Category: writing

Sensing My Dismay at the Election Results, My Wife’s Dog Presses Against Me

Sending support to Bob down South at this difficult time. I am in awe of his ability to express the present situation poetically when everything is still so raw.

robert okaji's avatarO at the Edges

keep-off

Sensing My Dismay at the Election Results, My Wife’s Dog Presses Against Me

And when I roll over, my toe finds a hole in the not
inexpensive 400 thread count percale sheet and rips

down its length, and I wonder if I should extend this
metaphor to include walls and the unbearable weight

of societal collapse, or hatred with small hands and
minds or faces like pale disks of whitewashed emptiness

glaring at my friends, or, well, my wife and I, across
the restaurant’s laminate booths or the potholed street

by the bus stop. I recall the woman’s sneer and hushed
commentary that afternoon, and though I wanted to

correct her mistaken assumption (hey, lady, I’m not
Hispanic) and redirect her bigotry to the correct ethnicity,

I chose instead to smile and wave goodbye, to drive to
the polls and cast my ballot, one drop in that dark bucket

of…

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Poems – Fall 2016 BPP anthology

The fall anthology of the Binghamton Poetry Project is now available, so I can share the poems that were published in it here at Top of JC’s Mind. I shared “Thanks to the Department of Public Art” in a separate post. Below are three poems that I wrote from prompts in the summer and fall 2016 workshop sessions. Enjoy! (For some reason, when I copied these over, they arrived in a different font and spacing, so I decided to just roll with it!)

Sounds of Silence

          by Joanne Corey

Even if there were no
birds chirping in the trees,
leaves rustling in the breeze,
neighbor’s dog barking,
car alarm down the street erupting,
papers rustling,
child dribbling a basketball,
ice cream truck playing its jingle,
chipmunk retreating into the downspout,
bee buzzing among the clover,
footsteps on the sidewalk,
there would not be silence.

The voice in my mind is never
still.
*****
To Do

     by Joanne Corey

Go grocery shopping
Cook dinner
Clean up
Watch the news
Read
Sleep

Don’t forget to sing

Get up
Eat breakfast
Shower
Dress
Call Mom
Listen more than you talk

Don’t forget to sing

Travel
Visit a volcano
Step into the Pacific
Climb a mountain
Hear Big Ben chime
Walk on a glacier

Don’t forget to sing

Become a grandmother
Mourn your parents
Visit old friends
Pray
Write
Listen more than you talk

Don’t forget to sing
*****
Four River Haiku

 ~~ by Joanne Corey

Ice glazes river.
Groan, crack, break, flow downstream, jam.
Water floods the town.

Snow melt in spring sun.
River hurries over rocks.
Meander, oxbow.

Summer drought for months.
Fish find oxygen in pools.
We cast, seeking them.

Leaves, gold, orange, red,
Windswept, traverse the hillside.
River flows away.

 

Thanks to the Department of Public Art

When I revealed my secret poetry mission, I promised to share the text of my poem “Thanks to the Department of Public Art” after it was published in the fall anthology of the Binghamton Poetry Project.  The anthology is available tonight at our reading, so I am pleased to share the poem below. Here is a recording of my original reading at the 2016 Heart of the Arts Awards dinner.

Thanks to the Department of Public Art
~~ by Joanne Corey

 for Emily Jablon, Peg Johnston, and all whose hearts are in the arts

Stencils and murals
on descending levels
of the Water Street parking ramp
time-travel through that historic corner –
Link Blue Box flight simulators
evolve from pipe organs –
punching in on Bundy
time recording machines
in the days before IBM
and the move to Endicott –
on street level
“Welcome to the birthplace
of virtual reality”

We walk back
walk through
move forward
cover
recover
remember
build
rebuild
renovate
together

Walking along the Chenango
more murals –
diverse faces
in shades of gray
with colorful songbird
overlay –
hot air balloons
float over green hills –
BINGHAMTON
in bold letters
filled with landmarks
proclaiming their location

We draw
paint
photograph
digitize
share
write
read
view
review
create
recreate
together

Across Court Street
a riot of mosaics
flowing around curves
moving through the spectrum
patterns
shapes
florals
the clear message
“BE  INSPIRED,
BE BINGHAMTON”

Broken shards of glass and lives
re-order
re-assemble
tessellate
shine in the sun
glisten in the rain
reflect
renew
touch
together

We sing
play
listen
dance
act
react
interact
applaud
together

We live
breathe
eat
drink
laugh
sigh
smile
artfully
thoughtfully
cooperatively
with heart

 

 

 

 

Poem: Making Aunt Gert’s Indian Pudding

I have not (yet) fallen off the face of the earth.

Life is increasingly complicated, so I haven’t been able to post much lately.

It’s so complicated that I forgot to post for National Indian Pudding Day yesterday! Here I am belated sharing an Indian Pudding blog post from last year. Enjoy!

Joanne Corey's avatarJoanne Corey

I am very pleased to announce that I have another poem published today!  The blog of Silver Birch Press has published “Making Aunt Gert’s Indian Pudding” as part of their “My Sweet Word” series. You can find it here: https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/making-aunt-gerts-indian-pudding-poem-by-joanne-corey-my-sweet-word-series/

Enjoy!

Update:  The recipe is now available here:  https://topofjcsmind.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/indian-pudding-recipe/

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By the Seats of Our Pants

I am pleased to share this link: http://ragazine.cc/2016/11/by-the-seats-of-our-pantscreative-nonfiction/ to a piece of creative non-fiction by my friend Wendy Stewart.

Wendy and I share in two local poet groups. This piece began as a prompt in Sappho’s Circle, a women’s poetry workshop convened by Heather Dorn. It has been my privilege to see Wendy’s piece evolve from those beginnings to its publication in Ragazine.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Arts reading video!

Some of you may recall my secret poetry mission to write and present a poem in honor of Emily Jablon and Peg Johnston for the 2016 Heart of the Arts award ceremony. I was invited to participate by the Binghamton Poetry Project, because they receive funding from the United Cultural Fund, which is the grant-bestowing branch of the Broome County Arts Council.

I am excited to share the video of me reading the poem at the dinner. The video was taken from a distance and I am mostly obscured by the podium, but the sound is good. The title got a bit cut off; it is “Thanks to the Department of Public Art.” The diction is pretty good. There are only a few words that are hard to understand – but I, of course, know what I am saying, so feel free to chime in if you have any presentation points for me. I’m not used to reading with a mike or in a large room. It’s rare for community poets like me to get this kind of opportunity and I am very grateful to the Binghamton Poetry Project and the Broome County Arts Council for making it possible.

I also want to thank my spouse B and my daughter T for keeping me (somewhat) calm at the event. I will share that B’s favorite word from the poem is “tessellate.” I don’t know that I will ever write another poem where that is an appropriate word choice, but at least I have done it once!

I am hoping to publish the poem in the fall anthology of the Binghamton Poetry Project; after that, I will share the text here at Top of JC’s Mind.

I hope you enjoy the video! Comments are welcome here or on the Top of JC’s Mind Facebook Page.

 

Videopoem from the Boiler House!

I am thrilled to share with you a new videopoem from the Boiler House Poets!

During our recent reunion residency at the Studios at MASS MoCA, we collaborated on a poem about our beloved Boiler House and each recorded her own lines.

Marilyn McCabe, one of our stalwart Boiler House Poets who has experience with videopoems, graciously handled all the photography and editing to produce the amazing final product.

Enjoy!

Smith-Corona

While re-organizing the basement, B ran across the Smith-Corona manual typewriter he had used in college and brought it upstairs to show to daughter T.

There was still a sheet of corrasable bond paper in it.

The ribbon, which featured both black and red bands, was a bit dried out after 30-odd years of storage, but he was able to advance it enough to find a functional stretch of it.

We proceeded to show T the features. How to set the single, double, or triple space. The unmarked shift lock. That you used a lower case l for the numeral one. How to release the margin if you couldn’t hyphenate the word at the end of the line and needed a bit more space. The “ding” that signaled it was time to return the carriage – and that had us humming Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter.” How easy it was to do superscripts and subscripts, in case you were typing a paper with chemical formulas or footnotes. How to set and release the tabs. How you had to be careful not to type too fast or the type hammers would jamb into each other. How much force you needed to type and how it was helpful to have strong fingers so that some of the letters were not lighter than others.

T, who loves plants and elegant simplicity, was enamored and tried it out, typing stream-of-consciousness style, enjoying the physicality of using a mechanical device.

Although she is a child of the digital age, she has the soul of someone from an earlier era, when the rhythms of the natural world and of simple machines like levers were the most satisfying.

Fall foliage

For some great photos of fall leaves in Colorado with a bonus science lesson about the colors of aspen leaves, follow this link to Steph’s blog,  Partial Ellipsis of the Sun. Steph always has a great mix of science, photographs, and wordplay, so you should definitely visit and follow her!

Last MASS MoCA moments

I posted my final MASS MoCA reunion poetry residency piece right before the Boiler House Poets’ last lunch together, but wanted to add a postscript.

The marvelous Marilyn McCabe had already completed a first draft of our Boiler House videopoem and gave us a viewing before we departed.

It looks fantastic and I am anxious to share it with you all, which I will do as soon as Marilyn puts the finishing touches on it and releases it to the public.

Stay tuned!