expensive for a poet trying to find a home for her poems. But Ellaraine Lockie loves them and she’s been entering them since she began writing poems, and winning, including two First Place ribbons at the San Mateo County Fair. For Lockie, poetry contests evoke the county fairs of her childhood where “Women throughout the year developed recipes, canned, needle-crafted and nurtured gardens in order to participate.” In the essay, In Praise of Poetry Contests,” which ends the collection, she details some of their benefits: "ot only are they fun and suspenseful, but placing in them gives credibility to cover-letters, pays money prizes or other honorariums and sometimes provides public reading opportunities. Often a poem gets published as a result of its contest standing, even if the poem didn’t place.”

Whether you’ll be sold on the idea of entering poetry contests yourself from reading this book, the poems in this collection are worth reading. Lockie is strongest when she writes about Montana, the land and its people, as in “Godot Goes to Montana,” a beautiful, sad elegy for farm life and its toll on the people who find themselves enslaved by the land:

      After hay baling and breech delivering
      from sunrise to body’s fall
      He slept in front of the evening news
      Too worn out to watch the world squirm
      Too weary to hear warnings from ghost brothers
      who were slain by beef, bacon and stress
      Too spent to move into the next day

“The Whipping Woman” is another strong poem that might have been written in response to Brenda Hillman’s injunction, “Write the poem that scares you.” It’s bare and uncomfortable, speaking a truth we wish we didn’t have to see. The narrator’s hired whipping woman visits the dementia ward in her stead and “accepts the mouth kisses wet with drool/From where gravelly words/dribble down washed-out gullies” that the narrator’s “rawhide flesh refuses.”

This collection is definitely worth reading. There is much to like here.

Kathy Skaggs

Jon Taylor

We interrupt the catitudinal constructions to say Laura Stamps, herself a cat lover and champion of feral cats, has reviewed Kathy Skagg's Poet Laureate of People Who Hate Poetry. In part she says. "Kathy Skaggs has an incredibly strong voice, which reaches out to the reader in every one of these poems." For the rest of this short review visit http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/583830.Laura_Stamps

okay yall go ahead and bring on the cat talk
here Laurel Johnson joins in

I can't compare to Charles and Reed, but I can contribute to the cat dialogue. I'm so happy to hear Reed's cat is better.

Gray Baby came to us when we lived in another town. She loved us unconditionally, with such devotion that we found it hard to believe. Gray was my muse. She developed a rare virus and we spent exorbitant sums of money in a desperate attempt to keep her alive. We failed. She's buried on the south edge of our property in a cairn my husband built by hand of concrete blocks and rocks to keep coyotes from digging her up. A couple months after she died, sunflowers grew around her grave in great profusion. Gray loved butterflies so we were delighted to see colorful wings fluttering around the flowers last summer. That small joy, however, did not make up for her loss. I haven't written one creative word since she died. This poem was written when she first came to us, only one of many cats who found their way to our food dishes.

Gray Baby

My town's claim to fame is not historic
wagon ruts left by pioneers who headed west
in shabby prairie schooners, or remnants of ancient Indians
who lived in vast encampments 'til the government
usurped their territory. This is the old west,
but legends fade and now their calling card is
feral cats. Cats running wild and multiplying
have overrun this dying town.
Nobody seems to care
that people come from miles around
to dump their pregnant house pets
to have kittens in abandoned, run down buildings.

Gray Baby showed up on our porch, a half grown cat
with fire in her eyes. Patchy fur over bone
is all she was, but cats three times her size
hunkered down or backed away
when Gray approached the food dish.
I tried to run her off at first.
She stood her ground, legs splayed wide
at the claim she'd staked and meant to keep,
growling fiercely as she ate.
And when I dared to run one hand softly
along her back, she purred and closed her eyes
in feline ecstasy to feel that kindly touch.
What little life she had left in her had once known
the human touch and tenderness.

"OK, I'll let you stay Gray Baby. What's
one more stray cat to feed?", I said.
Next day she proudly brought her babies
to the porch. Three black kittens, fat and healthy
from their mother's milk and care.
She must have lived on grasshoppers and crickets
to make milk for such big kittens,
all three near as big as her.
Gray had been a family pet, abandoned
when her family moved, or dumped
because she had a growing belly.
She wanted people, houses, human love,
to use a litter box again and chase a ball.
Gray is healthy now, she's spayed, well fed.
She sings a purring song to show her love
and gratitude—just one rescued from the thousands
like her in this town, a town indifferent to anything
that doesn't promote tourism.

Laurel Johnson

Reed Richards on Charles Ries' Cat

Hey Klyd –
Charles Ries’s poem about the cat struck pretty deep, especially since my cat got terribly ill with a virus last week and I thought I was going to lose him and spent a fortune getting him better. People’s reactions to cats are always interesting. I’ve never thought my cat (Spud) was terribly smart, but if he went outside and never came back – he’s an inside cat like Mr. Ries’s – I’d feel it was a judgment on me and not on him. I like how the poem communicates the sweetness and intelligence of a cat with a story that shows how they make their points so softly that we often don’t understand that they have affected us until long after the fact. Some people think that is insidious and manipulative, even passive-aggressive, but I think Mr. Ries and I both know that cats are just cats. Sure they know what they are doing when they affect us and make us love them. Dogs do it too. It’s funny that people who place moral judgments on the behavior of cats aren’t willing to admire how they stand up to challenges and even seek them out, for instance, how in a group of people they will cultivate the ones who don’t like them. Mr. Ries asks, “Well, animals are all pretty dumb aren’t they?” suspecting, though he grew up in circumstances that encouraged him to view animals as objects, that it’s not true. (Coincidentally, I spent a small part of my childhood living on a mink farm.) His answer is something like: Yes they are dumb enough to enlarge our understanding of love. The cat’s sitting and staring while he writes is testimony to her regard for him, but he rejects her (or thinks he is rejecting her) as a muse. But cats do some of their best work against that kind of resistance. That and her scratching on the door remind me of Robert Hayden’s description of “love’s austere and lonely offices.” Animals often understand our “human-heartedness”, to borrow Les Murray’s term, better that we do.

I really thought Spud was a goner last week, and even though he is about 19 years old I wasn’t ready for it. But this week he is all fixed and acting like he would have been just fine without all the intervention, so why the fuss? Typical. I don’t think he is human, but I know he is a person.

Reed

note from Kathy Skaggs— I really like the 2 from Charles Ries. Wish I had time to write more. The poems deserve it. Or then again, maybe they speak for themselves. : ) Both those poems really spoke to me.
Kathy

Laurel Johnson checks in; my most faithful commentator—and I am most appreciative.

Hi Klyd. I'm terribly late sending my comments. Just can't seem to get myself organized these days.

As of this morning I've listened to the latest Molding CD several times. The "explicit contempt" and literal giving the finger to political injustice in the world is heady stuff. We've listened to it several times now on our way to and from work, which seemed to enhance our enjoyment of the lyrics. :)) The group's creative ability as muscians is well established, but I thought the lyrics on this CD REALLY hit the mark and were especially meaningful as accompaniment to political campaigning and war statistics.

John Berbrich's poetic trip back through time was haunting. I enjoyed that poem immensely. Charles Ries's cat poem struck a tender chord with me. It expressed the solitude felt by both man and cat so well. The mink farm poem subtly tied reality to metaphor. Ries does that well in his work.

A couple lines stood out for me in Stephen "Nobody Dreamer" Goode's poem. My Cherokee DNA sings in my spirit too but I have no "roots and proof" remaining. Most of the time my "Medicine" is at arms length, in the forest or otherwise. Interesting work.

I'm always happy to see comments by Jan Fiering. She helps me see the poetry from a different perspective. And I thank her for her kind words about my poem. Yes, it is certain, my poetry will never be anthologized in Greatest American Poetry.

I'm thrilled to see so many new poems growing in the garden.

Laurel

a verse note from Joel the Good (Waldman)

Dear Klyd Watkins,

J the G here.

Trying to be

Hepful.

Just played Harp All Made of Gold

Again, twice.

While following TTG

Almost to the End

But ran out of

Measure.

If we’re so fuckin smart why ain’t we richer?

Too brown in the tan for tourmaline

I spose...

Wif love,

All the best to you and yrs.

Joel Waldman

PS I’m tickled by some of the company we’re keeping.

new voice on the time garden
Stephen "Nobody Dreamer" Goode

The first thing I read by Stephen was simply signed "nobody." There was a vast sadness. He has, apparently, experienced prejudice from "full blooded" skins. Yet there was a spiritual brightness to it too. I'm glad he send this poem:

Mental Truth of a Mixed Blood Indian.......

I suppose I'm nuts!!!!

How utterly ridiculous to think I could be a Native American with no roots and proof....

I'm so sorry and must apologize....

Apologize for being insane I guess is redundant, but never the less I'm sorry for that too..

I do wish though more people saw the world through my vision and beauty..

A world that doesn't exist but only in my Dreams..

It's true though there was a time this Dream of mine wasn't so insane and I could drink from a stream,

find Clams and Muscles as large as my hand,

Find Fish as long as my arm,

my Medicine was at arms length in the Forest..

Mostly as I roamed these lands being free from oppression I had nothing to be Sad about, nothing to be sick about and knew nothing about Money..

So After reading back over this I have to ask now who really is insane.....

my sad feeling brought about this little idea of mine........

Stephen " Nobody Dreamer " Goode............

2 from Charles Ries

MY CAT’S HUMAN
(November 21, 2006)

I would tell my daughters, “That’s the luckiest cat in the world;
she’s so dumb she’d die if she ever stepped foot out the door.”
I guess even she knew that the day I left the front door open by mistake,
freedom beckoned as she stared out into the wild world knowing it wasn’t for her.
I didn’t pet her; she didn’t like to be petted. I freshened her water.
My daughters were always too busy to do it. She was my daughters’ cat.
No one brushed her dreadlocks; the matted clumps that grew worse
as she aged, slowed down, and slept more. So I did.
I grew up on a mink farm. I don’t love animals. What are they good for except
to eat and wear?

She’d sit next to my desk as I’d write, and stare, and talk to no one. She’d sleep
outside my bedroom waiting for me to wake up; scratching the door if I was late.
She didn’t get smarter with time. After thirteen years she was still just a dumb cat.
Well, animals are all pretty dumb aren’t they?

Yesterday she didn’t get up from the place where she’d plant herself until I got home;
the spot at the top of the steps where she seemed to be glued as if she were waiting for
someone to come in the front door.

When I called Elaine to say the Vet had just put Princess down, I made a joke about
her corny name; and started to weep. That was when I realized she’d made me her human.

KILLING SEASON

I did what I had to do. I had no choice. I was the son of the man
who raised them. From kittens in May to an early death in November.
Our mink dressed the fashion elite. We cared for our animals like
they were our furred children.

We gave them a good short life and a quick painless death. We’d drop
them like quarters into a wooden box containing cyanide powder and
wait a few minutes until they expired, slowly, silently, into eternal sleep.
We didn’t always kill them that way. We used to break their necks.
But it took a big man many hours to break 10,000 necks each pelting
season. So we changed with the times and went with cyanide.
This allowed me, at fourteen, to become the chief executioner.
I wasn’t thoughtless. It never became like breathing or picking corn.
I’d run wheel barrows full in to my father who peeled their skin off and
readied them for New York furriers who’d select the best for full length coats.

My prolific ability at killing 40,000 mink over four seasons left me hanging
when I filed for Conscientious Objector status with my draft board. They
asked me, “If you had no qualms about killing thousands of mink, how come
you have a moral problem with killing the enemies of your country? I mean,
killing is killing, ain’t it son? Aren’t you just a natural born killer?”

The purity of their logic confused me. I had always been an absolutist, like
those Jain monks who see God in an ant. Who, when inadvertently stepping
on a beetle see a sentient being crushed to death.
If I could kill mink, why not men?

Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory and five books of poetry — the most recent entitled, The Last Time which was released by The Moon Press & Publishing. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot ( www.wordriot.org), Pass Port Journal ( www.passportjournal.org) and ESC! ( www.escmagazine.com). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore ( www.woodlandpattern.org). He is a member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission and a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes ( http://www.visitsheboygan.com/dairyland/). You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/

Jan is back!

Hey Klyd—I agree with Kathy. The last crop here is a good one. SPD must have been out of stock on the Holy Grail! Heath Row’s other poem, “Wireless Weather Station” has the same kind of humor in a subtler way. I love the way the speaker in the poem continues his father’s seemingly pointless obsession with weather, receiving a ton of information that is “not forecasts/ but records of what is,/ what was . . ."

The detail that it was his father who gave him the contraption that takes up the balance of the poem, the wireless weather station, with its elaborate technology and installation, is a telling point. We do pass down some rather elaborate uselessness. The return to direct reality at the end of poem confirms the readers suspicion of what the poet has been up to. It’s a very subtle poem, a piece of “conceptual music” in the phrase you used in one of the poems in 5 SPEED. I think it would be fun to read more of Heath Row.

John Berbrich’s poem is a powerful old school piece. It is wonderful to see free verse like this again—overtly rhythmic but subtle and unafraid to be of vast scope.

Finally, the quiet vicissitudes of Laurel Johnson’s piece. Klyd, this poem of hers, I bet you big money, will not be in The Best American Poetry of 2008. But I’m even more certain that it is a better poem than many of those that will be.

Jan Fiering

Ps—please don’t say “Jan is back!”

note from Kathy Skaggs— "Great new poems on your page."

new voice on the time garden John Berbrich (publisher of Barbaric Yawp) sends this poem:

Time-Exposure

Hands entwined, their eyes gaze into the future
Grainy black and white

Beyond her ruffled shoulder
An old chestnut tree, glinting dull sunlight

Beyond his, the barn stands in the distance
Like a mountain, birds roosting on its summit

Beyond the chestnut, white sails billow in the wind
Over the rolling deep-sea waves

Beyond the barn, a scaffold, stocks, and a fire
Fingers pointing at witches

Beyond the waves, carved gargoyles and monsters
Climb magnificent cathedral heights

Beyond the fire, naked warriors sharpen stone
And iron for killing

Beyond the cathedral, ghosts and demons wander through
A stone city

Beyond the warriors, blunt clubs lean against the wall
Of the cave’s mouth

Beyond the ghosts and demons, beyond the stone city
Beyond the clubs, beyond the cave

Two tails, snake-like, entwined
Dragons, the world burning

Fire in their nostrils, the dragons
Their eyes burning, burning into the future.

John Berbrich

new from Laurel Johnson—comments and poem

Goody, Klyd!! Can't wait to hear the latest Molding CD.

I really enjoyed Jan's review of Jeremy Gaulke's book. I learn so much from the reviews and commentaries on TTG and wish there were more of them.

What a pleasure to see a note from INDIA!! I want to see your work gain the recognition it deserves and celebrate every comment you share with us to that end.

Heath Row's two poems reminded me of that old adage, "Write what you know." I enjoy poetry about a person's every day life, their quirks and foibles. As I read these poems, the mundane often took on a brighter patina through the eyes and words of Mr. or Ms. Row. Here is an example of me writing what I know:

Morning Pleasures -- originally featured in Bellowing Ark

Today I sat outside in the worn
brown Adirondack chair
and watched the wind clouds
ripple through a bright blue sky.
Leaves danced a trembling jig,
turned inside out by thunderheads
growing in the south, predicting rain.
Redbirds and yellow finches grazed
together at our feeders, startling
at the sound of orioles and
blue jays swooping by, insisting
on their turn at the trough.
I smile to hear my husband cussing
in the background, something
about the latest raccoon raid on
sunflower seeds, cat food and cracked corn.
His displeasure is short-lived
when he discovers wild roses growing
thick along the ditch line by the road
and milkweed hosting butterflies.
His happy grin inspires me.
Birds and butterflies, wind and sky,
shade trees making muted music:
These are our morning pleasures.

Laurel Johnson

new voice in the time garden—Heath Row
2 poems

Dear SPD

Just got the box—thanks!
Order #166091.
In the box were four of five items ordered.
The item not packed was 0916685942—
The Holy Grail.
Do you plan to send it
separately,
or was it accidentally not packed?
Just a head's up.

2/18/08

Wireless Weather Station

My father keeps a diary
a weather log of sorts
An annual calendar book
marked up with pencil notes
on the daily temperature
and how many inches of rain
or snow
had fall’n

I receive weather alerts
via email
thanks to My-Cast's
weather condition reports
courtesy of the NWS

Both are not forecasts
but records of what is,
what was
in Eagle River and
in Central Park

Several years ago,
my father bought me
a wireless weather station
made by La Crosse Technology

Indoor temperature
Outdoor temperature
Min./max. temp recordings with time
Quartz clock with 12- or 24-hour time display
A range of 80 feet

For several years,
it's kept station on top of a bookshelf,
unopened and gathering dusk

Today I decided to install it

Two AA batteries from the freezer
One AAA, and another from a drawer
and I lean outside the open screen
to screw the remote sensor holder
into the wall outside

The wall too hard,
I drop the screw,
and I listen to it fall through the fire escape
to the ground below
each floor ringing a note clear and clean
as it falls like raindrops
like opportunity lost

From La Crescent, Minnesota,
to Brooklyn, New York,
it can still do its job
as I look out the window
at the afternoon light
and gathering clouds

In FREE VERSE Issue #94, 'tis announced that David Pointer is one of 3 winners in the Homeless and the Hungry Poetry Contest (Popcorn Press). David is the author of Wheelchair Dancer, a Time Barn Books chap.

a note from India:

Dear Mr. Klyd Watkins . . . . I sat through "Ghost trees" till just a while ago, listening to a familiar voice speak to me, a collective voice of the spirits of nature; the voice of the native from all lands, the voice of a meek permanence that is innocent of the heroics of "mighty man." Humility is not an obligation but a necessary condition for being. I guess its what makes you be as you come through your works......

Suresh Ranganathan

notice of CD release

Molding's new recording, Buddha Tormented by Pol Pot, was mixed and partially recorded at Thundershack, Klyd Watkins'--yr humble time gardener's--audio studio. Click the cover image to surf over to thundershack.net for full information.

Jan Fiering—a late, late review note on Jeremy Gaulke’s the ghost of Harrison sheets, published by The Temple ( http://www.thetemplebookstore.com/ghost.html )

Klyd, when you sent me a copy of Jeremy’s Gaulke’s first book about four years ago, I knew I could not review it, not because too much was going on, because, instead, too much had been going on just before and my concentration was spent. I read it dutifully, and gained a favorable impression, but really didn’t taste it, so to speak. Luckily, I picked it off my book shelves while looking for something to carry to the dentist’ office yesterday, and, as I had a long wait before being called in to the chair, I “discovered” the ghost of Harrison Sheets. I want to quote one of the poems in full.

the graveyard

they had hiked all day,
and fell through fern and cedar
to a graveyard of salmon.

rotting, pink, and knarred
some of the bodies half buried
in sediment
what was left of the dead eyes
stared from the exhausted stream
bed to the sky.

they sat on fallen tree and stone
and one of the boys
pinched the hooked
jaw of the largest fish
pulling it up and down
and talking like porky pig

they threw rocks at the fish
ten or twelve feet away
and pondered how many
they could catch with just a net
when the stream was full
and the salmon drifted down
to die

As overwhelming as the imagery of death is, the boys remain absolutely blind to its relevance to them. Their ignorance is a version of the truth too, the most appropriate version they could inhabit during these moments. They are doing what they should be doing, making the fish heads talk like porky pig, enthusing about how many salmon they could have caught when the stream was full. The wise reader sees the unconscious wit of the boys, its liveliness, take place within the scope of death. This is mind play. This is poetry.

Every poem in this little book from The Temple finds a way to dazzle quietly. Let me just say if you buy poetry books you want to buy this one here: http://www.thetemplebookstore.com/ghost.html . I close with a teaser (from “in Spokane and everywhere else”):

her shirt undone and a hand against the window
she was the saddest girl i’d ever tasted

Jan Fiering

We are selling a few copies here and there of Kathy Skaggs' book The Poet Laureate of People Who Hate Poetry (see below).

She sends this note:

I tried listening to “Oohlungwodee Oohnolay" online a while back, but my media software would quit in the middle for some reason and not restart. So I tried it again just now (with a different media player) and finally got to hear all of it. I like it a lot. I really like the layering of the voices. It works well with that particular piece. I love the circularity of it, or I guess it's more like a spiral of sorts. It really mixes up the connections between lines in a fascinating way so that you can hear things in the poem that you might miss by just reading it linearly. Great work!

Kathy Skaggs

MOIRA B. resurfaces--where you been, Moira?

I'm so happy to see The Time Garden up and running again. I've spent a couple hours reading the new poems planted there.

Sharon Doubiago's work is always worth reading and rereading. Ditto Charles Potts and Reed Richards and Laurel Johnson. (I did read The Alley of Wishes, by the way, and was surprised that it was not a romance novel, not what I expected at all.)

Maurice Oliver's poem intrigued me since it put a new spin on the everyday world around him. "Splashes of bright colors. / Textures that resemble wool. / White oleanders. / Yellow roses." I hope the artist-turned-poet returns soon.

That line from Tracey Darling's poem, "Then, fondly fold a blossom plucked..." reminds me of Wordsworth or some of his peers. Her work is gently humorous and thought provoking.

The Gordon Purkis poems broke my heart. "The Ninety Nine Ways My Heart Breaks" was particularly touching. The second verse was my favorite. I read it several times because he articulated his feelings so clearly. I hope to see more of his work in the Garden soon.

L.B. Sedlacek's poems were visually stunning. I could see the stars, the car hurtling its ghostly passengers through the night.

I'm so pleased to see you published a little book of Kathy Skagg's poems. She's making quite a name for herself regionally and deserves to have such recognition on a wider scale.

And of course, I listened to the little sampling of your latest work in progress at thundershack.com. I'm always delighted to know a new Watkins creation is progressing.

As for me, I'm not writing anything at the moment. If and when I do, you'll be the first to know. Merry Christmas!!

Moira B.

sweet it is to have JOHN SWEET back at The Time Garden

loss

sounded like music, like the

voice of god, and when you stopped

to breathe, i left

it was a blue sky broken up by

hard white clouds, by powerlines, and

i was afraid of how quickly

winter was coming

i was tired of listening to

my father's ghost

i knew the soldiers would win

had watched them on tv,

shooting into the crowd without emotion,

without prejudice,

killing everyone they could,

and i looked at the picture of

yourself you'd sent me

walked outside and closed my eyes

felt myself rise up slowly

above the trees

John Sweet

note from Poets West's J. Glenn Evans
Great harvesting with healthy crops!! See you got hold of seeds from Jim Bodeen, Charlie Potts, Stephen Thomas (link did not work but I took poetry classes from him) and Paul Nelson. By the way, we used "The Wind Is Sacred There" [Oohlungwhodee Oohnolay] on a recent show "Earth Echoes."

J. Glenn Evans

It's my pleasure to present, again, Sharon Doubiago

Dancing, They Rise

Alone, alone, so alone I drive the coast
to the bands and dance.
I dance alone, so alone, the unknown ancestors
rise.

The boys don’t dance. Or I’m too old
though carded at the door. Women
who stay beautiful, a friend assured me, are still waiting
to be seen. By
the boys? My mother’s
great great uncles, the Confederate dead,
Moses, Christopher, Daniel, Alexander
and her great grandfather John
the five sons of Mary Ann

eye me from the dark corners
prancing around. Stompers, behind the banisters,
they suck their beers, puff cigars
beneath their handlebars. Straight backed
in their black suits, starched ruffled white shirts
and string ties they would if they could. Is it disapproval
or just death? The defeat on their faces
eyeing me would stop the Union Army. Finally
stops me

Now outside in my mother’s Valentine bed
in my parking space of a quarter century
I sleep with thirty years of notes and records.
Moses enlisted May 25, 1861. 21, six foot seven and a half inches tall
with stark blue eyes, dark hair.
Christopher, Daniel and Alexander
all three severely wounded at Gettysburg
taken prisoner, July 1, 1863.

I dream I’m hauling them down to the continent’s edge—
Moses wounded at Cold Harbor, taken prisoner May 12, 1864
at Spotsylvania, Virginia, transported to Elmira New York
died of pneumonia September 14, 1864. His grave number is 250—
throwing them in the ocean. Nothing is lost, Mary Ann. Nothing
can be

especially your baby Johnny
walking home from Appomattox, dried
corn, a few raw peanuts, and opium for his wounds, his
Soldier’s Heart, his
forty year habit
I drive
and dance and dream within
and out of
****

2 by 2 by 2 by 2 December 17, 2007

2 poems by LB Sedlacek, 2 poems by Gordon Purkis, 2 prose observations from Laurel Johnson

Laurel reviews

The Poet Laureate of People Who Hate Poetry

By Kathy Skaggs

ISBN 978-0-9799560-0-3

24 pages at $5 glossy cover chapbook

Time Barn Books

529 Barrywood Drive

Nashville TN 37220-1636

Kathy Skaggs is a well-known participant in the Nashville poetry scene and the recipient of several grants. Her work has been published in two anthologies, and in journals throughout the country. Her writing is touching, humorous, and always honest. In this latest book, she figuratively looks readers in the eye and says, “I am the woman God and life have created.” You’ll find a lot of meat and marrow in this little book. Not one word is wasted or disguised.

“Advice to Middle-Aged Women Poets” demonstrates the humor Ms. Skaggs uses so effectively. I laughed out loud while reading it, partly because of the word pictures she inspired, and partly because the experience is familiar:

The night before a poetry reading don’t stay up till 3 a.m.

fighting with your boyfriend. Only very young poets

can look graceful and ethereal after a sleepless night

haggard is not the appropriate image for a poet to project

especially a middle-aged woman poet who is suspect already

and especially if the skin on your face tends to sag

when you look down.

“My Winter Boots” segues from humor to nostalgic longing as the poet compares her life in Nashville to one of childhood struggle in Kentucky. Momentarily, natural beauty distracts her:

And yet two black hawks

playing loop-the-loop

above 8 lanes of interstate

and naked gray trees against the horizon

the day before the new moon

make it hard

not to just keep driving

home

to the country

for winter.

And again, Skaggs remembers fondly her Kentucky roots and the life lessons learned from her mother in “What I Learned From My Mother.” I quote the first verse of this exceptional poem:

While other girls were learning

how it’s never too early to start using

a good moisturizer and which fork to use when

and how to really clean a house

I learned to make cornbread:

“My Friend Eliz: A Poem Against War” is a powerful poem that clearly reveals the heart and spirit of Kathy Skaggs:

I’ve written poems about rain and tobacco stripping

about activists, poor people, and strong women

about all the lies Lot told about his wife and his daughters

a poem about buying a gun

about a vegetarian who goes squirrel hunting.

Once I wrote a poem that started We had a fight about pie.

I guess Curtis would say that poem is about sex.

My friend Curtis says all poems are about sex or death

But Eliz knows it’s really an anti-war poem.

My husband is a native of the Kentucky mountains, a true hater of poetry and all things literary. Without my knowledge, he read this little book and loved it. He shook it in my face and said, “You damn well better write a good review of this book because it’s SPECIAL.” He’s right. This book is special in so many ways I can’t express adequately in a review. Kathy Skaggs writes about the life she knows, provoking envy in both readers and peers. Her life has been hard, but beautiful, just like her words. Thanks to Time Barn Books for publishing this book and to Kathy Skaggs for writing it.

Review by Laurel Johnson
buy Poet Laureate of People Who Hate Poetry thru paypal

or buy by mail by sending check for $7.00 to Time Barn Books, 529 Barrywood Drive, Nashville TN 37220-1636

LB Sedlacek cohosts "Coffee House to Go" with Mike Potter, a literary podcast the time gardener recommends. Her book Average Bears is available at thepoetrymarket.com

Ghosts Within

We are driving, Big Dipper
to the right of this country highway
lit only by the moon flung high overhead—partying with the stars.

We ride in silence, the big
maroon car hurling forward
past dark houses; we meet no other cars.
No sounds—not even wind delve
into the soft, leather interior
aglow with specks of green neon, that are read—not spoken aloud.

We are three strangers, like customers
shopping in an electronics store
searching for the right DVD or CD
to strike a spark,
or a flame from a falling star.
The car weaves and climbs up hills;
narrowly making turns.

The passenger in the back lifts
a fist to his face, his body jerking
back and forth as he coughs without
sound; it is too far away to
find a radio signal out here.
The Driver eases off the gas just
a little, eyes droopy, in need of
rest – the front passenger sleeps.

A glow of blue and white hurls
towards us bathing our vehicle
in purple as the speeding sports
car blazes past us never pointing out
with a flash from high beams to low
that we—in our maroon car—
are driving without headlights.
Making us ghosts driving towards home.

The Silent House

She won't be hollering for him anymore—
with cupped hands,
curlers in her hair, and a pink
bathrobe and slippers. Nope:
now he's cooking for one—
the bachelor menu of bacon, eggs
or microwavable blocks of ice;
nothing like the meals she used
to make. His neighbor’s fix him
plates, but he knows they're
only leftovers. Then they ask
his opinions on all sorts of
things. He keeps busy with the
yard work: raking, mowing,
shoveling snow. But, he's just
no good at cleaning her china:
useless to him, but it was hers
so he dusts it three times a week.

by LB Sedlacek
LB Sedlacek's poetry has appeared in a variety of publications such as "Red River Review," "Passport Journal," "Heritage Writer,"
"sidereality," "Bear Creek Haiku," "Down in the Cellar," "Open Mouse,"
"Transparent Words," "Inkburns," "Poet's Canvas," "Spiky Palm," "X Magazine," "Re)Verb," "HazMat Review," "3Lights," and "ART:MAG." Her chapbooks include "Alexandra's Wreck" and "Average Bears." LB is co-host of the podcast "Coffee House to Go."

Gordon Purkis

The Ninety Nine Ways My Heart Breaks

You didn’t think I was going

to actually list them all did you?

I mean where would I start?
Where would I end?

I could tell you it breaks

soon after waking up, when the

serene bubble of peaceful sleep

pops in silence, when I remember

the world, the permanent task of

breathing under the sun and

keeping head straight, limbs

moving like a soldier with no

fanfare or letters home.

I could tell you about the urges

I have to dance but finding

no music, I stand perfectly still

and hold onto the wistful inertia

of minutes gang-tackling each

other, becoming hours, and hours

breaking out into a brawl of days,

days swelling into riots of weeks

and battles of months and wars

of years and somebody says the

word “Philadelphia.”

I could just paraphrase, and tell

you plainly: there are ninety-nine

ways in which my heart breaks and

you could just chose to believe me

and we could leave it at that. You

could tell me I am just being silly,

melodramatic and to just stop it and

since you’re probably right I think

I will.

How I feel about your heart in general

I’ve got a handle on making me sad

and your brown eyes have a way of

sending me off into space – alone

without air, surrounded by nothing

but years and shyness and fear.

I burn myself almost on purpose for

you like not waiting for the pizza to

cool off after I extract it from the

oven and my glasses fog up and

I am blind.

What I’m getting at is I really get

kind of bummed when I’m not given

your love on a plate with sour cream

which symbolizes the way I feel about

your heart in general: white, whipped, sinful.

Gordon Purkis edits the online zine Mastadon Dentist. He says, "I'm a poet but it's not what I do for a living. It's like I'm a sober drunk but it doesn't define me. Still looking for that definition of myself."

Laurel on several things

I listened to your [Klyd Watkins'] CD too, a couple times. Oohlungwhodee Oohnolay is not the sort of music poetry a person can listen to only once. I will listen to it on my way to and from work next week too, as the sound system in our jeep is far superior to the sound system on my computer. My maternal great grandmother was full blood Cherokee. The history, beliefs, lore, and sounds of native indians is fascinating to me. You capture that haunting sound of an ancient past with the voices and music on your CD. I envy the way you use your voice like an instrument, Klyd, and your creative gifts.

I've read Potts' and Doubiago's poems several times. I keep going back to one part of Potts' poem. I've read just about everything he ever wrote throughout the years, and I'm always amazed by his quiet power:

Orion stands over the river.
Tears were freezing to my face
18 months after your last ride.

Doubiago's work is so intense, and I'm so simple minded, that I sometimes struggle with her messages and metaphors. I wonder if her poem is not somehow related to mine, only far more skillfully expressed. We both wander from devastation to devastation -- she soars and I stumble blindly:

My first stories
were of the last couple
at the end of the world
after the Bomb
wandering from devastation to devastation
knowing they had to make love

I'm SO HAPPY to have the Time Garden back and to know you're still creating.

Laurel Johnson is such a faithful contributor to The Time Garden that I assume yall know her as well as I do. I correct myself by mentioning that among her many publications are a novel The Alley of Wishes and My Name is Esther Clara, creative non-fiction in which she tells her grandmother's story in first person. Good reads, available on Amazon.

NEW FROM SHARON DOUBIAGO

Love in the Ruins

down on our sidewalk
two days and nights now
the 20 th anniversary of my father’s death

down behind the weekly-painted cement wall
of the new Octavia on-ramp, Sunday night

they were so conked out, her face
straight up, flaming red, so exposed I thought dead, he
on his back, his black pant legs like the saw horses
my father use to make
and again, last night, they hadn’t moved
and this morning, the weather changed,
just a big orange and purple pile
between the two loaded shopping carts

but coming back
from securing my parking place for the next six days
striding through somebody’s notebooks and lose papers
scattered up and down Market,
a strong hand in my feet, “to resent
is to give away your power,” she

was risen up over him young and fresh
(though something weird and dirty
like a rubber belt for padding or maybe blood
at her exposed crack), most tenderly over
his still unmoving form, his sawhorse to the sky, his black
business shoes to the ground, bent to him so intimately, talking,
coaxing him back, her pale red pony tail blowing
in the first ocean breeze of Fall
as sexy as the one beneath the headlines, High
End Fashion on the Rise in Union Square

I never saw his face, but today is the 20 th anniversary
of my father’s death. That day
in the Oregon dunes
he left us his body (that day I’m still bent
to his face

When I was a little girl I wanted to grow up
and be a hobo with my Daddy, singing we ain’t
got a barrow of money, we may
look ragged and funny. My first stories
were of the last couple
at the end of the world
after the Bomb
wandering from devastation to devastation
knowing they had to make love

Now past September, so suddenly Daddy
the weather has changed
and they are gone, and you
singing our song

*****

Sharon Doubiago has written two dozen books of poetry and prose, most notably the epic poem Hard Country(West End Press), the booklength poem South America Mi Hija (University of Pittsburgh) which was nominated twice for the National Book Award, and the story collections, El Nino (Lost Roads Press), and The Book of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes (Graywolf Press) which in 2005 was selected to the Oregon Culture Heritage list, Literary Oregon, 100 Books, 1800-2000. She holds three Pushcart Prizes for poetry and fiction and the Oregon Book Award for Poetry for Psyche Drives the Coast. In 2008 Love on the Streets, Selected and New Poems will be published by the University of Pittsburgh as well as Volume One of her memoir, My Father’s Love/Portrait of the Poet as a Girl, by Red Hen Press. She’s an online mentor in Creative Writing for the University of Minnesota and a board member of PENOakland. Her new collection of memoir stories, Why She Loved Him, is looking for a press.

Laurel Johnson brings it:

Sisters

Today I don't see wrinkles in their faces

or half a century of living. I see two

tiny girls, poor kids from the wrong side

of the tracks, fixing supper for their mother so

she wouldn't have to cook after working hard

all day. Wienies, cream style corn, and

runny mashed potatoes were their best surprise.

They had to stand on chairs to cook

and wash the dishes after supper.

And when they hurt me with their fights,

borne of family dysfunction generations deep,

I don't see women who should know better. I see

toddlers screaming while their daddy beats them

with his belt for no good reason other than he's

drunk and needs to hurt someone or something.

I see children, frightened faces, bloody welts

on chubby bottoms, desperate lives that can't

progress beyond their buried nightmares.

I see behind their faces and the grown up

bodies, past the years of motherhood and marriage.

I look beyond the jobs and adult responsibilities

into the past and I see pretty children singing

"Jesus Loves Me, This I Know" into the dark of night

to boost their courage. I see their hunger for a life

of happy memories, wish somehow that I might substitute

those repressed fears with love and kindness and rid

their pasts of violence. The child in them won't let me.

Laurel Johnson

Klyd,

Glad to hear you are keeping on. I have been busy. Just put a CD into the mail for you, two poems of mine with commentary by Elizabeth Austen over KUOW, an upshot of my Jack Straw experience this past year in Seattle. Here's a poem you can post if you like,one of five I gave them for their anthology.

Nice to see Karen Sykes-Waring on your pages.

(I, the time gardener, have received the cd. The program is available online here: http://www.kuow.org/search.php . You'll need to search for Charles Potts on arriving at the webpage. The program is certainly worth time and effort to hear, particularly for Charles' poem, "Searching For Mitsuhiro," simply a great poem, which is available in print in the portable potts .)

Charles Potts

Riding through the Night in a Shirt of Stars

I jumped two white tailed deer;
Saw a Great Blue Heron skim the lake.
I prefer the rippling lake
To the fractal undifferentiated auditory
Pounding of the water over the ripraps.

Mars is low in the west.
Arcturus defines the dawn.
The bridge is thick with frost.
Orion stands over the river.
Tears were freezing to my face
18 months after your last ride.

Ice puddles in the road ruts.
The trail is hard and lumpy in the springtime,
September it’s full of finely powdered dust.
By the time I get to turning back
The visuals were down to
Mars hazed out in HAZMATS,
Sirius and Betelgeuse.

Soon I will descend into the lake’s
Orange cottonwood necklace
Technicolor clouds reflecting on the surface.

Dawn swallowed Antares.
The invisible helicopter
Chops the wind.

Charles Potts

More information about the piece can be found at the October 13 2007 entry at http://thundershack.net/ThundershackJournal.htm In fact you have to go there to hear it, because it took me a week to put the mp3 up there and it won't behave when I try to put it here. Maybe because of the frames. Anybody know? After following the link above scroll down to the bottom of the page where an MP3 player waits to say/sing. Click your browser's "Back" button twice to return here.

There are two new (to this webiste) reviews of Harp All Made of Gold in the "new CD by Klyd Watkins" box below. Take a look.

A new Kathy Skaggs chapbook coming from Time Barn Books on November 15.

The Poet Laureate of People Who Hate Poetry

$5.00 + $2.00 s&h

Kathy's poems have appeared a number of times on TTG. At the center of her style is a tendency to include, like Whitman--the Whitman that Emerson complained wrote catalogs instead of songs--just about everything. For example, one of the poems in the collection tells how to bake cornbread (I have forgiven her for including flour in the recipe). I love the way she stretches poetry toward prose and every now and then tips over the line then "recovers" and lifts into song again. Kathy's virtuosity lies in her observation, with the virtuosity of her language subdued and camoflauged so that people who hate poetry don't notice what is happening to them.

a poem from the collection:

Advice to Middle-Aged Women Poets

The night before a poetry reading don't stay up till 3 a.m.
fighting with your boyfriend. Only very young poets
can look graceful and ethereal after a sleepless night
haggard is not the appropriate image for a poet to project
especially a middle-aged woman poet who is suspect already
and especially if the skin on your face tends to sag
when you look down.

And if you do stay up all night fighting with your boyfriend
for goodness sake don't mention it at the reading the next day
unless it is as poetry readings should be
appropriately scheduled late at night in a dark smoky room
the audience appropriately softened with alcohol
but if it is the middle of the day and especially if it is at a conference
called 20th Century Literature and especially if the reading
has something to do with being a feminist poet
because real feminists, even feminist poets, don't have fights with their boyfriends
they're lesbians for one thing or failing that long and happily married
or long and happily divorced having only got divorced either before
or right after becoming a feminist, Separate Baptists and feminists
never get divorced unless immediately after conversion they find themselves married
to an unrepentant sinner who refuses to see the light
although they witness to him and pray for him and leave helpful literature
around the house and they don't have boyfriends either or fights with boyfriends
and if you do mention it or write a poem about it at least change the gender
of all the pronouns so it will sound like you might be a lesbian or at least
a lesbian sympathizer.

If on the night before a poetry reading you do stay up till 3 a.m. 
fighting with your boyfriend and you have to drive an hour and a half 
to a university campus you've never been to without really any directions 
don't leave 10 minutes later than you meant to and do wear your sexiest jeans 
the ones that make your legs look long and skinny and you can tuck your cash 
and credit card and drivers license snug in your back pocket 
with the poems you should have picked out before you started fighting
but probably didn't because neither feminists nor poets carry purses ever.

And don't drink all that coffee and smoke all those cigarettes
(everyone knows feminists real feminists don't smoke cigarettes anyway)
and do wear a pretty shirt with your sexiest jeans
because Tess Brown's mother was right when she said
that you should always dress your best when you feel the worst
and it's okay to think that one good thing at least
is that the stress of staying up till 3 a.m. to fight with your boyfriend
and feeling like you never want to eat again ever means that you look even better
that is to say skinnier in those jeans than usual although it's best not to admit this either
because feminists real feminists don't think about such things or at least
they don't admit it.

And if you do mention to anyone that you were up until 3 a.m.
fighting with your boyfriend or if you decide to write a poem about it
under no circumstances admit how scared you really are about that fight
even though you worked things out finally after wishing that something magical
would come along to fix everything like in the last 10 minutes of a Star Trek episode
terrified you've given up too much to let someone get too close more scared
than younger black-clad girl poets with their fearless assurance and perfect bellies
could ever be. It would be bad for the image of middle-aged women poet