Five Dollars Worth of Ten Cent Pigs

[matthewcavellier]

Part 3 (The Call)

Behind her the kettle rumbles and spits water but doesn’t whistle. Coils on the stove glow around the bottom of the kettle. An inverted halo. Hot. Dastardly. She pours the water into a mug bottomed with lemon slices and honey. Returns to the porch and her whole world is gone.

[matthewcavellier]

Part 2 (The Hero)

Mavel opens her door tucks her robe around her and leans into the doorframe, resting her head against the cracked wood. Outside is a wonderland of dilemmas, a cadre of fashionable notions. But they are beyond her sightline. There is a garden gnome on his side, his beard half-buried in leaves. His face frozen and ruddy. The rake. The lawn bags. The worn gloves copulating in the grass. The door to the shed is open. The light is on. And dying. Shimmering chimerically; flashing like wanton neon in the downtown of a city Mavel has never visited.

[matthewcavellier]

Part 1 (Invocation)

There is a dream on the streets tonight. Rumbling through the forested woods and landing spitstop on the lawns of middle America, tracing patterns of seashells through the softsand beaches in resort towns, dramatizing Goethe on the somnambulant blacktop of Midwest cities leaning east. It has no name. It has multiple names.

[matthewcavellier]

Twaiku #5 (Excuses, Excuses)

I will only write 22 poems in April. Poems are workday items: forms and meter enjambed with meaning. Not like the weekend, when all is latent.

[matthewcavellier]

Twaiku #4 (I Miss the Rains Down in Africa)

last night i dreamed goats out the gates last night i smelled burns on the leaves last night victoria swallowed townie and tourist alike

[matthewcavellier]

Twaiku #3

one hundred forty characters is plenty of room to square dance around facts pirouette between truths shim-sham the plan fall down. go boom.

[matthewcavellier]

Twaiku #2

Tagalongs are tasty fun and good for what may ail you unless what ails you is the scale then Tagalongs just fail you.

[matthewcavellier]

Twaiku #1

Snow fell this morning: staticked white noise cauterizing snow-plowed grooves soothing yesterday’s sorrows settling in for another semester.

[matthewcavellier]

Visit Original Link

We bury bottles for good weather and never forget where they rest. And if it rains, we all get wet but cling bourbon to our chest. And when it suns on wedding days, consider us double blessed. The liquid and the love flow free from lips to ears confessed.

[matthewcavellier]

30-Second Poem (NaPoWriMo Poem #15: Haiku)

Puddled silent rain Grass browned and broken open Winter's soft lament

[matthewcavellier]

On a Burned Hand (NaPoWriMo Poem #14)

Samir and Sadiq refuse my high fives; Muse stares and points, reluctant to move close. I look at the burn in my palm and wonder if the stigmata itches, how infection would present, why I forgot the panhandle was hot. It's too much. That's the simple answer: it's too much to keep straight heat-laced metals and safe internal cooking temps, where to snap asparagus stalks and split onions to french. I look at the burn and turn over in my head the parched possibility my wound will be the worst fear those boys will face, growing up dark and accented in a world like ours fleeced in snow so white.

[matthewcavellier]

Winter 2.0 (NaPoWriMo Poem #13: Haiku)

If April showers bring May flowers, what pray tell does April snow bring?

[matthewcavellier]

This Is Not a Boston Poem (NaPoWriMo Poem #12)

From the sky the streets of Boston lay out like wagon wheels and cross-hatching. From underground the city looks the same as other cities with clogged arteries and transit tubes. (But this is not a Boston poem, nor is it a Boston poem disguised as not a Boston poem.) I've walked the 1 from Newbury Street to Harvard Yard, and the 66 from Porter Square to Coolidge Corner. Most days were bento box lunches on Boylston, Japanese game shows, and the refraction of cars streaking electric across the Pru. But this is not a Boston poem. If this were a Boston poem, I would have to talk about the Red Sox and the North End, First Night and lobstah. If this were a Boston poem, I would tell of Patriots' Day and Heartbreak Hill (I saw Will Ferrell there once-- he running the Marathon, me picnicking on a grassy knoll.) and the crowds that line the route like beneficent parade-goers. But I'm not ready to talk about that yet.

[matthewcavellier]

On Patriots' Day (NaPoWriMo Poem #11)

1. I'd write in form but not today. Windows spiderweb, bloods spatter, guns drawn to keep order hang mute. Today does not fit into a ghazal or sestina or villanelle. It does not call for order. 2. With no net, tennis is not quite different; it is not the same game. Today, I understand Frost. 3. Indeed there will be time to pen poems with measured feet and climbing rhymes. There will be time for heroic couplets and Elizabethan sonnets praising all the faces that we meet. Just not today. There is too much normalcy in order, and today must not be normal.

[matthewcavellier]

It was Written in the Heavens (NaPoWriMo Poem #10)

I try hard but there's just so far to go, until Spring calls and April bids adieu. Last night I fell asleep to Diderot, and left myself a poem still to do.

[matthewcavellier]

Beasts of the Southern Wild (NaPoWriMo Poem #9: Yadu)

1. Beasts in the wild southern mild night are riled and shake the earth, take charge, and break the silence. 2. A girl can take so much, fake strength, and wake up strong despite wrong plots and long forever walks. 3. This is her song: a proud conga along reviled waters, styled quick on wild southern beats.

[matthewcavellier]

NaPoWriMo Poem #8