I Am Just Happy to See You

But I also have a poem in my pocket, courtesy of the kind folks at literary magazine Ninth Letter, who sent me a tiny envelope to celebrate today: Poem in Your Pocket Day. And obeying the instructions, I did not open it until April 17th. It was like Christmas morning. And like the best gifts, it seems as if the giver knew me because I received a prose poem. Here it is:

from PRIMER: AN ABECEDARIAN
by Sara Pennington

You watch your mother through the barn's KNOT HOLE.

She sharpens anything that she can use for killing, polishes and cleans her own dead daddy's Confederate gun, his knife folded quietly in the homespun pocket of her skirt. The pitchfork gleams like a fox's hungry chops, the scythe fleer its grimace, the sickle its overwrought smirk. Between weapons, her fingers turn to kippers, writhing, those pale-bodied worms eaten up with death. And now, you know why she keeps moving: she must. To rest would be to give thought to the maggots, to the fine-haired fungus, to the earwigs and earthworms; idleness serves only the graveyard's nibbling legions. She will not feed her anger like slop to the swine. Vengeance is mine, saith the widow, for each stillness, each silence is a dark-mouthed

KEYHOLE through which grief slithers like a honey-voiced snake.

from Ninth Letter vol. 4, no. 1

Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day, everyone!

NatPoMo Update

That cutting edge literary magazine Ninth Letter sent me a surprise today. It's for "Poem in Your Pocket Day," which is April 17th, 2008. It's part of NatPoMo. The poem for my poet is sealed in this portable tiny envelop and warns me "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL APRIL 17 PIYP DAY." What can be inside? I hope it's money. I like money. But I suspect it's a poem. What is the poem in my pocket? Find out on April 17th! Live! (Is a blog live?)

P.S. Please resist any jokes that day that begin: is that a poem in your pocket or....