Puzzle: how to nudge this boat
among trailing vines and branches,
squeeze through the one bare space,
poke the reeds with the paddle
and pluck out the Coke can?
Then figure the best wrist action
for flipping a taco wrapper
from beneath the snarl of algae
that streams off the paddle
like hair from a corpse.
The bag between my knees
grows lumpy with Styrofoam
bait buckets, beer cans, a slack-faced
soccer ball, glass and plastic
bottles sloshing grainy water.
Puzzle: why is the world so filled
with slobs? And why,
on a mild spring morning
in downtown Elmira,
does all this garbage
beckon like carnival prizes?
Originally published in Eunoia Review (January 27, 2016).
Photo by Gorlov.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote this poem after helping to pick trash out of three ponds in Elmira, New York, during a volunteer cleanup…
I’ve got too much on my plate – and my blogging has been suffering because of it.
I’ve been busy with poetry, singing, family activities, and chores and a lot of the other things on my plate, like blogging and doing poetry submissions have been pushed off to the side.
As is often the case, it’s not so much that I need more time as that I need more brain power. While I thought that I had gotten through the alternating bouts of numbness and thought-swirl that happen from grieving, this fall has shown that I was mistaken. I have only limited time when I can concentrate well enough to write – and some days that doesn’t come at all.
I know better than to make promises about catching up on blog posts.
I do have a few submissions that will be coming up on deadlines that need to get moved up on the list of tasks – or to the center of the plate if I can make myself return to the original metaphor – and I will need to work on holiday cards, which are a high priority item for me.
I’m hoping that I will have a couple of poems published in December, so there will be posts for those.
If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to get my mind in a more stable place and clear some of the items off my plate.
(She writes, really trying to do stream of consciousness metaphor…)
I’m pleased to share the news that Jessica Dubey’s newest chapbook, All Those Years Underwater, is now available, either from Kelsay Books or from Amazon. If you happen to order from Amazon and don’t yet have Jessica’s chapbook For Dear Life, be sure to add it to your cart, too.
Jessica is one of my local poet-friends, part of the Grapevine Poets here in Broome County, New York, as well as the Boiler House Poets Collective. It has been my privilege to see the poems in both manuscripts develop over time and come together into power-packed chapbooks.
Jessica has a special talent for writing about difficult issues in a way that is beautiful, but searing. As Marilyn McCabe notes on the back cover of All Those Years Underwater, “Danger is so delicate in these poems; it slides like a stiletto between the ribs. The poems stare you down with their lovely eyes, even as they insert the blade.”
For more information, links to previously published poems, and contact information, visit Jessica’s website. I’m sure she would love to hear from her readers!
The Design Thinking Initiative and the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College, my alma mater, are currently spearheading a Common Reassemble project using the works of Emily Dickinson.
To participate in the Emily Dashes project, members of the Smith community take a page or two of Dickinson’s poems and create a response to the work using whatever materials they see fit.
I have submitted two pages. Being more of a poet than a visual artist, I relied on erasure style with a bit of added decoration.
The pages will be displayed at the Poetry Center and may be shared on social media. At the conclusion of the project, they will be assembled and housed at the library as part of the Mortimer Rare Book collections.
What a fun and innovative way to leave a bit of myself “in residence” at Smith!
I was working on a poem to send to Rattle Poets Respond, which is an online series from Rattle in which poets submit new work based on something that happened in the news that week. I was literally on the last step to submit this poem when my daughter E, who lives in London, UK, told me that Liz Truss was about to make a statement. I delayed hitting send and, in those few minutes, the poem became moot. Still, I thought it was worth sharing here as a moment in time.
Liz Truss or Lettuce
Which will last longer? asks the Daily Star.
On Day One, the iceberg is unadorned, but soon
enhanced with googly eyes, a smile,
sprouts a full head of blonde hair.
While the PM dodges questions, sheds
Cabinet ministers, the lettuce tries to stay
fresh, despite the spotlight, enjoys snacks, a glass
of wine, some tofu on day six, a nod
to the departed Home Secretary.
The bookies’ current odds are 1 / 2
that Liz will outlast the lettuce.
Place your bets before it’s too late.
Rattle also requests an explanatory note and links to the news stories involved. This is what I had prepared: With the government of UK Prime Minister Liz Truss in turmoil, the Daily Star has a livestream of her photo beside an increasingly adorned head of lettuce. Brits seem to have a special talent for finding humor in any situation. A clip explaining the Home Secretary/tofu connection can be found here.
If anyone is moved to share this post or poem, please include my name, Joanne Corey. I hope it will give people a smile or chuckle, however rueful.
My apologies for the infrequent posts as of late. There has been a string of important events and I haven’t had much time/brain for posting, but I did want to get the word out that I am back at The Studios at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) for the annual reunion residency of the Boiler House Poets Collective.
We have three first-time members joining us this year and there have been some renovations at the Studios. With ever-evolving COVID protocols in addition, things feel somehow new as we make our way together, taking the opportunity to re-vamp our usual routine.
I’m very excited that we will be doing our first public reading in several years on Friday, October 14, 2022 at 4 PM at the Artist Book Foundation in North Adams. If you are in the area, come join us for a sampler of the work of eight members of the Boiler House Poets Collective!
On September 17th, I returned to my hometown, Monroe, Massachusetts, for their bicentennial celebration.
The day began with a presentation from State Representative Paul Mark of a framed copy of the restoration of the original town charter. In his remarks, he noted that, unlike most Massachusetts charters, Monroe’s does not have any mention of an English king. The town was incorporated from parts of other towns and named for President James Monroe, who was president of the United States at the time.
The charter was hung up right away!
When I was growing up there in the 1960s-70s, the town had about 200 residents. In the 2020 census, there were 118 residents, making it the smallest town by population on the mainland of Massachusetts.
The festivities centered around the Town Community Center, which was the school back in my day. (Also, in the days of my father and his siblings, when it was built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.) The building still houses the town offices and library. What had been the classroom for grades 1-4 when I attended is now a community meeting room where many of the indoor activities were housed. The rest of the building is now used as offices by the power company that is the successor to New England Power, for which my father worked for over forty years.
I was able to make some contributions to the memory board and books. I sent some poems and was surprised to find one of them on display with a vintage newspaper photo of me when I graduated from high school.
Many of us were feeling nostalgic about the post office. There were two postal employees there to hand-cancel envelopes with a bicentennial commemorative postmark, even though the Monroe Bridge post office closed years ago to be replaced by this:
Not nearly as distinctive looking as this mail slot which was salvaged from the old post office and is now in the Monroe Historical Society’s collection.
For an explanation of why it was the Monroe Bridge post office and why I often refer to my hometown as Monroe Bridge, you can read my poem “Monroe Bridge Mail” published by Wilderness House Literary Review here. (It’s the final poem in a set of five.)
I spent quite a lot of time in the Historical Society, looking at the artifacts and photos. It was nice to see that the murals that had been painted by a WPA artist for our classroom had been moved there:
There was memorabilia from the Town’s sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) which I remembered as a very exciting time when I was in grammar school.
It was fun to get to reminisce with people who had been in town when my family lived there. Some are still residents or folks who have stayed local, while a few, like me, had travelled from further afield. I especially appreciated the time that Lucy spent with me, pointing out family connections among the memorabilia on display or in the Historical Society. I was touched by all the kind words about my parents and the expressions of sympathy on their passing. The celebration was just a few days after the first anniversary of my father’s death; he and my mother were among the founding members of the Monroe Historical Society.
There was Bicentennial swag available! One of my purchases was the Bicentennial History Book. I was honored that my poem “Playground” was chosen to be on the back cover. It reads:
Our WPA-built school housed two classrooms, eight grades, two teachers, twenty-some students, old textbooks, reams of assignments designed to keep us quiet at our desks.
Morning and afternoon recess and the remainder of lunch hour, we jumped off swings, attempted running up the two-story slide, sent the spinning merry-go-round swaying to crash with a satisfying clang into the metal pole from which it hung.
Dodge ball, monkey-in-the-middle, a dozen variations of tag, where the tap of a classmate’s hand thawed you from your frozen state or freed you from jungle-gym-jail.
Jump rope chants “Not last night, but the night before, a lemon and a pickle came a-knockin’ at my door.”
Upper-grade boys against girls in Wiffle ball or kick ball. Despite our skirts, the girls, already becoming young women, usually won. *****
Of course, as promised, there was cake!
It was a great celebration for a little town! Even though I’ve lived out-of-state for forty years now, a part of me is still at home there.
And even if you have never visited, there are now new signs to welcome you. This is the one you will see if you cross the state line from Whitingham, Vermont into Monroe.
I’ve been out all day at the bicentennial of my hometown so this will be a short SoCS post.
When I saw that Linda’s prompt was ring, what came to mind was the poem I wrote about taking off my father’s wedding ring after he died. The first anniversary of his death was Wednesday. The poem was published this spring by Wilderness House Literary Review here. ***** Join us for Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/09/16/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-17-2022/
I’m pleased to announce that I have two new poems published in the Fall-Winter issue of Rat’s Ass Review! (In case you are wondering about the somewhat unusual name, read the longer version of their submission guidelines, which is one of the most informative, honest, and entertaining I’ve ever encountered.) Many thanks to current editor Roderick Bates for choosing my work for inclusion in this issue.
There are 61 contributing poets plus cover art, so there’s lots to enjoy! Contributors are arranged alphabetically, so you will find my poems listed under Joanne Corey. Clicking on any poet’s surname takes you to their bio in the last section.
The inspiration for my first poem “The Banned Bookmobile” is a project under development at WordPlace, the Southern Tier Literary Center at the Bundy Museum, Binghamton, NY. J. Barrett Wolf, director of Wordplace, is planning to assemble a collection of banned/challenged books in a bus that can travel about to present programs on the First Amendment, censorship, and other topics. (Editor Rick Bates helpfully made the title of the poem a link to the web page for the project.)
For those of you who may not be familiar, in rural/underserved communities, it was common to have a bookmobile visit several times a year, giving schoolchildren and adults the chance to borrow a wider range of books than were available in town. I remember the excitement in my rural New England town of 200 when the bookmobile visited. Although I loved our town library, it was very small and the bookmobile offered many more options.
My poem references several books/series that have been banned from various schools or libraries in the United States, including And Tango Makes Three, the Harry Potter series, The Bluest Eye, and To Kill a Mockingbird.
“Video Chat with our 95-year-old Father” was written in early 2021, shortly after Paco had moved into the assisted living unit of his senior community. Due to pandemic restrictions, my sisters and I weren’t allowed to visit his place, even though I lived nearby. The staff would set up a video session with their iPad and then leave to attend to other duties. Unfortunately, Paco had difficulty grasping the situation and the technology involved.
Cleaning Miller Pond
Joanne Corey 