Welcome to Sifting the Rubble's weekly blog and podcast of my poem-a-day challenge for 2022. I am your host, and poet, Emily Gibson. The poems for the 47th week of the year, Nov 19 to 25, came from experiences of the week and prompts from Move Me Poetry on twitter.
I want to explain, for those new to this podcast, that these are 1 or 2 day poems, which have not gone through the full grist of revision. That comes later, something I truly look forward to, as I sift the collection for poems I want to finalize. For now, they are new, not quite steady on their feet, but each speaks of something, so I share them, uncensored. It is part of my healing challenge to write a poem every day this year.
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And now, for this week's poems!
Poem #323, People will Know Without Asking
by Emily Gibson, Nov 19, 2022
A Viator Poem
If you are risible,
all day you laugh and snort
at the drop of your hat
or a pine cone or tree.
You live in detention
if you are risible
in school. Everyone loves
to poke your funny bone.
On a dating app form
the humor question asked
if you are risible.
You giggled gleefully.
You are always ready
with a knock-knock, tall tale,
quip, pun, or bawdy joke
if you are risible.
About "People will Know Without Asking": This is my first attempt at a Viator poetic form, where the first line of the first stanza is repeated as the 2nd, 3rd, and then final lines of the following 4-line stanzas. As an extra challenge, I included the same 6-syllable count for each line. The word "risible" came from a list of interesting words to include in poems.
Poem #324, The Reverse Could be True
by Emily Gibson, Nov 20, 2022
What if, on dreary, rainy days
when the thought of a hint
of a minute of summer
gets swept into the rubbish
of long dead leaves
crumbled to dust,
we are simply stuck
in a photo’s negative
where all is reversed
from light to dark?
That means, somewhere,
a green tree celebrates a sprinkler,
children dance with ribbon sticks,
and my car window
isn’t streaked with tears
against a Möbius strip black sky
as I leave my home town
for good,
for the last time.
About "The Reverse Could be True ": This is an ekphrastic poem (a poem inspired by art), written to an image by Joshua Eric Williams of a tree scribbled in black against gray. I am not able to share the art, as it is part of Rattle's November ekphrastic poem contest. I love how this poem stands well on its own, without the art.
Poem #325, Saint Helens’ Spring
by Emily Gibson, Nov 21, 2022
A child of the summer of love turned teen,
still hummed lyrics to her first favorite song:
“Do you remember, the twenty-first night
of September,” long after home-made cards
as valentines to every classmate were
a thing. A mountain in south Washington
blew its top and clouded the Pleiades
from sight. Her fondness deepened for the myth,
seven sisters she used to find at night.
Unlike her own brothers three, difficult
jailers who curtailed her curious mind.
She traced love sonnets in volcanic ash
layered on car hoods overnight. She pulled
maple leaves off logs to see their outlines,
gray mountain dandruff crusts, perfect detail,
until disintegrated by hard rain.
Her mom bought a glass teardrop, ash melted
to rainbows by a gaffer’s fire, symbol
of growth and recovery to come. Alone,
she sat on bleached beach logs just out of waves
reach; searched for morning agates in dense fog
to put in a jar of someday; once tried
to get drunk on grandma’s stale rum fruitcake;
dreamt she could stand on the steady wide back
of a Belgian draft horse at a canter.
It was that season before summer, months
before high school hopes crumbled, like the side
of a Washington mountain. That season
she learned to make art from destructive fire,
beauty that endures in ash darkened days.
About "Saint Helens’ Spring": This poem began with six required objects/concepts that just so happened to merge well with elements of my youth. Mostly fictional with undertones of real events. Though I have 3 brothers, they are awesome and not difficult at all. And my grandmother's fruitcake was delicious but not intoxicating despite the heavy rum. Each line has ten syllables, and each stanza has six lines, as a structural form.
Poem #326, Mahale the Chimpanzee Reunites with Baby Kucheza Post C-Section Recovery
by Emily Gibson, Nov 22, 2022
I thought I knew the heaviness of loss before recovery heals.
I thought I knew the world as a primate with my view of words.
I thought I knew sentience, how it looks and feels from my skin.
I thought I knew the root human, in the words humanity and humane.
I thought I knew the spark of hope, how it banishes dark despair.
I thought I knew the capacity of joy to catapult grief from view.
I thought I knew the switch flip of emotions, like how a fish flops.
I thought I knew what it is to cradle a loved one thought gone forever.
I thought I knew parental love, how it disappears the existence of other.
I thought I knew that love can disintegrate immense pain.
I thought I knew it all.
Until Mahale’s masterclass on love, subtitled in Chimpanzeese.
About "Mahale the Chimpanzee Reunites with Baby Kucheza Post C-Section Recovery": When I saw Mahale the Chimpanzee pick up her newborn infant after a two-day separation, her actions caused me to consider all I thought I knew about being a primate, a human, and sentient being. You can watch the video clip here: Mama Chimp is reunited with Baby after C-section - YouTube It is so indescribable, yet I still attempted to describe what she made me feel.
Poem #327, What Use is Immortality in Walmart?
by Emily Gibson, Nov 23, 2022
Golden Shovel Poem, using words from the first four lines of “Immortality” by Clare Harner
Why did he (so often a he) do
the horror we would not?
How can we collectively stand
for one more mournful stand-by
of weak thoughts? Fear hovers in my
heart: those gunned down lie in my grave
made deeper each day that dawns with death and
wider with every hour we weep,
actionless. Though not the dead, I
know the violence spewed and am
overwhelmed, tempted to hide my eyes to not
see how easily I could have been there.
Powerless? Remember, there is no timid I
in “we” or “us.” Yet how temporary unity is. I do
fear that, when we fall back to “I” we do not,
though still powerless, struggle enough to sleep.
About "What Use is Immortality in Walmart? ": I wrote this poem in response to yet another act of gun violence in the U.S., caused by a human shooting other, innocent humans. It is a golden shovel poem that uses the words of the first 4 lines of "Immortality" by Clare Harner as the last words of my poem's lines. You can find Clare's full poem here: https://yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=322
by Emily Gibson, Nov 23, 2022
Golden Shovel Poem, using words from the first four lines of “Immortality” by Clare Harner
Why did he (so often a he) do
the horror we would not?
How can we collectively stand
for one more mournful stand-by
of weak thoughts? Fear hovers in my
heart: those gunned down lie in my grave
made deeper each day that dawns with death and
wider with every hour we weep,
actionless. Though not the dead, I
know the violence spewed and am
overwhelmed, tempted to hide my eyes to not
see how easily I could have been there.
Powerless? Remember, there is no timid I
in “we” or “us.” Yet how temporary unity is. I do
fear that, when we fall back to “I” we do not,
though still powerless, struggle enough to sleep.
About "What Use is Immortality in Walmart? ": I wrote this poem in response to yet another act of gun violence in the U.S., caused by a human shooting other, innocent humans. It is a golden shovel poem that uses the words of the first 4 lines of "Immortality" by Clare Harner as the last words of my poem's lines. You can find Clare's full poem here: https://yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=322
Poem #328, Chop Shop Exercise
by Emily Gibson, Nov 24, 2022
Exercise in line breaks, putting line breaks to existing text that has been stripped of poetic form.
Tomorrow,
and tomorrow,
and tomorrow,
creeps
in this petty pace
from day to day,
to the last syllable
of recorded time;
and all our yesterdays
have lighted fools
the way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but
a walking shadow,
a poor player,
that struts and frets
his hour upon the stage
and then is heard
no more:
it is a tale
told by an idiot,
full of sound
and fury,
signifying
nothing.
Original text by William Shakespeare, from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth
About "Chop Shop Exercise": This poem came from an exercise in a poetry class. Given an existing poem that has been turned into a paragraph of text, give it new life/meaning by putting line breaks in thoughtful places. I did not realize, when I was given the block of text, that it was Shakespeare! So I am not sure I gave new life or meaning to it, but it was a useful and fun exercise, nonetheless.
Poem #329, A Trip on the Southbound Evening Train from Klamath Falls
by Emily Gibson, Nov 25, 2022
A man sat in a train depot,
like a trapped hummingbird,
moments after departing a bus.
A patient-firm bus driver confronted him:
“Why did you throw trash
all over the backseat of my bus?
Did I treat you disrespectfully?”
She waited for his answer.
He stumbled over words, cried,
then said, “I can clean it up.”
She explained it was all cleaned up.
“Well, I didn’t think you’d come here
and be all mad at me like this.”
As he shook and stammered,
the bus driver said, “You were
the only person there. Think, man.
Think. Don’t treat people
like this.” They shook hands,
his tears vanished with the driver.
On the train, he continued, unable
to conform to expectations. He walked
the train in rapid feet, bare after he yanked
socks off by their toes, which sprayed
nearby passengers with dust
embedded in their fabric.
Like a curious cat, he explored
every button and handle on the train
to see what his astonished eyes did find.
He pulled the between-car
canvas and metal frames out, blocked
the passageway, and ran back to his seat
at sight of the patient, impressively bearded
young conductor, dapper in a knee-length,
fur-collared coat, with shined leather shoes.
The conductor followed, herded, and cajoled,
all failed attempts to contain passenger to a seat
until the next full-service stop’s security support.
Every time the conductor fixed attention
to conduct other train tasks,
the passenger popped up like a jack in the box
and ran off in the opposite direction.
That lack of boundaries,
that knee-jerk response to “no”
unsettled everyone around him.
How different it would have been,
as behavior of an age-appropriate toddler instead.
This teacher was grateful to disembark
and leave my bit-player role
in that particular passenger’s trip.
About "A Trip on the Southbound Evening Train from Klamath Falls": This poem was born of observations from sitting next to a passenger who caught everyone's attention, including mine. I liken this to a "lunch poem" but rather than observing over the course of a lunch, it was a few hours, between train station wait and train ride.
And that concludes Sifting the Rubble's poetry for this week! I hope you enjoyed this collection of newly hatched poems. Perhaps some of them spoke to you, or maybe you found one begging to be shared with someone else. If so, I hope you will pass it on! Either way, thank you for listening and reading. Hope to see you next week with seven new poems!
