Approaching 31 on Stubs (a Short Girl Birthday Poem)

Original Photo by Agnes Fohn Photography, (C) 2014

Written while staring down 31, then realizing you need a step ladder to look it in the eye.


APPROACHING 31 ON STUBS

My legs haven't grown.
They say third time's a charm,
but three decades have passed
and they remain abridged.
Apparently I was not destined to be a torso,
and head,
set upon giraffe gams,
or to grow into a lithe antelope woman
made of sloping lines toe-walking in knife-sharp heels.
I'm okay with it.
At least it's time to be.
We still need pixies.
We still need
someone to wear the scraps
cut off other jeans made
for longer bodies.
We need the travel-size army keeping the hemming industry
alive.
The invaluable insight into urgent matters like
the nuances of the undersides of chins,
or the perks of speaking to navels,
can only be obtained by miniatures looking up.
(Also children.)
Still, sometimes,
when slithering into
worn-in mens t-shirts,
borrowed for spooning or sleep,
my wish,
my always wish,
will be for a ballerina's base:
Two long extensions,
sinews taught
to wrap around your waist
like climbing ivy.


(C) Kimberly Kaye 2014

Delicate F-ing Flower #2: Chrysanthemum, and More Accidental Poetry Found Lurking in Gmails

Chrysanthemum.

Of course she had to pick the name that is the hardest to spell, one of those blossoms that need to be Googled before you can put it in print.

Where does the "y" go again? 


A few weeks ago I introduced and explained a metaphorical poetic garden filled with Delicate Fucking Flowers. (There will be an explaination for why we're plucking them at all...eventually.) Today, Chrysanthemum joins Tobacco Blossom, Dearie in the DFF bouquet, though her debut is unintentional.

Chrysanthemum is our youngest flower at the tender age of 16. She started writing me when this blog first debuted and has since made me spit-take coffee, cock my head sideways at her advanced insight and reminded me why I wouldn't go back to being 16 and in high school if you offered me $10 million dollars. She did it all via a daisy chain of both wry and aching emails.

When the following snippet appeared in one of the most recent Gmail messages, I couldn't help but think it fit the bill of accidental poetry, one of my favorite genres ever:

Our house is small,

and Cape Cod,

and every newly-weds’ dream.

The blue shutters

just scream “come live in me,”

as if shutters could scream.

Our landscaping is pristine,

and everything done by hand.

Our hands.

The hands of my

dyfunctionally perfect,

still married,

single child

family.

There are flowers in the lawn.

IN THE LAWN.

I think the house belongs

somewhere in

a coastal Massachusetts town,

with landing seagulls

and fireworks over the bay

on The Fourth of July.

When my parents got married they had a painting made of it.

A painting.

Of our house.

Hanging in the front entryway.

Just in case you missed it

before you came inside.

This girl is 16. I freaking love her. And her real, intentional poetry debut will sprout up on the blog shortly.

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.