For many Christmas means gifts.
What are gifts?
Material things–the new toy, new technology,
perfume, clothes.
People spend hours and money
many lack to give gifts.
Yet the most wonderful gifts remain:
joy
love
beauty
birdsong
touch
wonder
peace
poetry
Jen Payne’s New Book
Evidence of Flossing, WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND provides an unexpected metaphor for individual life, culture, and so much more. Nearly all the poems are accompanied with a photograph, often of trash in which lays a dental flosser (yes, one of those instruments with which you floss your teeth) with date and location. Flossing is supposed to prevent anything from being left behind. Hence, the title brings up an unusual play on words.
The first section Damage contains more than 20 poems which are a lament about much of modern life–mass shootings, the demise of wildlife, unpleasant changes. One poem asks the question: “Would God floss?” In the second section, Contact, the poems focus on the natural world, walks in the city, the woods, beaches. The third section, Connection, emphasizes the interconnectedness of everything, especially the relationships between humans and animals and nature. There are poems about frogs, storms, birds. One called Evidence of Fairies makes the reader feel the magic of old growth forests with moss and ancient trees. In the footnote to another poem she discusses the fact that wolf spiders actually create songs to lure lovers. Then, toward the end, the Alice poems appear, Alice as in “Alice in Wonderland”. In my favorite poem Payne relates her encounter with a stranger picking oyster mushrooms near a path in the woods.
After reading the poems and comments in this book, I will never view flossing the same way again. Will I find dental flossers now, something I never even previously thought about? I use those long strings of floss not flossers. Apparently the poems and flosser photos affected enough people that some sent Payne photos of flossers they saw here and there on the ground, some of which she has included in the book.
Even if I find no flossers, now I will certainly give a lot more thought to what I and others leave behind.
About the author: Jennifer Payne is the owner of Words by Jen, a graphic design and creative services company in Connecticut. She belongs to the Arts Council of Greater New Haven as well as several other arts and poetry organizations. Her work has been featured in various publications, including The Aurorean, Six Sentences, and the Story Circle Network. You can read some of her writing on her blog Random Acts of Writing.
Grief
behemoth bones
bleached white
African sun
grave yard for giants
some shot
others died a natural death
the living caress
bones with trunks
six thousand nerves
sensitive, searching
for answers
Sunday Poem–Rain
It’s raining! It’s raining!
It has not rained in more than a month.
I run out the door,
spreading my arms skyward.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
A smile smears joyfully across my face.
I run across the patio,
rain drops pelleting my face, my arms.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
My dog stands, rivulets of rain running off her.
Lightning explodes, thunder booms bass,
the steel roof plays staccato music.
I laugh out loud, dancing in the rain.
From my book “On the Rim of Wonder”. This poem holds true today. After a summer with lots of rain, it quit. It is very dry with a high danger of wildfires now that the summer vegetation has dried, perfect fuel.
Poetry Reading
A busy time of year, this holiday season. Here is what I will be doing this week on Thursday. Now I have to decide which poems to read, the Puma Poems, Hot Pink Toenails, Star–the sad one about the death of my grandson’s horse, poems about aging, death, what?
Sunday Poem-Puma I
“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.” Martin Buber
My neighbor walked out her door
found a puma lying on the lawn.
Puma rose, stretched, disappeared.
At night when I open my gate
I wonder if she lurks
behind the cedar trees,
pounce ready.
My daughter dreams puma dreams:
a puma chases her up a tree.
There are no trees here big enough to climb.
A Zuni puma fetish guards my sleep.
I run with puma
Night wild
Free.
I scream and howl
Moonstruck
Bloodborn.
I hike the canyon
stroll around my house
look for puma tracks.
I see none.
I would rather die by puma
than in a car wreck.
Note: This is the first in a series of Puma Poems in my book “On the Rim of Wonder”.
Still Life
Simple ingredients
Beautiful
Healthy food
Sunday Poem–“Hair”
No females in my family had long hair.
Dad did not like it,
said it showed male domination
over women.
Once when grown and gone
from home, I began to grow mine
out, experiment.
When he saw it, he told me
he thought it unbecoming.
I cut it.
Mom said she had long hair
when she was young.
Her dad forbade her to cut it.
In her twenties she chopped her golden locks
off, flapper style, then hid her head
in a scarf, afraid.
Note: This poem is from the family section of my book, “On the Rim of Wonder”.
Sunrise
Autumn’s beauty
Sunrise
Rim of Wonder
Sunday Poem
A few years ago Uno Mundo Press published my second book, a book of poems. Reviewers say it is a memoir. Oddly, that was not the plan; in retrospect, it seems apt. The poems’ topics are not chronological but rather via topic with quotations before each topic as a sort of introduction. For the foreseeable future, while I continue writing another book, I will post one poem from the book every Sunday.
The book begins with this quotation:
“Do something scandalous to give your descendants something
to talk about when you are gone.” Vanessa Talbot
The first section begins with this quote by Judith Jameson, the famous dancer and choreographer:
“I always tell my dancers.
You are not defined by your fingertips,
or the top of you head,
or the bottom of your feet.
You are defined by you.
You are the expanse.
You are the infinity.”
The first poem in the book goes like this:
I Have Lived
Depression, sad days, melancholy.
Gone!
At 26, I said, “To hell with this!
You control you life, live it!”
I tried forbidden liaisons, trained horses,
Traveled around the world, a cobra wrapped around my neck,
Walked the Shalimar Gardens in Kashmir,
Stood before the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi,
Watched the Taj Mahal reflected in still waters,
Walked the streets of Katmandu,
Talked to monks at Shwedagon Pagoda,
Bargained with sticks in dirt, math our only common language,
Downed raw turtle eggs in Costa Rica,
Danced on table tops, sang “Adonai”,
Roamed empty roads across the Navaho Nation,
Divorced four times,
Raised two talented children.
I have lived, running on the rim of wonder.
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