Flash poems (formerly known as “micropoems,” though some are not so “micro”) are poems I challenge myself to write in the time it takes to write a thoughtful Facebook status update or short blog post… 20-30 minutes at the very most. Sometimes I give myself a topic, form or specific challenge. Often I will post these unedited as a daily exercise, and edit them down later. Anything that was a result of a flash poem exercise is posted in this category.
…I was still new, and you were much newer
and sometimes I think about that, this whole time thing—
all the clocks with their arms and alarm bells
making awkward ticks and tocks toward winter:
you had such little hands then, hands I would have
held in mine and walked to the swings with,
and everything would have been different
but you caught me at the end of apple season
while I still have leaf-piles to jump in
so get it now while you can—…
Scrawled graffiti on my brain.
I’m tired. My garden is dying
and waiting for rain. I’m sore
and losing the words that capture
my feelings. Boxes, blankets,
windows, seashells: the hermit crabs
of my thoughts scuttle barebacked
across the hot sand.
I needed the ocean…
They lumber through empty places
with their slow impossible loads
through lonely mountain spaces,
along rivers and past roads.
With their slow impossible loads,
they pull the weight of consumption
along rivers and past roads
toward some kind of junction…
You circulate through the air
like pollen, and the sunlight
that streams through the front door
you always leave open.
You watch the feeder for goldfinches
and mix turmeric into your morning shake…
I’ve uncorked the perfume
today, of the day we first met.
I needed it. It was all blue:
oxygen and azulene,
neroli and pine trees,
jet fuel and you, always clean
even after strangers touched you…
…She learned to fly by climbing the walls
and sometimes burnt the curtains
just by breathing.
She chatted with herself
and vibrated like an electron.
Drawings poured from her restless mind
over every freshly painted surface.
She always asked “why,”
and the reasons never satisfied her…
