Stalked

For Sylvia Plath's birthday. Born in a difficult part of the year.

Clear the Table
Everyone looks uneasy when you say you'd like to help.
They might murmur a little kind approval, but the truth is
They resent you for making them watch, and making them pretend
They're not watching. You stack it all up high,
And then a little too high. There you go.
A matched set shattered. Your mother's mouth
A gnarled line. It had been
In the family for years.

Photo: Mine. I think they'll be all mine from here.

Brazen Mail

Split Skin

The years come down to naught but
A catalog of places to avoid touching.
Oh dog, stop gnawing your sore spots.
You forget where all the wounds are
Until night, when the coffee table grows claws,
Or a bright morning--you're clearing the garden,
And a wild twig, light green and high
With grassy juice, snaps back at you.

The last condo office lady used to put a poetic or inspirational quote on top of the weekly bulletins she'd hang in the foyer. Last year around this time it was from Longfellow: "Magnificent Autumn! He comes like a warrior, with the stain of blood upon his brazen mail. His crimson scarf is rent." Except she had a typo in it and it was "His crimson scarf is tent." And I'd see it every morning and think, that's really interesting, that a scarf could be a tent. What a weird sort of modern construction for Longfellow to come up with.

Photo: mine

On and On and On and On

I veer between hysterical sobbing and grief-barfing on my friends about how everything I've written is racist-tainted worthless shit, and thinking, well, you'll just have to pull it together and keep on going on.

The truth will probably fall somewhere in between.

Then I walk down the street and smoke a cigarette, come home, clean up, go to bed and have nightmares that I'm Lana Del Rey making out with Daniel Snyder on stage at Coachella.

And Poetry Twitter keeps on blowing up.

Time, gentlemen.

Finally Getting Around To Doing Right

Dear one or two friends, wonderful mysterious commenter, and person looking for porn who stumbles on this blog: Got something to tell you.

tl;dr: One of my pen names, Maria Padhila, the one I used to use for this blog, can give the impression that I am Latina, and I am not. It was ignorant and careless, but I didn't intend to mislead or appropriate.

But ultimately, intentions don't matter. I'm appalled at my ignorance and slowness to act.

I'm terribly sorry.

If you want to know more, here goes.

But WTF that name what why?
Like some other Dumb Shit White People Do, it started with the best of intentions.

People who know me know that I'm a lifelong witch and eclectic Pagan. I got the name as my witch name from a Brazilian witch. It's actually a European Spanish name, but really, who the hell cares? The misleading effect is still there, and that's all that counts.

When I started doing Pagan activism (tapping media and policymakers to educate and reduce discrimination), Pagan leaders encouraged activists to use witch names that sounded like "normal" names, to gain legitimacy and to use in spokesperson capacities. Only Starhawk can get away with being Starhawk. Later, when I started writing more, I used it as one of my pen names.

(Oh sweet christian jesus is she going to pull out the Wise Latina defense and say that using this name this is actually a great honor? Hard as it may be to believe, I'm not that ignorant. But this is how I live. Before I started writing this, I set a glass of bourbon on my Maria Padhila altar, and lit a candle. That's normal for me. I have little altars all over the house. I don't teach, I don't preach, I don't even take money for astrological or tarot readings. I've never set myself up as the Lady Shaman WooWoo who's going to initiate you into the true Amazonian mysteries. Some people can't deal with eclectics and mixed pantheons. I'm not asking you to like it. It's my spirituality and has been for decades. I'm not denying that there's a huge problem with appropriation in Pagan and witch circles, but that's another conversation, and Pagans have been having it for a long time.)

For years, I felt like if there was a problem with the name, the gods would let me know. For all my altars, I didn't listen well enough. The real world, real people, and real harm from appropriation is the voice of the gods; I should have known that. The world has changed in 25 years. I will leave this name with the spirit, where it belongs.

Why can't you just use your "real" name?
Never could stand it. Assaulted twice and didn't want him to find me. Stalkers. Want to keep a job. Want to guard the privacy of my family and friends. Feminism (don't want a man's name). Crazy MRAs. Came out of the punk culture, where you invent yourself and your name. I'm a bi poly witch, for fuck's sake, and I write about it. It's scary. I'll always use pen names. I'll just choose them better, starting now.

Why now?
I should have done it sooner. That's another ugly moral lapse by me. I've considered dropping it for years. I started talking to friends about my plan to drop it months ago. I'm surprised by how many told me not to bother, that there was no harm in it. I kept feeling like there was indeed harm in it, and I made plans to make a change on the new moon/solar eclipse, to get a new start. I was working on an elegant, witty essay to explain it all. I bet you would have liked it.

Then the news about that BAP 2015 Michael Derrick Hudson bastard came out, and I lost it.

Looking at that contributor note was like looking into a distorted mirror. It was wrong on every level, including factual; better and more plugged-in writers, people more qualified to speak are pointing that out. It had that smug, chuckling tone I recognize from MRA types who have tried to make me see the light over the years. So pleased with himself for "pulling one over." Makes me want to take a shower.

But was what I did out of ignorance and indifference that much better?
I'm still crying over my own stupidity and blindness. How could I have thought for so long that this was in any way OK? I'm grateful also to the people who helped walk me through this tonight. I'm surprised also at how many people said I should just change over and not make a big deal over it. It is embarrassing. It is uncomfortable (that favorite avoidance word of white fragility. We simply cannot stand to be unCOMFORTable!). I'm sorry if laying all this out goes some people I care about a hard time. I don't want to make a big deal, but I don't want to look like a weasel, either. Might be too late for that. I wish I knew a better way to handle it. I can't even think of how to make this right. I don't think there is a way. I'll just have to live with it.

Luckily, I'm not well known, and not many people give a fuck.

Couple more clarifications:
I don't seek publication very often, and I usually choose blind judging.
The other pen names I use are Anglo and French/Anglo.
I've gotten one fellowship in my life, and it was under my legal, given name, before I had the need to use a pen name.
I've rarely been published, but the few editors who have accepted my work know who I "really" am and why I use a pen name, and they approved and have my back. The kind of gratitude I feel for that is hard to express.

All I ask:
I'm thinking this isn't likely, but please don't drag anyone associated with me through the subtweet bully madness. It's all on me.
Don't assume everyone using a pen name is a catfish or a con artist. Many of us still need to use them, and it can be done honestly.

Lord love a Xanax,
Your correspondent, aka Sally Wilde

Thirsty?

The Empty Bottle

The moment just before it's empty is dangerous.
It's not just the matter of who gets the last
Drink, though knives have come out for less.
By the end of the bottle, the balance
Is off. One or the other wonders whether
One, or the other, has had too much. New lovers
Vie to press more upon the other. Old allies
Eye the butt and tilt it up until
Sediment swirls around and slops up in the mouth.
You don't want to know all what's in there. Dirt,
Metal slivers, bugs to clean you out for good, bugs
That live in you for years before they make you crawl.
But here is the part most dangerous of all:
And you'd better think before you drink the last
Drops, for here's a time you'll wish you'd
Planned ahead. When all you had is gone,
What will fill that space, now, tell me,
What will you find to fill it up? What will come
Your way and rush into your emptiness, like blood
Leaps up in a wound, a wolf bounds through
An opened door? How will you guard
That emptiness until you choose?

Image: Aubrey. I think he's all up in the public domain.

All Sewn Up

Bury the Silk

You need to sink the silk into the muck
For three full moons--every fiber must
Suck in the mud to be transformed.
We have created this cloth
For hundreds of years on this island,
Just this way. The dirt smells
Like blood. It's rich. Iron, copper,
Silver. The cloth must be pressed hard
Under shovelful after shovelful
Of blackness, the cloth needs to drown
In this filth we would rush to wash
From our hands, until the cloth
Begins to feed on it, breathe
Only dirt. It becomes one
With the mud. Trust the process.
Its strength is reliable, its beauty
Incomparable, its hand fit
To touch the skin of gods.

On the island Amami Oshima they have made a type of cloth since at least the 11th century that's known as mud silk. The silk thread is soaked in mud or even buried for a few months in order to get the richest deep brown/black/blue color and a certain smooth but stiff texture, almost like silk leather. The iron in the soil is a mordant. In the 18th century, only people in the ruling classes were allowed to wear it. Designers still use it today.

This is it for National Poetry Month, but I have too much work to do tonight to wrap it up proper. I might do so tomorrow, or just let it speak for itself.

Today's judge is poet Jessie Carty, who among other things has a great Tumblr. Click that thing and you won't regret it.

Image: Kentaro Takahashi, New York Times, from an article on how it's becoming prohibitively expensive to keep making the cloth by hand.

Pennyroyal, Parsley, Rue

The Yoshiwara's Daughters

We've all got a child no one knows about
Tucked away somewhere. In a castle,
In the country, in the ashes in a jar
In the temple. But most of our children
Take no more shape than memory: that time
We knew there was no hope of rescue, the time
We fell down laughing, or when we
Kicked the ball right over the wall, or
Slept safely, breathing in concert.
They are the ache of fear when the bone-dry
Tissue refuses to show any blood,
The flux and spasm after the herbs,
The bruises from your own fists,
The pinch of the sword's tip--
That last resort. And the triumph
You felt on waking up alive! That love
For your own life is your own
Most precious daughter: sad and fearful,
Willful, she's hard to raise.
Everywhere she hears that she's
Not wanted, but there's this whisper
That says: "Listen more carefully.
Stay up late." Tonight, my love will sing
The song she wrote for our daughters.
She changes the words a little, so the men
Will think she's singing about them.

Today's prompt: "nobody knows" poem.

Today's judge: OMG OMFG it's Marge Piercy!!!! I have at least 10 of her books within a few feet of me and more somewhere around here! I have all those crumbling paperbacks I bought secondhand when I was so poor in the early 80s!!! Like Small Changes where a woman lives with two men and I'm all, yes, it can be done! Why do you think I named a character in my mystery Jackson, huh? (Well, OK, that and Patti Smith's son.) And DAMN Woman on the Edge of Time!!!! Why didn't anyone found a religion based on THAT scifi novel, huh? Well? WELL?

I'm a fan.

Kickball was actually one of the big courtesan-ly accomplishments, right up there with calligraphy and blending incense. THIS IS TRUE.

Then of course there are those things that some people know but everyone ought to know. Like that a woman's life has value in itself, not only as a baby-bearing or pleasure-delivering or hell, work-doing machine.

Image: Harunobo. Night Rain at the Double Shelf Stand. Just having some tea and getting your hair did.

You Make Me Feel So Real

Karakuri
The builders uncovered a mound of something that looked like bones, but with an old man and some old books, we pieced it all together. At the time before the invaders, the leader's engineers devised the most extraordinary type of automata. The secret was every once in a while they would do something you didn't expect: Fling the tea in your face, totter off to serve someone else, you know, show a little spirit. Not always something dramatic, no, sometimes they'd laugh behind their hands, cry quietly, whisper for you to please stay. You just never knew; that was the trick of it. The priests said the automata had demons inside them, but who listens to the priests when times are good? Everyone of style had to have one. As always, elegance tends to extremes, and it became the fashion to push their limits, give conflicting orders, that sort of thing. They'd watch them appear to go mad, repeating a movement or a word over and over until a spring burst. Of course there are always those who can't tolerate capriciousness in the first place, and these would take even such an expensive toy and smash it to bits after too much wine. When the invaders came, it put a stop to all that. We needed fighting puppets then.

Opted for prose poem today. Prompt was a twofer Tuesday, "matter and anti-matter."

Junot Diaz called the book by today's judge, Eduardo Corral, "wise and immense." Who could argue with that?

Parting

Learning to Look Back

Don’t neglect this glance in your arsenal:
The strategic turn of the head to one departing
Can serve to seal the deal. But here’s the trick:
Work quickly, lightly, as with ink on paper.
Take too long with it and your head will
Ache, you’ll start to see your childhood
And beyond, times gone and gone before
That, and you are ink, a dark puddle.
That was a fine piece of paper
You started with, and now it’s ruined.

Today's prompt was "looking back."

Today's judge was Okla Elliott, a poet who has a novel coming out soon. Looks scary!

Image: Harunobu

Dive

The Other Wave

My every step is one across a sea,
A sea surrounded by a moat, within
Another sea. I wade and slosh and duck
From broken board to sand to rock, dripping
Tea, tears, wine, and the sweet relief of blood.
See, the surface reflects stars and lanterns.
You believe the bed is stable, so you sleep,
While I feel the slow roll and upheaval.
My home is the floating world, the realm
Of desire, which is unceasing,
And so of suffering.
You may be deceived and
Think you drank your fill but
Hear, how harsh your breath and
See the shore recede with
Every stroke.

Today's prompt was "across the sea," and I've been hearing Bobby Darin in my head all evening.

Today's judge was story editor for many episodes of Sailor Moon! and ! again! ! You can read six of Todd Swift's poems here.

Image: Utamaro, Abalone Divers, part of a triptych. I'm leaning pretty heavily on the Utamaro, because most of the other biggies from that time did almost all erotic, and during National Poetry Month you never know who's going to walk in on you.

I Don't Know What Was So Great About It.

Great Tenmei Famine, 1782-1788

I was sold after the locusts came.
I haven't been hungry since. This time
They blame the volcanoes, they blame
The leaders, they blame the priests,
Then they blame us. But they still come
Here and buy food. We arrange the dishes
So it looks like they're getting more
Than they really are. Everyone here
Knows that trick, same as we know
Everyone wants most what they can't get.
We're not too bad off, here
Behind the moat, not yet anyhow.
Soon enough, he says, they'll come down
Like a hammer on a nut. But today,
If the sun never shines, how am I
To miss it, shut up here? I do
Feel the cold. No one can warm me.
The men grow food in the small plots
Of ground given them. He brings melons
To feed the new young girls.

The prompt was to write a poem about a historical event.

Samurai were so badly paid that they had little gardens so they could grow enough food. They were kind of like the Walmart employees of feudal Japan.

The famine was thought to have been touched off by a series of volcanic explosions that caused a series of cold summers. This article has an interesting look at the worldwide Little Ice Age and points out that there was a relief food system in Japan for the starving.

Most women who worked in the Yoshiwara had been sold at around 8 or 10. Many felt it beat the alternative.

Today's judge is North Carolina's Kathryn Stripling Byer. I'm still so amazed that Writer's Digest got so many noted poets to read what has amounted to thousands of poems a day.

Carry On

Sea of Trees

I.
It's dirt in my mouth.
So tired, I had to let my head fall
To the floor. The dark hairline
On the back of your neck
Is my new horizon.

II.
Viewing the leaves, the blossoms, the rocks
And the waterfalls--all beautiful, but
The innkeeper knows why lovers like us
Come to a place this remote. He doesn't look
Directly at us. The ones who bring the wine
Stand a little apart, a little in awe
As if we're from the stage, and we've come down
To walk among them a little while.
It's true. We have come down.

III.
How many robes have been dropped
In this forest, how much skin
Dropped from bones, how many bones
Among the roots, how many instruments
Rusting in the leaves.

IV.
I have enough left to find a patch of sky.
The clouds are horses,
Tired and old. I don't believe
They could tote even another feather.
I like to think I'm a merciful person.
I won't ask them to carry me.


The theme of the love-suicide was wildly popular in Japan for centuries, and hit a height in the early 18th century. Many immediately see this as some sort of pathology, and these are sometimes the same who have no trouble with Shakespeare or Verdi. The most hopeful and exciting article I've read in a while was about a monk working to help suicidal people near the Sea of Trees, Aokigahara near Mount Fuji, a popular place for people to come to die. It's really beautifully written. Here's something he learned:

"Lying in the hospital, he spent a week crying. He had spent seven years sacrificing himself, driving himself to the point of breakdown, nearly to death, trying to help these people, and they didn’t care about him at all. What was the point? He knew that if you were suicidal it was difficult to understand other people’s problems, but still—he had been talking to some of these people for years, and now here he was dying and nobody cared.

"For a long time, his thoughts were too dark and agitated to sort out, but slowly the darkness receded, and what remained with him was a strong sense that he wanted to do the work anyway. He realized that, even if the people he spoke to felt nothing for him, he still wanted something from them. There was the intellectual excitement he felt when he succeeded in analyzing some problem a person had been stuck on. He wanted to know truths that ordinary people did not know, and in suffering it felt as though he were finding those truths. And then there was something harder to define, a kind of spiritual thrill in what felt to him, when it worked, like a bumping of souls. If this was what he was after, he would have to stop thinking of his work as something morally obligatory and freighted with significance. Helping people should be nothing special, like eating, he thought—just something that he did in the course of his life."

If you have come to this page through a search keyword and need help, please hit this link immediately, or call this number: 1-800-273-8255. Someone will be there to help you.

Today's judge is a lot more fun than this day's subject! But Justin Marks does have a poem called "Visit Me In My Grave," which begins: "My fear of being an asshole / leads me to / being an asshole..." Enjoy!

Image: Utamaro, from The Courier of Hell.

Walk Off!

My People, The River

Nobody says who owns this sand,
So I stole it, for us. No boundaries
For us; every day it's a new line
To cross. Swagger, sword: I stake my claim
Slant and watch it wash away with the next storm.
Every day there's a new story,
Another song and dance. Here by the water
You can't tell if we're daughters or sons,
Demons or thieves. Twenty-five years
Is long enough for us, my family.


Prostitutes and kabuki performers used to live on the riverbanks with the trash that washed up, because the land was always shifting so no one could own it. Kabuki is said to have originated with women performing with a lot of swagger, playing men's roles as well as women's. Then it became popular and moved into the brothels, then it became so dangerous only men were allowed to do it. Kabuki and the Edo superstars all come out of this kind of outlaw swagger. "25 years" is a reference to the inscription on the sword of too-fast-to-live Otori Ichibei.

And tell me this is not the perfect day for the surreal-est of punk poets Megan Volpert to be the judge!

The prompt was a title of "My [blank], the [blank]."

Image: Okuni, said to be the first Kabuki performer. They say she also invented the fashion runway.

What Enforcement Isn't Selective Enforcement?

Courtesans vs. Censors

Who is the man who wins our tears?
Not the one who can keep five wives quiet.
He's the one who wears handcuffs as if they were silk cords.
Who is the man we drink to tonight?
Not the one who forces us to pass the bottle under the table.
He's the one who keeps the ink flowing freely.
Who is the man who opens all gates?
Not the one who makes laws against books.
He's the one who makes us laugh.

The censorship imposed under the Tokugawa shogunate had several prominent victims; artist Katagawa Utamaro and the comic writer, illustrator, tobacconist and all-around flaneur Santo Kyoden being two of the most known. The usual penalty was to spend 50 days in handcuffs. Kyoden did it and went on to marry a few more working girls of the Yoshiwara and to open a tobacco shop. I read in a few places that Utamaro's health never returned after he completed his sentence. Kyoden's story is featured attacked artist No. 3 in this Cracked magazine article. "Five wives" is a reference to the image that got Utamaro in hot water, a gorgeous pass-agg depiction of an historic leader viewing blossoms with his five wives, in a time when ostentatious displays of wealth were in danger of riling the populace.

It's interesting to me that the two big bouts of censor crackdowns in the 18th century came after famines in Japan.

Today's prompt was "authority." Today's judge is Dorianne Laux, an authority in a good way. I'm planning a trip to Oregon right now, so perfect timing.

Image: Santo Kyoden hanging at a mansion, by Utamaro. From what I can figure, he's the one at front left. He looks like he's having a pretty good time.

Right Here, Right Meow

Abandon

Charcoal dawn's approach. Start to coax
A man's body away from warmth,
To yawn, to stand, to walk away
From a cat and a lady.
A boat bobs, no harbor.

Prompt today was use only two vowels out of the alphabet, with Y as a wild card. I read there's a Japanese idiom "all the cats and ladies" that means the same as "every Tom, Dick, and Harry" in English, so that's what that's about.

Today's judge: Christian Bok? You must mean Christian Rock! Cause that's what this experimental poet does. You can check him out here.

Image: The meow, the myth.

No Strings On Me

Bunraku Domestic Drama

I hope you're prepared to devote
A full day to this. It takes time
For this art to unfold. Begin
With a nod to the text and a pledge
To resist deviation. Every move,
From swinging fists to gentle daubs
Of her tears, is done with sticks.
The female puppets don't need legs,
But for this story, they constructed
One lovely foot for him to kiss.
These days it takes three masters
To manipulate just one of them, think of that.
They never hide themselves--we all
Know they're there, and we forget
They're there, as we're spun into
This month's variations of the beloved story:
The lovers love, transgress, and so they must
Die by their own hands, so artfully
Guided by the hands at their backs.
Love it while you're here, but don't
Live it or they'll shut the playhouse down.

Too much to explain on deadline, except to say love-suicide bunraku plays were so popular people started offing themselves and the censors banned the theaters from doing them. Also that Chikamatsu Monzaemon went back to writing bunraku cause kabuki actors messed with his lines too much and bunraku doesn't stand for that kind of thing.

Yeah, missed another day yesterday, I'll slip it in, comme elle a dit. Today's prompt was, god help us, "a swing poem." I tried to resist the obvious.

Today's judge is Boss, Todd Boss. Check him here. He works poetry in with public art and films.

Image: Masanobu. Now who's pulling the strings.

Scope Creep

Telescope

Tell me, spyglass, what do you see?
I see tiny dutchmen waving at me.
I can almost hear them across the water:
"Children! Primitives!" they bark.
"You're doing it all wrong!"
They never fear to visit
Any indignity upon us, their hosts,
Yet they are so concerned
That all must be done correctly.
And all the power of the glass
Won't reveal what's inside their ships.
It must be so precious to hide it that way.
When the wind comes around,
It smells like death to us.
With their big noses,
How can they ignore the stench?


Dutch and Chinese traders were allowed into Japan, but only under strict rules. Rengaku, or "the Dutch effect," refers to the relatively fast way Japan was able to "catch up" with technology and even overcome the west after years of isolation. The theory is that some technology from the Dutch sort of leaked through and developed despite the obstacles. It's always funny to see the world as others see it, to paraphrase Burns. I don't know if there's a word for Rengaku in reverse, but there certainly ought to be.

I am a supporter of reparations, but I don't believe most programs of reparation are of sufficient scope and vision. It is not only American fortunes that were made on the trade of people as slaves, but European ones as well.

Image: Wiki Commons and it ain't sayin

Pull Back The Covers

Yellow

Light changes color, I knew that
Even before they brought me here
As a child. I was tea and now I’m petal
And at night I am gold. I dreamed
The moat was full of enormous boats
Bobbing like jugs and buckets. Giants
Charged out and tore off the gates,
Smashed in the doors, broke screens
Like firemen, pressing us flat
Between leaves of paper. I was trapped
Inside a book and I was yellow.

When I was little, I could never figure out why they used the words for skin color that they did.

Today's prompt was to use an adjective as your title. Today's judge is a real poetic heavyweight: Alberto Rios. You can read some of his work here. I'm so psyched to be in the company of these National Poetry Month judges. It's like when I run a long race and I see the elites passing me, and they're on their way back to the base when I'm just starting out, and they're like, "good race, good job." And they're serious, because I'm old and slow, but they're so nice about it.

Image: Yellow Book. You know Wilde was never published in it, isn't that strange.

Truly, It Is A Lonely Planet

A True Guidebook To The District

Most of you are here to impress
Each other, not me. We’re lazy as cats
When you’re not looking. At your step
Down the street, the scene springs to life.
The cheap ones are thieves and the honest ones
Cost more, so you’ll pay the same either way.
The bad ones hurt your body, and the good ones
Hurt your conscience, so you’ll hurt either way.
I have a whole book of secret ways
To make yourself cry, and each style of sadness
Is distinct, with a name and a poem to go with it.
It’s very beautiful, but I’m not allowed
To show it to you. For years, I’ve saved
My greatest sadness, and I haven’t had to spend it
Yet. Yes, it could be yours. This wine is worth
Every bit you pay for it. Don’t be fooled;
I am the one true guide to the district.


Missed a couple days, have things scribbled, was running around. Will make up for it later, threat or promise ;)

Today's poetry judge is spell crafter Annie Finch. The prompt was honesty/dishonesty.

Guidebooks to the Yoshiwara were often produced and highly popular, with names and portraits of popular women and tips on how to conduct yourself there so you wouldn't (ha) get ripped off or look like a bama (or in their words, yabo or hankatsu. Hankatsu means you got only enough tsu to get that tsu matters but you don't really have the full tsu. You're half-baked.). Anyway, I saw similar guidebooks of Paris prostitutes from turn of the last century at the Museum of Eroticism in Paris.

Image: Hishikawa Moronobu, 1678, from Love in the Yoshiwara, a little earlier that what I've been focusing on but you get the gist. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Four And A Half Stars In Your Eyes

Four Seasons At The Four Seasons

Spring
Blossom festival
Duties ended, princesses
Hit the hotel bar

Summer
Masked men dislodge a
Wasp's nest from the eaves outside
Room 237

Autumn
Orange skies. Sheet-wrapped
Lovers huddle on sidewalks.
Just a fire drill.

Winter
Irish, neat. A low
Table near the window wall.
Footprints in thin snow.

Today's prompt was a seasons poem; the judge is haiku master Michael Dylan Welch. (I'm going to start linking the judges for the Writer's Digest Poetry Month project, because they're fuqing saints to put up with us, and some tiny promotion is the least I can do.)

I have a soft spot for the Four Seasons. It looks nondescript, like the dullest office building, from the outside, but inside, it's all luxury and views of the park. I interviewed Rita Mae Brown there one spring. Last year, we went ice skating Christmas Day at the waterfront rink, and DD fell and cut her hand. The drugstore was closed, no convenience stores around, but the front desk at the Four Seasons hooked us up with a full first aid kit. I told them we weren't guests, but they said they were happy to help current and future guests. That's how you do it.

Image: "Executive Chef Douglas Anderson’s decadent French toast is made with smashed chocolate croissants served with Nutella, black cherry compote, whipped butter and maple syrup. The dish is offered during breakfast Monday - Friday 6:30-10:30 am and weekends 7:00-10:30 am for USD 17 exclusive of tax." I got too many food allergies to get into all that, but I'll watch.