Fleetwood Bridge

For day 3 of the November PAD challenge. Prompt: a "location" poem.

the roadmap streaks blue and red,
twisted, knotty, the veins I trace
with my finger....
were there a global positioning system
that could find you, it would be on
a bridge over Fleetwood's tracks,
casting your eyes over, casting your
bread upon, the river, where we
saw an opossum, swollen-bellied,
amble down to take a
drink, silvery under the electric
light

later,
squinting, so, at the
green, gold, red, heavy-lidded through
years of yellow paint, one coat upon
another, you gripping the steering wheel
as we plot the best route,
from aye to bee to cee and finally,
oh so finally, to zed. and home. and rest.

but now it is as black as a North Korean night on
Google maps, the last candle snuffed
out and no electric light to be seen

brights on the bridge, at night,
a necklace, sparkling, but
hot to the touch, they warned one
off, the wires, too, woven azure, crimson,
grass-green, jewel colored, touch me, touch me,
if you dare

Seven-OH-Five

Day 2 of the November PAD challenge. Prompt: a "not ready" poem.


seven o five and OH the
minutes tick down, and dear,
this stocking is already laddered (where IS
another?) and there the
kettle blowing her top, steaming
away as if she would power the
whole house and
dammit where are my keys, so
sure I left them on the hook
by the door,
tick, tick, tick echoing back,
the click, click, click of
hasty shoes upon the boards (too
late, now, to worry about the
noise) snatching at purse-
strap then
dash-dark-down the stairwell,
ready as she'll ever be
(resolving, always, to be better:
that graceful, unhurried woman espied from afar)

Page-Turner (Can One Trust the Narrator?)

For day one of the November PAD challenge. A poem re: turning the page on past events.


leather spined, she turns the
first, blank page, to see the
frontispiece, in short inky strokes,
obscured, so slightly, by paper tissue-
thin, the uppermost corner
wrinkled as if the last reader
closed the volume with an
impatient (or hasty) hand

endpapers, printed in peacock
colors, the whorls of red, blue,
green merging into a whole as
rich as plum pudding

turning the page, forgoing the
inevitable dedication (not to
her, certainly) musing over the
cryptic capitals punctuated by
oh-so-definite periods

chapter one was romance, the
treacle thick on the fingers,
licked off, delicious it was, so
sweet

no eye for foreshadowing, the
page missing from the index
vexing her, and can one,
really, ever trust the
narrator?

no. and so--she turns the
cream colored sheets, looking for
some legend she will understand,
oil black, that
she can trace over. but. no.

placed back upon the shelf at the
last and left to the whims
of the removal men

Mount Vernon Inquirer article by Mr. Joe Parisi on the book launch/reading for "Blood Beats in Four Square Miles" edited by James "jAFa" Fair

http://www.mvinquirer.com/blood_beats_in_four_square_miles.htm

Scarecrows

they crop up, this time of year, on
lawns untroubled by tubers or the
like, pale vestiges of their former,
workaday selves, clad in old clothes
and caps, to scare off the crows....

now, the mass-produced grins mirror
each other, staked in similar clipped
suburban lawns, reduced to the
decorative, the false pleat, the
row of buttons designed to catch the eye

crows are nonplussed by such fellows,
storebought, their tags still attached
as they are staked into the ground, a
xerographic, sixth-generation copy of their
sterner cousins, trousers cut to

ribbons in the wind, their aspect
fearsome, clad, as they were, in
the clothes of the dead, the tattered
remnants of a Sunday suit, worn
shiny, cuffs and collar frayed

and crows and candy-gorging goblins alike,
pass them by, unseeing, unafraid

Machinery

beehive hum of the machinery will
echo again down the long halls,
the shuttles spinning, this time the threads
woven into a new tapestry to tell all
our days, our hours, the long nights
before the dawn is done and day
crowns straight upon the veiny
sidewalk, asphalt blue, sparkle
glass accidental jewels pressed there
so incidentally and now only noticed
by the keenest eye

the colors go from red to blue-est
black, the inky color of oil blearing
across newsprint

and somewhere is archy still
tapping out stories for mehitabel
while the Yellow Kid tweets
"Hully Gee" and updates his
Facebook status?

stories, like human nature, do not
change: they merely pass from
speaker to speaker, dipping our
pens in the common ink, the
blue-black read all over
used for wrapping paper, kindling,
insulation for our boots, for
the long march--and words
will keep us warm--if we repeat them
fast enough
if we believe them, clear enough, if
we sleep, love, laugh, eat with
word-work, the best and brightest work,
the truest work, in the end

Blood Beats in Four Square Miles - promotion

Poetry Reading, 22nd October 2010, Lola's Tea House, Pelham, NY

I was not able to make this reading due to unforeseen circumstances.....apologies...


Poetry Reading

Lola's Tea House
130 Fifth Avenue
Pelham, NY

Friday, 22nd October 2010

7:30 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.

$5.00 cover / $10.00 food purchase

RSVP 914-738-2100

Now available via Amazon.com!!!!!!! "Blood Beats in Four Square Miles" -- the first anthology of Mount Vernon, NY poets, edited by James "jAFa" Fair.

It's here!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Beats-Four-Square-Miles/dp/1453778047/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1

BOOK LAUNCH!!! "Blood Beats in Four Square Miles" --- the first anthology of Mount Vernon poets!!!!

Book Launch / Reading for "Blood Beats in Four Square Miles" edited by James Fair.

This is the very first anthology to feature the work of Mount Vernon poets.


Date: Sunday 17th October 2010

Time: 3:00 p.m.

Place: AC-BAW Center for the Arts
128 South Fourth Avenue
(between 2nd and 3rd Streets)
Mount Vernon, NY 10550


This event has been listed on Facebook, should anyone like to RSVP and attend!!!!

I, along with a few others, will be reading some poems.

Cheers,

MaryAnn

mccarrafitz@hotmail.com or mmccarrafitzpatrick@gmail.com