Christmas Shopping at the Liquor Store

We met between the cabs and the sirahs —

My old lover and I.

A hank of chardonnay-colored hair

Fell between the Prosecco and Aperol

As he peered at a label with a falconer’s

Eye and I tripped over the Budweiser

Horses into his arms.

If wine is poetry,

Old friends are run-on sentences.

Let them come and take us away.

Playing with words for Shay's Word Garden.  Her word list this week is taken from A Coney Island of the Mind by the late beat poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a favorite of mine, and also the owner of the famous City Lights Book Store. Visit her post this week to read his Junkman’s Obligato. 

 

And for the last dVerse of the year, a Meeting at the Bar, Zen Poetry. This was my Zen moment in the store before we went to the bar!  Happy Hoppy Holidays!!!

The Lake Superior Writer's Retreat

A small one-room cabin sits on top of a dune overlooking Lake Superior. Local legend holds it belonged to a writer. It’s not really a cabin, just a glassed-in lean-to which this writer supposedly built as a retreat. When walking the beach, you can see the top of the glass enclosure. Knowing the rumors of his mysterious death by drowning along with the sad truth that the dead have no privacy, I climbed the dune to see what the inside of a writer’s cabin overlooking a vast body of water looks like.

 

A grill sat beside the door next to a weather-beaten bench. I pressed my face to the glass. The inside was cluttered and desolate. It wasn’t at all cozy, as I had envisioned, only abandoned and sad. A crookneck lamp sat on a table beside the window but nothing else beyond clutter was recognizable. Nothing to indicate a writer ever worked here. No reams of paper, no lost manuscript, no rejections taped to the wall. Who were his heirs to let this writer’s retreat fall into ruin? What did he write? Poetry? Murder mysteries? Ghost stories of the lost at sea? Lake Superior never gives up her dead, but still, I envied him his writer’s retreat on the top of a dune.

Written for Poets and Storytellers Friday Writings, whose only stipulation is that we include the word cozy in whatever way feels right.

This is a true story. 

Salvador's Ashes and Snake, the story of an indentured boy.

This is the new issue of the Slippery Elm Literary Journal. Pretty, right?

I'm happy to have a short story and a poem included.

As we descend through the clouds

fires dot the rising landscape. Smoke spirals up

and an odor fills the cabin . . . 

Yes, I can't resist tooting my horn, though it's what we writers hate more than anything.

The comparison is a stretch, but I loved being in the marching band, the group better than the individual, the precision, synchronization, and reward of belonging to something bigger than the self. That's what it feels like to be included with other writers more accomplished (all those MFAs) than myself.

Should you want to take a peek, this is the link. https://slipperyelm.findlay.edu/buy-a-copy/

Thank you for reading. Now I'm off for more coffee  to offset this cloudy, dismal (no snow) December Michigan morning. 

 

Ode To The Best Medicine

Robert Louis Stevenson once said, Wine is bottled poetry, and John Keats said, "Give me books, French wine, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know."

To the masters, I would defer. It seems alcohol and poetry go hand in hand. As a tribute to the intoxicating power of poetry, dVerse (the poet’s pub) has asked us to write a poem about our favorite drink or one with a drinking connection, whether alcoholic or nonalcoholic, to live up to the pub's name and spread some cheer. "Drink to the goodness of words flowing," says our hostess. So, bottoms up!

Olive Aficionado

I’ve been found out.

I knew I was in trouble

when he started counting

the beers in the refrigerator

and I started hiding the empties.

He roots through the garbage

like a pig after truffles.

He doesn’t know how lucky he is

I don’t drink martinis.

I only wanted the olives.

We once had a row at a family reunion—

the grand dame sipping

her martini all afternoon,

shading her complexion

and saving the olives

plump and replete.

Me, on the fringe of conversation

waiting for the distraction,

the sly sleight of hand.

Anticipation is everything.

Martinis aren't my favorite, but they were my dad's. "Gin," he said, "is the world's best painkiller."

 I will end with a Bukowski quote the Pub served up because it made me laugh, and I think that's the next best thing.

"That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Graveyard Hierarchy

  

My son asked how much a tombstone costs.

Depends if you want an angel

 to watch over you.

We trace ancestry through the graveyard

and calculate dates—how common it was to bury babies.

 

Some lucky souls merit saintly companions

who guard their tombs with outstretched arms.

Or even a wrought iron fence to ward off vagrants.

But look how the monied died just as young.

 

At the rear of the yard are the stones we can’t read,

their shallow etchings mildewed and faded.

Bare of epitaph, they lean against each other.

Even their stones are tired.

 

Then there are the markers that only bear a number,

Like the tattooed at Auschwitz,

like the burial ground at the asylum.

One straggler is off alone and we wonder

if he wanted it so.

The rounded stone juts white from Earth like a tooth.

And what of those who couldn’t even get inside the fence—

separated from the gilded, even here.

 

Inspired by  the poem someone read about a cemetery during, Open Link Live at dVerse  I decided to post this one.  I wasn't prepared to read, or to put my messy self on camera and I was late to join but loved listening and putting faces to names.  This is an inspiring, fun, and diverse group. 

Election Day Eve

The phantoms of disorder

dance across screens

but from whence they were conjured

no one can say.

On election day eve with naysayer cries

they'll don placards like

cheerleaders outside

a car wash brigade.

They walk along byways

like bad actors

on the dole,

whisper and hiss

intrigue and lies.

The republic is under siege

with three days to go

by jackals that feast

on the leavings of fear

while the acolytes of the lie

with their camo and guns—

        as fungus grows best

        out of the sun—

repeat what has spewed

from the maw of the king.

For Shay's Word Garden List Poem.  The challenge to compose a poem using words she has taken from the lyrics of Jim Morrison and his poetry collection "The Lord & The New Creatures". I'm a huge fan of The Doors and everything Morrison so this one I could not pass up. If you are likewise a fan of the Lizard King check her link. Also, linking up the Poets and Storytellers and the power of three. And won't we all be glad when this election season is behind us and we can relax with a cold one, or hot, as the case may be. Cheers!

If Beets Were Blue

Having suffered a tangle of weeds

as the grass shrivels and dies

their shoulders emerge

pink, golden and red.

Breeching the glacier-laid loam

they broaden and grow

sweeter for frost

and the equinox sun.

Come see my beets

like rosy-cheeked girls

in red skirts and pink scarves

reclusive and shy

as the red-breasted finch

that flees from the jay.

But I'm glad beets aren't blue.

Aren't you?

A little fun for the turning of the sun. And for open link night at dVerse  the Poet's Pub 

Ghost Of The Dinner Bell

October corn the hue of the tumbleweeds

that choked my sister's desert fence,

rustles and bows to the toll of the bell.

But the one who pulled the rope

and filled the plates fills only dreams

and the bell lies on the cellar grate.

I wrote this poem (a Quadrille) for dVerse, the poets pub. Quadrille are poems in 44 words. This week's prompt, which is to take the meaning of one word and transform it into 44, is BELL.

Here in Michigan, we saw snow yesterday, and with the corn still standing outside my window and my dad's dinner bell (and his dad's before) still erect and majestic in my mind's eye, I composed my bell poem. Thanks for reading. Visit dVerse for more poems about bells. There are more meanings than I had realized, jarring forgotten memory.

The Story Of Little One Leg

With drenching skies overhead and gusty wind rattling the windows, it's a good day for a story, and a good day for soup. 

After soaking in a saltwater brine overnight, little One Leg is in the pot. He lost a leg while just a chick, but he was a survivor, a gutsy little fighter.

Earlier this summer, we had a racoon problem. The crafty creatures with their long fingers (five, mind you) could reach between the small openings in the wired sides of the pen to grab vulnerable baby chicks by the legs or wings. We had several dismembered in one night before we could reinforce the sides of the pens with a second reel of wire.

Most of those small birds died, bleeding out, but little One Leg somehow healed and thrived. Our daughter grew fond of his plucky endurance and catered to him, making sure he had food and water and named him (first mistake) One Leg. Even so, he never got over three pounds after his traumatic start in life. She doesn't know he's in the pot.

Growing up on a farm, you become accustomed to what humans see as nature's cruelty. But mother nature is smarter than we. It's all in sync and, perhaps, beyond our understanding, but my daughter grew up in a town before moving to a city, and then to a bigger city, so the transition back to the farm for what was supposed to be a relaxing summer sabbatical has been a trying one. But........

she loves homemade chicken noodle soup. 

A Dark Shining

Headlights pierced the gathering fog

and swept the side ditch and the

barbed wire fence.

 

Hypnotized by the sameness of nothing—

the fallow fields of winter—

I reached for the radio dial when out of the gloom

a lurching figure appeared.

 

All legs—a wendigo?—chase curtailed?

The headlights pierced the jellyfish eyes

of the crazed creature, its back legs snared

on the barbed wire of the fence.

 

Hung with weight, the doe lunged for freedom

over and over like the pendulum of a clock.

Her companions having long since

cleared the fence.

It's open link weekend at Earthweal  and the forum stays open until midnight. Lots of time!

Happy Sunday Funday from the sweltering Thumb of a changing world. 

Patty's Spaghetti

It's the heart of tomato season with a hint of autumn on the air, and once again I find myself making Patty's Spaghetti. I first posted this recipe during hunting season in 2008, and I figured most of you didn't know me when.

After walking down our gravel road with gunshots going off in the woods all around me and a bowl of spaghetti under my coat to deliver to the folks, I decided to write about the experience and share my mother's old recipe.

At the time, I clearly remember wondering, if you are hit by a bullet, do you feel it? Does it hurt? What if one hit my bowl of spaghetti, sauce down my coat and in my hair. What would they eat for dinner? 

PATTY'S SPAGHETTI SAUCE

1 handful of sliced fresh mushrooms

2-3 cloves of garlic (as much as you like)

2 large onions, several stalks of celery

diced and simmered in a stick of butter

until translucent.

Add 2 quarts of canned tomatoes

tomato paste

1 bay leaf, 1 t. oregano

2 t salt and 2 t pepper

Homemade meatballs.

Or you can chunk it up

with winter squash if you don't have

a good local source for pastured beef. 

Simmer all day on the stove,

stirring frequently (don't burn it like I just did)

Your sauce will thicken as it simmers

addendum:

Best with real garlic bread made with minced garlic drenched in melted butter and toasted in the oven. Don't buy Texas Toast. Ewww look at the ingredients!

No Bullshit. Just Books. And Farming......

 Because it seems the only writing I have time for in the summer is my farm newsletter, I feel compelled to share part of one here. My blog needs entries and followers and more attention then I can properly give it.  But first, an important caveat, meet my publisher.  UNSOLICITED PRESS.   "No bullshit. Just books." For all you poets out there, they publish a good deal of poetry. And, of course, cutting edge fiction.

Now, for the dirt.

                                                               Sister

                                            Earlier Tomatoes

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. The rain in the Thumb falls mainly elsewhere. Sister swears there was a sprinkle in the night, a mist, a dewdrop, a splattering of wind, a phantom in the night on a whoosh of vapor.

 

I woke to a full moon, the light shining on the plastic of the high tunnel stretched taut across the braces. The air is still and the crickets chirp. I step outside to test the air, the dampness on the wide walk, a trace of rain in the night. The moon rides high in the sky, a beacon over the Earth, and a car passes swiftly on the road. The eastern sky is bright with the new day, yet still the moon outshines it, high above the highest tree that banks the creek bed. The rain gauge measure three-tenths of an inch. We've been extremely dry so count the tenths as a blessing.

 

Thus begins the day—coffee time, writing time—till the rooster crows, the cat jumps on the windowsill demanding breakfast, and the corgi thumps up the stairs, all thirty pounds of him, wanting outside. He likes to chase the chickens, but with the new poultry fence installed none are getting out, and his fun has been stymied.

This week our CSA contains our second planting of cabbage. We planted more lettuce and hid it from the rabbits. The summer has wearied us with his weirdness. In checking last year’s garden log, I pulled all the winter squash between Sept. 1^st and the 8^th. Here we are, as I write this, on September 12, 2022 and none appear ready. I thump the watermelons with my knuckles waiting for the hollow drum sound, I turn the acorns in search of the telltale ground spots. I wonder what imp stole my eggplant for surely there had to have been more. We pull onions to dry and wonder why they are small. We pray the peppers will turn red before frost. Our major successes have been our beets, chard, tomatoes, and garlic. What garlic is left must be saved for replanting, and we need speak no further on the tomato bounty.

For those of you who don't know (or care?) the tomato harvest has been phenomenal. Heirlooms can be finicky, but this summer's heat has agreed with them. Even the Costoluto, the Italian heirloom that craves Mediterranean heat, has been happy here in the Great Lakes Basin. 

Now, back to writing before I have to pick up the hoe.

Over and out and hoping for comments. I insist, some day I'm going to be famous. 😃📖📖

A Good Day For A Burning

Grass won’t grow where the barrels were stored.
Three seasons gone; it wasn’t easy.
But then it wasn’t hard.
He cleansed the ditches with burning
And crossed the Rubicon.

Three seasons gone—sprayers, masks, drums that bled.

He took back the cultivator for weeds that don’t

glow in the dark—stooped into his father to embrace

the old ways. With each sluice of the plow

clean dirt is turned. But nothing will grow

on the north side of the shed.

 

Trees denuded by a weakened sun

are stripped bare as the arms of a refugee.

Unplucked apples, like rosy knuckles,

drop to ground and cling

to the bank of a dry creek bed.

 

We warm our hands at the burn barrel.

The jovial days of fall—

the kicking up of leaves—

passed in the night some nights ago.

It was a good day for a burning.

 

But nothing will grow where the barrels were stored

Posted with thanks to Poets and Writers for the writing community they embrace and Earthweal for their open link weekend prompting us to post a favorite poem.  I wrote this while my father was still alive. He liked it. 

What Summer Makes Us Do

Beets simmer in the pot

as the sun burns a path

through the archetypal mist of dawn.

Ferns hang limpid in the dew

and cattle low from the hilltop.

Mary hangs sheets from the line in her underwear

shaking out love from the folds.

Penning a poem of just 44 words to make up a Quadrille for dVerse, the pub where poets hang out. 

For Quadrille #157 the only other requirement is the inclusion of some form of the word type. I may  have stretched that a bit. Check out the pub!!

Submitting to Literary Journals

I just received an acceptance notice for a short story in Ohio's very own Slippery Elm Literary Journal. Founded in 2013, the Slippery Elm is distributed nationwide and internationally. It's name is taken from ulmus rubra, the unassuming yet versatile hardwood that flourishes in Northern Ohio. The name feels fitting, don't you think? Writers need the same  traits, in addition to having the endurance of a hardwood.

If you are ready to submit your poetry, short stories, or multimedia, consider the Slippery Elm Literary Journal.

Happy Father's Day to all you dads. 

Editorial Calendars and Garden Musing

While I'm waiting for my first edits to come back from my publisher as per the timeline set forth in the editorial calendar, I started querying agents for a second novel. I would still like to be represented by an agent at some point in my career and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to send a batch out. The Blood Red Pencil has an informative post up about acquiring an agent and there are many other sources for "dos" and don'ts", Nathan Bransford and Janet Reid being two of my favorites. 

I also need to start the process of creating an author website. Word Press has good templates and website building is a good accompaniment to the querying process. I already purchased my domain name YvonneOsborne.com so nobody can snatch it up. The plan is to put up pictures of my garden, my cat, my cluttered desk, dad's old Corona, the first strawberry of the season, etc. and start a sign up for my mailing list.

On a different track (warning...and some might find this inhumane and offensive) there was a family of baby groundhogs invading the garden, nibbling on the onion tops and the strawberry plants and eating baby cabbages when the wind blew the row cover askew. This is financial ruin to an organic gardener. You can imagine the time, sweat, and expense that goes into a one-acre garden. To cut to the chase, my sister and daughter, who were weeding the garlic, discovered the intruders hovering where the tall grass grows, but they were too squeamish to knock them over the heads with their shovels. Sister ran off to get her dog, the varmint killer, but Sarge arrived too late for they had all escaped back into the creek bed. All but one. 

An hour later my husband was on the tractor, tilling the perimeter when he spotted a furry creature on the top of the deer fence half hidden by the wild raspberry canes. He called me over to "come see!" There it was with his sharp little teeth hissing away. Hubby said, "I should have had my pellet gun with me." I was like, well knock him down. Do something! He rummaged in the built-in tool box behind the seat of the tractor and came up with a can of WD40. He sprayed the bejesus out of him. I couldn't look, but he said it dropped like a wasp under a stream of wasp spray. The underbrush was too thick to find him, so he didn't know if it killed him or just taught him a lesson.

The next morning I found a dead groundhog outside my greenhouse door. What was this? The mama dragging him by the scruff of his neck to lay him at the feet of the perpetrator?

Anyway, that's it for now. Out and about, over the bend. 

Prose Before Hoes

I have a new hoe. 

Hoes are essential tools for the organic gardener, from the standard (grandma hoe) to stirrup hoes, collinear hoes, trapezoid hoes and hand hoes, all in different sizes for tackling different weeds. Then, reigning above the affordable, there's the almighty Glaser Wheel Hoe, a 12" oscillating hoe that has always been priced out of my reach. I secretly covet it as I browse early spring catalogs and think golly wouldn't that be sweet?  Did you even know there were so many hoes? 

But even in spring when the garlic sprigs have burst through the soil, promising summer, the pen pulls at my heart.  My take on this popular meme (Prose Before Hoes) often paired with Shakespeare's likeness on shirts and mugs, is literal.  All this cute little saying means to the writers amoungst us who deal in dirt is that instead of toiling in the garden, working up a sweat, we'd prefer to bury ourselves in writing. If we struggling poets and writers/gardeners didn't put our prose before hoes how would we ever have time to write masterpieces and assemble chapbooks? 

I suppose if I devoted more time to seedlings and markets of a different sort, I could  spring for a Glaser Hoe. But then I'd have to enlist more help and reward them accordingly and, oh well, you see the dilemma of a small time gardener who secretly wants to dabble in words the day long and live frugally.

Happy Planting-a-Tree-Earth Day, but other than the 22nd, I'm going to try to keep my prose before my hoe!!

Over and out to the dirt I go.

There There

This is an astounding literary accomplishment I highly recommend. I recently posted a review on Goodreads which I seldom do, and thought I'd share it here.

 "There There" opens with a true account of the so-called Indian Wars. A look at the underside of our rewritten history. You will never again feel the same about Thanksgiving. 

 In 1621 when the colonists invited the chief of the Wampanoags to a feast, it wasn't a thanksgiving meal. It was a land-deal meal. And two years later when there was a similar meal meant to symbolize eternal friendship, "two hundred Indians dropped dead from an unknown poison ."

And so the slaughter begins.

In 1637 several hundred Pequot gathered for their annual Green Corn Dance. "Colonists surrounded their village, set it on fire, and shot any Pequot who tried to escape. The next day the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a feast in celebration and the governor declared it a day of thanksgiving. Thanksgivings like these happened everywhere, whenever there were what we have to call successful massacres."

These are just two examples Tommy Orange relates to shine the light on what really happened four-hundred years ago, continuing (in a more 'civilized' manner) through the nineteen hundreds to present day. His is a voice never heard before.

Writing of the plight of the urban Native American, the story centers around twelve characters in Oakland, California struggling to reconcile their identity with what they know of their ancestral past (this land was once ours). For various reasons, they travel to and converge at the Big Oakland Powwow where their stories connect in a climatic way.

This is a gut-wrenching story that grapples with our painful history in a never-before published fashion, laying bare what was done to fulfill the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. I think it should be required reading in schools and universities across the country.

 

 

Turning Down The Linen

The lost sunrise, rare coin, I now lament.

So too, its flaming slide at end of day.

I can’t escape my farm girl’s sentience.

Unleash me over those fields of fresh mown hay,

Not here, where brick and steel climb up the sky,

Where wren and hawk have flown a quick retreat.

Gray smoke and stacks alike tarnish surprise,

Over a city that rumbles beneath my feet,

That busy beast that swallows every sound.

With clotted breath to water’s edge I’m drawn

Where stars appear from out the black surround.

Like fields of wheat, waves undulate in song.

And then there’s you with power to part the night.

You turn the linens down and dim the lights.

I'm pounding the pentameter for d'Verse, the poet's pub, a top destination for poets worldwide to meet and share their work.  

The challenge here from Ingrid  is to write a poem in the heartbeat of iambic pentameter. da-dum, da, dum, da-dum,da-dum. 

And then order a drink!

Flamethrower Super Heros

Finches crowd the feeders
as a masked man fills the suet
sucking in his own stale air.
We all looked alike for over a year.
Maybe to them we always did.
Masks made from tee shirts,
faded rags from under the sink,
repurposed under the foot
of dusty sewing machines
pulled out of closets.

With thread directed through the eye
of a world that tightened around us,
we grew suspicious and more alone.
In the evening we howled off porches
like wolves at the moon
          (doomed one day to follow them gone)
sang from balconies and from behind barricades
for our flamethrower super heroes
who lived in hotels and slept on cots
to save this suicidal world
from behind their masks.

With these in mind: Absence of Color from Poets and Storytellers and Earthweal (poetry for a changing world), I dusted off an old subject that went and grew legs. 

The Number Two Bus

  

The downtown line

is the Number Two bus.

It lurches forward

and bodies sway with the clutch

of the Number Two bus.

 

Home to the homeless

    (bags of belongings between their feet)

they’re out of the rain for the length of the route.

Seattle is tolerant of her homeless.

They don’t have to pay to ride the Number Two Bus.

 

A homeless man boards with a jug of eggnog

and he holds it in his lap like a baby.

Everyone looks at his gallon of eggnog.

What a sensible homeless man

with a sensible breakfast he grips with his thumb.

 

Commuters and senior citizens,

tourists and homeless all share the bus,

the dependable, rollicking Number Two bus.

 

You dropped your smile, a hard-to-place cad

    (doesn’t fit in a niche)

says to the girl who boards with a backpack.

He smirks as she looks down and around.

 

Unflappably cool, she buries her face in a book

but he got her to look,

and the homeless, the commuters, and the tourists

all laugh as the driver lets out the clutch

of the Number Two bus.

Written on our pre-covid trip to Seattle, which now seems like the good 'ol days, brought out of hiding by dVerse's prompt to write about a smile, (a smirk, a laugh?) maybe my ride on the Number Two Bus fits into the niche. Check out all the talent at dVerse when you have an extra minute!

TGIF!!!

How Words Become Swords (to submit or not to submit)

 If in the dark, I can better see, I will sit up all night to decipher the day, write about my failures, from which I can learn (or should). 

So, if you have writer’s block, write about them. You might find you can’t stop. You’ll be like Jack Kerouac with a manual typewriter, a carriage return, and reams of paper on a roll, spewing out failures across the floor and out the door like the meatball that rolled off the table when somebody sneezed. 

The loneliness and ungodliness of the day past with the anticipated tomorrow on the threshold, and, well, shit. Is unholy ungodly? Unholiness. Maybe that’s the word I wanted, Mr. Word. What does Word know as it tries to tell me what is a word and what is not a word. But I love Word. I love words words wordswordswords. See how words become swords? We wield our swords to make a point. We spar and swing and pivot our way across the day and into the night as we search for the perfect word to end a story on. To send on. To enter on. To close the cover on.

********

Adam Feasting:

What if Adam ate the apple?
A rogue deceptor, a muscle man,
who climbed the tree
who shook the limb
who took a bite
and smiled it good.

To write, read and share. Poets and Storytellers. (Feast or Famine)

What's For Dinner?

I knew something was afoot when he went upstairs in his barn coat. He came back down with a knife that belonged to his father who grew up in Kentucky where shotguns and knives were all a boy knew. A boy who could knock a squirrel out of a tree with a slingshot became a man who went to war in the first wave. He was in a foxhole when the soldier beside him took a bullet to the head, but he aimed over the heads of the enemy and came home with a purple heart. 

The son of that man stepped back into his boots, worked his fingers into his gloves, and with the knife in one hand and a stainless-steel bowl in the other (my mother’s for whipping up cakes), went back outside in the near dark and bracing cold to skin the kill.

 

A big rabbit lived under our garden shed. I saw his tracks in the snow every morning when I let the chickens out. I knew where his entrance was and I knew his comings and goings. His circle of tracks was like a child’s game of fox and goose.

 

A big rabbit once lived under our shed.

For Poets and Storytellers my New Year's resolution is to try new recipes.