Monday, March 7, 2011

Delicate F-ing Flower #1: Tobacco Blossom Dearie



A momentary shift of gears.

See, there's this metaphorical garden. It's overgrown with Delicate F-ing Flowers, fragile-stemmed blossoms with poetic petals, sharp tongues and hidden thorns, all perfumed in that intoxicating way that makes you have to sniff them. 

They may or may not snap their jaws shut fly-trap style and consume you whole when you stick your lovely nose in. They have been known poison admirers when worn in a lapel.

But you'll still want to pick them because they're so damned pretty. 

Today I humbly submit for your approval the first of the bouquet. This first bloom is from Louisiana, a green sapling somehow old enough to dangle years of Spanish moss, who knows what it means to miss New Orleans and to help grow it back from scratch. When she's not tending cities she's tending herbs, making roux, stitching vintage undies and dresses back together and making them new, putting little birds under her wing until they're grown, and occasionally tossing back red wine like water.

She sent us this piece scrawled on an old envelope (the best kind of submission) as Mardi Gras approached, when sequins and feathers should take priority over words, earnest or otherwise.

So on this sacred Lundi Gras we post this bit of poem, mailed in from the south by Tobacco Blossom Dearie

Untitled (or "none in particular, or all")

the wind has picked up 

my hat lifts, and sails

i shift the weight of solitude from hip to hip,
testing its heft,
and round the corner

a child chases a dervish of leaves,

laughing.

further on
an old man walks by
under my hat.

i can smell the rain on his breath.


-in loving memory of RJS.

14 comments:

  1. oh, heart! you make a girl blush, then cry....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beautiful. The imagery and the action make this poem feel as if it's in a perpetual state of motion. A living work of art.

    ReplyDelete
  3. great metaphorical way of expressing life in motion

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's kinda mawkish. vague enough that it could mean everything, but doesnt really mean anything. and that's not a valid point to make.
    the title is sophomoric.
    the periods at the end of the stanzae don't seem thought through.
    it needs work.
    some of it's good though, i like the last line. and the imagery's nice. like the use of dervish and heft.
    just so uberemotional and equivocal...

    ReplyDelete
  5. I like it, metaphor for life passing and acceptance. Look forward to the bext blossom:):)

    Olga from http://revedoa.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. Kimberly you wanted a Love letters, I have just updated my blog

    http://code2liveby.blogspot.com/2011/03/my-soul-sparkling-with-sensational.html

    I will be most thankful if you comment.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thank you for visiting my blog Kimberly, as yo can see I wear my heart on my sleeve

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Chris B I do believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, especially when it comes to what we read, but wish that the word sophomoric would go back to high school, where it belongs-- and that the standard for good poetry, particularly in the eyes of practitioners, was not to accept esoteric lines and abrupt clippings as the only elements of success...we have forgotten that the poem was once the place to go when prose failed emotion and emotion failed prose

    do appreciate the comment though, and I'm sure Tobacco Blossom does too

    to the rest--more blossoms on the horizon

    ReplyDelete
  9. Loving the metaphorical garden. Girl, you're taking notes with one helluva sharp instrument.
    And I thought Dearie's poem was just beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  10. @chris b.: actually, the poem started out as untitled; the title tacked on was the header for the email i sent to ms. kaye. which is fine by me, as i am from a city that functions in a perpetual state of "practical mysticism." here serendipity rules. thank you for taking the time to critique
    my scribblings. "mawkish" is one of my favorite words! dana (tbd)

    ReplyDelete
  11. interesting bit obscure but interesting never the less. kinda like a bug that you have never seen before you know its a bug just not sure if it will bite you or not

    ReplyDelete
  12. i think it's beautiful and that IS the point isn't it? to create beauty and to share it. those who criticize are merely unsettled by their own reflection!

    ReplyDelete