It's April 1st, so it's National Poetry Month, and NaPoWriMo. Festivities for the latter can be found all over the place, and particularly with the Bloofs, Reb's posse, and at Ada Limon's. These are the places to be for daily poetry goodness.
I'm afraid I can't be counted on for these demands. But my notebook is just about outta clean pages, so on today's agenda is picking up the cheapest notebook I can find where the binding is across the top. That's the way we like it--also need one of those book stands for the desk so I can have books open without destroying binding.
But just because I won't be writing a poem a day and posting it doesn't mean I'm not trying. I'm gonna attempt to give you a poem a day by someone else.
I'm also going to go through the full notebook, and see what's what.
I've also got a bunch of other projects that you'll hear about shortly.
Let's do the damn thing:
from Nick Flynn's Some Ether,
Cartoon Physics, part 1
Children under, say , ten, shouldn't know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies
swallowed by galaxies, whole
solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning
the rules of cartoon animation,
that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries
will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down--earthbound, tangible
disasters, arenas
where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships
have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump
you will be saved. A child
places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows
the exact spot will skid at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by the sharks. She will learn
that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall
until he notices his mistake.
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