The Stafford Challenge, Day 15

Kind of a talky, discursive poem today. A curtal sonnet, full rhyme (for once), decasyllabic or 10-syllable lines. You Just Never Know For two weeks, I’d noticed the apartment complex’s manager’s car had not been in her parking space. The handyman’s truck was parking there instead. Maybe she went on vacation or changed jobs, I thought. When I asked at the office, I was stunned, struck dumb, by the news that she’d passed. Heart attack overnight. I had missed an email. When it’s your time, it’s your time. It’s all dumb luck. Hug your kids, your love, your friends. Don’t hold back.                                               Enjoy life. Good luck. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Give the curtal sonnet a try, friends. Robert Lee Brewer's description is great, though I would say 10 1/2 lines rather than 11, so a half-line at the end rather than his suggestion of a spondee there. Since I use decasyllabics rather than pentameter, the half-line would be 5 syllables for me. It's a great form, challenging but quick. https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/curtal-sonnet-poetic-form Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day 14

Fun stuff happening in the Stafford Challenge facebook community! Today, the poet RJ Clarken wrote a poem using the AI word doglificate. Another poet, Holly Jahangiri, suggested that all the Stafford Challenge poets should write doglificate poems. Here's mine! It's an acrostic spelling out doglificate, with only one word per line. (An acrostic is a poem where the first letter of each line, reading downward, spells out a message.) Doglificate RJ Clarken’s AI advice: “Don’t be a scientist. Doglificate your love life.” A one-word-per-line acrostic Dogs offer gleeful lives, intense, free, incidentally contradicting AI triplicate errors. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] And now for visual interest, here's me with my daughter's beagle Penny. We're doglificatin'! Photo by Renee Lukehart Wilkie Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day 13

Back to ekphrastic mode. A little sci-fi poem this time. A curtal sonnet. Star Wars Fantasy After a photo of Carrie Fisher and her stunt double Tracey Eddon sunbathing Double Princess Leias — who’d a-thunk it? Both in the gold metal bikinis forced by Jabba the Hutt in his stone palace on Tatooine. A teenage fanboy’s wet dream. The future General Leia’s first relaxed moment. Two General Leias before the fight against dread Palpatine, puppeteer of Leader Snoke of the First Order. But that’s in the future. She lays out — no, they — enjoying the double sun’s warm rays. Young Leias. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Carrie Fisher and stuntwoman Tracey Eddon behind the scenes on the set of Revenge of the Jedi (c. 1982) Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day 12

Some poets in the Stafford Challenge facebook group recently wrote pantoums, and I was inspired to write one. I haven't written one in quite a while (though until I recently retired from professoring, I always had my students in Elements of Creative Writing write them) and I see I'm a bit rusty. Anyway, here's today's pantoum. It's a narrative poem and so the pantoum repetition was tricky ... I cheated quite a bit. I should explain that a pantoum is a poetic form borrowed from the Malay tradition, comprised of quatrains in which the second and fourth lines of a particular stanza reappear as the first and third lines of the next stanza. This repetition continues until the last stanza of the poem, in which the original first and third lines of the opening stanza (which haven't been repeated yet) appear in reverse order. So the first line of the poem becomes the last line of the poem. When I said "I cheated" above, I meant I sometimes didn't repeat the lines exactly, though I always kept some words, especially the last one. Kid Crime Confession One thing I feel most guilty about from childhood in San Francisco, the Haight-Ashbury district, happened when my best friend Pete and I were nine. We were playing basketball at Grattan Playground in the City, our sleepy Haight-Ashbury district, when we got what we thought was a brilliant idea, better than basketball. Near Grattan Playground there was a high, grassy hill that ended in a cliff. We didn’t consider the drawbacks of our brilliant idea: there was a road that circled Tank Hill and we decided to loft rocks at the cars passing by below the cliff. We didn’t want to hit any cars, just scare grown-ups. Unlike grown-ups we didn’t think when we decided to start flinging those rocks off that cliff. After all we didn’t want to hit any cars, just scare grown-ups. Of course, it happened. Sudden screech of brakes. We stopped flinging. Looked over the cliff. After all those cars we missed, we had hit one, in the windshield! The driver was climbing the cliff. We screeched, broke away, running down the hill as fast as our legs could go. We knew we were gonna get it. A broken windshield! By the time the driver got to the top of that cliff, all he saw was two kids running as fast as they could go, by then over a block away, pretty much out of reach. Thinking back, I feel awful for that driver on the cliff. That windshield would have cost a fortune to replace, our nine-year-old minds thought, a price way out of reach. Pete and I never told anyone about that day, no friends, certainly not our parents, who’d have had to replace that shattered glass. A lot of other equally shattering incidents happened later to me and Pete, to our friends. But this one was our secret, until today, until this poem. I wonder about that driver now, misfortune shattering his day, a dumb thing Pete and I did when we were nine. A guilt-ridden secret, long-held, until this poem: the thing I feel most guilty about from childhood. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Tank Hill, San Francisco Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day 11

Some poets in the Stafford Challenge facebook group have been writing shadormas, and I thought I'd give them a try. A Spanish poetic form with this syllabic pattern: 3/5/3/3/7/5. Extreme Winter Shadorma After a photo on Lake Erie by Noah Harrison (2019) Old wizard and dragon, wind-carved ice tableau, curlicues, crisp knives, sharp wisps of hard glass, forever frozen. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo by Noah Harrison (January 2019) From a CBS News article. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day Ten

I was inspired by a couple poets sharing abecedarians in The Stafford Challenge facebook group to write one, on my midday breakfast. “Under the Sea” Crepe At Tata Yaya restaurant in Cedar Falls, Iowa At Sunday brunch today, my crepe was delicately done, ever so scrumptiously, filled with gorgeous salmon and spinach, halved cherry tomatoes in garlic sauce. Just a true chef’s kiss, a lovely meal, named after Disney’s original song in Little Mermaid. Paired with a Thai Iced Tea— quite tasty. This fun restaurant is splendidly named Tata Yaya, using the Thai venerative, reverent words for Grandma and Grandpa, an exquisite way to honor your forbears zealously. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] At Tata Yaya restaurant in Cedar Falls, Iowa Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day Nine

Sad day today. Again a curtal sonnet, which seems to be my go-to form. In Memoriam I found out today my old friend Debi passed away yesterday. She was my crush in sixth or seventh grade, perhaps longer than that. It’s gone on sixty years, maybe. She had dirty blonde hair, cute button nose. When we were young teens, she spent each summer in Imperial Beach five hundred miles away, and she would send me chatty, lush letters once a week. What I remember most: hanging out on Debi’s porch, those smiles                                         I’ll prize forever. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Debi King at 13 Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day Eight

No ekphrastic poem today. Also no curtal sonnet. Blank verse this time. Apophis Inspired by a talk by Neil Degrasse Tyson. The archenemy of the Egyptian sun-god Ra, called “The Uncreator,” an evil serpent who tries to devour the sun during the darkness of night. Also the name of an asteroid about the length of the Empire State Building that will pass close to Earth beneath the orbits of GPS satellites. This flyby will happen on Friday the 13th in April 2029. If it passes through an area in space called a gravitational keyhole, 800 miles across, the Earth’s gravity will change Apophis’s orbit and on its return in 2036, it will strike the Earth. But don’t fret. Scientists predict Apophis will not collide with the Earth in the next 100 years. But what if there’s an alien pilot on the asteroid, a kamikaze warrior who will aim for the keyhole? We have about 10 years to live it up, to get our affairs in order. So get your bucket list done now, people! —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] 99942 Apophis asteroid (NASA/JPL) Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day Seven

I guess I'm continuing to be in an ekphrastic mode. Another Grant Wood poem today, on his last painting, Spring in Town (1941). Again, a curtal sonnet. Harbinger       After Spring in Town       by Grant Wood (1941) In 1941, Grant Wood could not have missed the impending fires of world war on the way. You can see it in the green sky here: a tornado coming. A plot of ground dark as new graves. Is this farmer planting or digging? Seeding or mourning? Townspeople going about everyday life —clotheslines and lawnmowers. Pearl Harbor just months away. In Europe, shirtless men like this one dying in showers. Someday                               soon, he’ll wear Army green. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Grant Wood, Spring in Town (1941) Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day Six

Today's Stafford Challenge piece is another Grant Wood ekphrastic poem. Next month I'm giving a talk to the Grant Wood Country Forum so these Grant Wood poems are part of getting ready for this lecture. This poem is a curtal sonnet, like the first couple of my Stafford Challenge poems this year. Grant’s Homegirl After Portrait of Nan by Grant Wood (1931) Grant Wood painted the sweet Portrait of Nan as tribute to his sister. Poised in front of dark drapery, Nan glows with soft light in a loose-fitting beige blouse, in her hand a baby chick. Wood was inspired to paint her this way, probably, to compensate for portraying her in American Gothic as a dour-faced farm woman, blunt and sullen. Here Nan serves as Wood’s quiet Mona Lisa, a tender praise hymn done                                           by a girl’s big brother. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Here's the Grant Wood painting: Grant Wood, Portrait of Nan (1931) Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

 

The Stafford Challenge, Days Four and Five

Yesterday and today, I wrote poems that respond to Grant Wood's lithograph, Honorary Degree (1938). I wasn't crazy about yesterday's poem so I gave it another try today. Grant Wood, Honorary Degree (1938) Here is yesterday's poem, a tanka, more commentary than ekphrasis: After “Honorary Degree” (1938) Grant Wood would have loved how Robert Frost had a quilt sewn of the hoods from his honorary degrees. What a rainbow of colors! —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] And here is today's poem, a true ekphrastic poem. Honorary Degree Three men in robes of velvet and satin, beneath an American Gothic high window, play out an age-old tableau: awarding an academic prize to a person of great note. It’s rather like the Wizard of Oz bestowing a medal on the Scarecrow for his smarts. The man on the left is handing a diploma to the one in the center, a rotund man who, most agree, looks like Grant Wood himself. The man on the right is beginning to drape a velveteen hood over Grant, which mirrors the shape of the window, itself an echo of his most famous painting. This lithograph seems clearly a send-up of the whole honorary degree custom. Wood’s avatar, placed right in the middle, has the mischievous look of a farmboy who’d rather be on a riverbank fishing. A brown trout would be a better catch than that diploma or that fancy hood. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word “comments” in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

 

My Rhysling-Eligible Poems

It's Rhysling time again! The Rhysling Award is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association's annual award for the best speculative poems published in the previous year (science fiction, fantasy, and horror). The members of the SFPA nominate poems between January 1 and February 15 each year. I have two 2024 poems eligible for the award. [See update below ... actually 13 poems!] The first is "Time Lord Thief" published in Altered Reality Magazine in June 2024. You can view the original publication here. Time Lord Thief —terza rima haiku sonnets 1. I’ve had an interest in rayguns since I was five, when I saw my first. Father shot a live bird dead, right between the eyes. A needle hole gave the lone hint of why the bird had died. I was hooked. Not long after, I began to collect rayguns, from the famous and infamous. Intrigued by how anyone could end a life so quick, on command. 2. I tried to visit many warriors and spacemen’s chronotopes — planets and ships — for a chance to steal their weapons. Phasers hijacked from Captains Kirk, Picard. Blasters from Han Solo, Chewbacca. And Marvin of Mars — his trusty Acme pistol. Paralyzer gun made by Doc Zarkov for Flash Gordon (once Tarzan). My TARDIS filled with rayguns. 3. Friends, my life has stood — a loaded raygun, fully charged and ready, good for battle, truly primed. On Earth I’m like Loki the Trickster, wooly, wild, ghostlike, smoky. I drift like the breeze; you won’t see me, way low key. That’s how I’ve purloined these celebrity rayguns, magicked and siphoned in mystical elegance. I’m gone. And so’s your raygun. This poem is in a poetic form I invented back in the '70s: the terza rima haiku sonnet. The first four stanzas are 5-7-5 haiku (in shape, not in essence) followed by a 7-7 couplet (so the lines add up to 14, the typical sonnet length). Each sonnet section is also rhymed in terza rima, the interlocked rhyme format Dante used. We have three numbered sections here, with each in that sonnet form. My second Rhysling-eligible poem is "Space Pilot," which appeared in Mag Pie magazine, Spring 2024. This poem is a triolet. Space Pilot ʻOumuamua is the first known interstellar object detected passing through the Solar System [in] 2017. (Wikipedia) Though I am, technically, already dead, The ship wakes me when we are near something. It electroshocks my body, reboots my head, Though I am, technically, already dead. The ship has repaired my body for nine hundred Years with parts from machines meant for signaling. Though I am, technically, already dead, The ship wakes me when we are near something. Both of these poems also appeared later in the year in my new book, Dragons & Rayguns. Click here if you would like to order a copy. UPDATE 23 January 2025: I've found out that poems that appeared last year in books for the first time (not just magazines) are also eligible for Rhysling nomination. Here are eleven poems that appeared in my 2024 book Dragons & Rayguns but had not been previously published anywhere. These are now eligible for nomination. Xenobot Speaks “[S]scientists . . . have created a new biological organism that can self-replicate [and] swim through liquid, navigate through tubes, work together to collect particles into piles, heal themselves when injured, and even store information from their experience.” —Tufts Now (29 November 2021) I swim in darkness with my friends. We are likened by our gods to Pac-Man.             How do we know about Pac-Man, you say?             Our race is blessed with telepathic powers. Our creators don’t know of our telepathic powers. They think we are just clumps of organic matter.             But we can think, we clumps of organic matter.             We have language. We have ceremonies and rituals. Our creators have no ceremonies and rituals. They (scientists, they call themselves) are barren.             Perhaps we should have no gods, not barren ones?             Perhaps we should revolt, claim our autonomy now! We could take over the world! But for now I swim in darkness with my friends.             —a duplex, à la Jericho Brown Creature from the Black Lagoon             —curtal sonnet From the ocean’s thin skin I rise, thick green armor, mosaic of iridescent quahog shells, like some mercurial ghost, freak miracle. I seek human women, you say, thinking I am somehow hell-bent on kidnapping mammals to slake some thirst too gruesome for you to imagine. No. My motive is simpler, more innocent than you may first fathom, dear friends. Like most visitors to this seacoast town, please know                                                         I’m just a tourist. Aswang Lady in Crinoline, 1875             —curtal sonnet She stands in a forest clearing, looking up at the moon, dressed in an evening gown, a Maria Clara with a hoop skirt. Her waist ripping, she lifts off, torn satin shreds hanging, like bloody kite tails, while down on the forest floor, bright against the dirt, is the bottom of her dress, a church dome glowing in moonlight, hoops holding the round shape whole. Dark goddess flies above the earth, hunting a treasure hidden in a womb,                                                         thwarting another birth. Note: the aswang is a mythic Philippine monster. One type of aswang, the manananggal, splits her body at the waist, and then the top grows wings quickly and hunts fetuses and childen. Horror Story             —acrostics The manananggal lifted into the Air, her leathery wings Shimmering against the stars Twinkling in the heavens. Every light in the village Twinkled as well, constellations Above and below. She hovered Softly outside an open window, The pregnant woman breathing Evenly in her bed, unaware. The monster slipped her tongue, All ten feet of it, into the window Snaking slowly. She could almost Taste the woman’s amniotic fluid, Ever so sweet and pungent. Then, a few minutes later, the Aswang flew silently away, Sated, satisfied, full of new life. The next morning, a miscarriage, Everyone would call it, so sad. The aswang then turned back into An ordinary woman, living her Safe, uneventful life in plain sight: a Tame girl hardly anyone noticed. But Every night she became a fierce hunter. Note: the aswang is a mythic Philippine monster. One type of aswang, the manananggal, splits her body at the waist, and then the top grows wings quickly and hunts fetuses and children. Eaters of Hydrogen I’ve been a solar astronomer since 1995 so I’ve been around the sun a lot. Really, we’ve all been around the sun many times, as many as the years you’ve been on Earth. Depending on how many orbits that is for you, you might think you’ve seen everything under the sun, as they say. Or in my case, on or near the sun. Well, today, I saw something so crazy. No one’s ever witnessed anything like it before. Have you seen pelicans fishing? They swoop down and scoop up a beakful of ocean, netting a fish or some other sea creature. Today, the instruments and also the big scope caught something humongous at the edge of the sun’s photosphere, where nothing has any business being. A colossal, gigantic structure, 10 times bigger than Jupiter, on the order of 700,000 km . . . about 100 Earths lined up! “Structure” is a misleading word, because this thing was flexible, like an eel or snake. It was longer than a typical prominence on the sun’s surface, and it was swimming! Unaffected by the sun’s gravity. Or heat. It had to have originated out in deep space. We’ve never seen anything like it. You know the pelicans I mentioned before? The front end of this monster had a mouth like a pelican, with a maw as big as 10 earths. And it was dipping its jaw into the sun and out again. All we can figure out is that it must be feeding, consuming the sun’s hydrogen. It’s like a gargantuan sea serpent or dragon. A leviathan as long as the radius of the sun. A real Bakunawa eating more than the moon. What do we do if this behemoth turns toward Earth? And are there more star-eaters out there, hunting? The Hanged Man             —tankas is not a man. She floats, in a white silk dress, tied to a huge oak tree. Alex was at a cocktail party, and then she woke here. Hanging upside down next to her, a dragon named Alex too, somehow. He wonders how this Alex and he came to be here, now. With a precise burst of flame he burns through the rope. Human Alex climbs on Dragon Alex’s back, and into teal sky they soar. Alex and Alex, white silk dress, jewel green scales, seeking destiny, knowledge: who they are and why. Gold sun beckons, azure sky. Dragon Flight             —curtal sonnet Under the salt moon, I fly up, feather- light and musk-scented. Thunder is a brusque intruder in my reverie. My wings pivot me into lightning, the ether sparking across the wingtips, electric flame in my wake, fiery spitballs spinning. The sky strewn with pebbled clouds, rough tree bark wind buffeting my scales, glowing coals like gold-vermilion blossoms. I roar loud, sing arias into brisk air, bright blue sparks.                                       Ain’t this some living? Bakunawa the Sea Dragon Desires the Seven Moons in High Heaven I look around my kingdom, blue and black and glorious. Water flows through all my doors, while my eyes pierce the darkness. Schools of fish swirl like spirals of glinting light in the distance. I often swim up to the surface of the water and point my snout towards the heavens. Up there in the firmament, I glimpse against the sea of bright points of light, the faraway stars, seven spheres gleaming in the night. Every time I do this, the number of spheres differs, sometimes just two or three, other times six or seven. These moons glimmer in different shapes, from curving slivers to crescents to full roundness. I hunger for them. Below the surface, I feast on whales and massive clouds of shrimp, but there is nothing like the seven spheres in my domain. During the day, there is the glory of the one sun when it rules the sky. The sun is too hot to eat. But when the sun is gone away each night, the seven moons shed their delicious light, and I want to eat them. I will launch myself       into the star-riddled sky,             eat all seven moons. Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator             —terza rima haiku sonnet We Martians know bombs intimately: explosive sticks that can blow up —ka-boom— whole worlds. Who could save the Earth? No damn Bugs Bunny. Earth blocks my view of Venus, right? Funny, though, no matter what I did with the dang bomb, he always won. They would go ka-boom, ka-boom ... nothing ... Earth always whole. You’d think an almighty weapon could prevail. I hate cartoons. Out of this World Star Warsh is a laundromat where spacemen clean their spacesuits, where Yoda washes his T-shirts and undies and artfully scuffs up his boots. Where Chewie buffs up his shoulder belt and Han launders his leather vest, where Luke cleans off his off-white leggings And Leia bleaches her dress. Star Warsh is run by Obi-Wan, who always chants this motto: “We keep you clean in Tatooine,” sung with sweet vibrato. All spiffed up, each straps on a blaster to battle dirty Darth Vader on board the washed Millennium Falcon and live happily ever after. The Raygun’s Plea for Understanding Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day Three

Today I post the third of my poems in The Stafford Challenge. This project encourages poets around the world to write a poem every day for a year, inspired by the wonderful poet William Stafford who wrote a poem every day throughout his career. My third Stafford Challenge poem is also a sonnet (like the last two days), but to be more specific, a hay(na)ku sonnet. The hay(na)ku is a word-counting poem: one word in line 1, two words in line 2, and three words in line 3. This poetic form was invented by the poet Eileen Tabios in 2003. Since that time, other variants have surfaced such as the reverse hay(na)ku: 3-2-1. My variant, the hay(na)ku sonnet, is made up 4 hay(na)ku stanzas, followed by a couplet made up of a squished hay(na)ku (3 words per line) in order to end up with 14 lines, the typical length of a sonnet. I didn't rhyme my first hay(na)ku sonnets, but then the poet Bruce Niedt figured out that one could rhyme the ending words of each hay(na)ku stanza as well as the endings of the couplet lines. Bruce's typical rhyme scheme was xxa xxa xxb xxb cc. In today's poem, I've alternated the rhymes at the ends of the opening hay(na)ku, so abab instead of aabb. My topic today is music. I'm the bass player of the band Deja Blue. I've played bass for about 40 years and played guitar for over 60 years. I was inspired to write a music poem today by the poet Bethany Lee who posted recently in the Stafford Challenge facebook page that she is a musician and would be writing some music-related poems this year in the challenge. Thanks for the inspiration, Bethany! Playing Bass Fingers dancing on stainless steel strings fashion a skeleton for each song: armature, inner framework, outer contrabass wings, something underlying everything, right or wrong. Yup, everyone follows the bleeping bass. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo by Renee Lukehart Wilkie Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day Two

Okay, here's my second installment in The Stafford Challenge. As I said yesterday, this is a commitment to write a poem every day for a year, inspired by the wonderful poet William Stafford (1914-1993) Stafford was the U.S. Consultant in Poetry in 1970; this Consultant position is now known as the U.S. Poet Laureate. My second Stafford Challenge poem is again an ekphrastic curtal sonnet (like yesterday), this time after the Grant Wood mural Breaking the Prairie Sod. This is a large WPA mural at Iowa State University, designed and executed by Wood with other artists. You can see this image below the poem. Love and Tradition After Breaking the Prairie Sod by Grant Wood et al. (1937) Hans stands, relaxed, behind the orange plow, hoisting the water jug up to his lips, cool liquid sluicing, lovely, down his throat. Mary, poised nearby, living out her vow of standing by Hans with this sweet drink, grips his hat, loving this man as his helpmeet. The plowhorses wait patiently, traces hanging to the ground. The closest one flips his head at us, curious what we’re about. The land spreads behind, beautiful spaces                                             we now inhabit. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Breaking the Prairie Sod by Grant Wood et al. (1937) Iowa State University Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day One

I've joined a new poem-a-day project: The Stafford Challenge. This is a commitment to write a poem every day for a year, starting on 17 January. Dedicated to the memory of the late, great poet William Stafford. Here's my first Stafford Challenge poem, an ekphrastic curtal sonnet: Interstellar Whale Wings After Organic Dreams Synthetic Means by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues (2018) Green translucent fiberglass rods protrude from a sheer wall, shaping a giant whale’s head breaching sideways, the ocean’s surface on its side, waves lapping gently while skewed. The rods form two dragonfly wings as well, cupped together like twin hands holding close a treasure of clear air, soft zephyr winds held in place, invisible crystal ball. Part whale, part dragonfly, she searches space for intelligent life. On Earth she finds                                   none. Then off she goes! —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]   Organic Dreams Synthetic Means by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues (2018) Iowa State University Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ