NaPoWriMo, 2006

My name is Karla Andrich. I created this blog to host the poems I'll be writing for National Poetry Writing Month, a spin off of the more well-known NaNoWriMo.

NaPoWriMo is held in April, and requires the participants to write a poem a day for the whole of that month. I'm pretty sure that I can do this. It'll be a great spur to me either way, since I've been in a bit of a slump recently with my poetry. Lots of great notes and ideas and disjointed lines, but no actual poems. Well, that's about to change.

I found out about NaPoWriMo over at Erin Noteboom's blog. Read her stuff, it's great.

Being as NaPoWriMo started April 1st, and I found out about it yesterday, I'm already behind. I wrote three poems yesterday, and one so far today. See them below. From now on, it will be one poem per post. Should I decide that they are worth editing, I'm going to do so offline. What you see here is first draft goodness in all it's raw and untouched glory.

1)Fallen

He was going to ask me
something. He had a hand out.
I assumed, spare change, and leaned
backward, instinctual, disassociative,
don't touch me.

When he fell, then
I was too far away to catch him.
Blood on the ice, his
dazed eyes. Shame
bitter in my mouth.

I bent to help him, I put
a hand beneath his arm,
and when I could not lift
him, had not the
strength, or the leverage,
I knelt on the street.

2)My Grandmother's Death

She is far away now,
it becomes apparent. Her eyes are open
to an unseen realm. The face of god.
The trackless desert. Her feet are
bare upon its sand.

They touch her hand. They
speak her name, and her eyes flicker, tracing
the faraway horizon, and the distances
of forever. Her body, a slow and
emptying vessel, lies low upon
the bed.

Not long now, say the nurses. Thank
you, says my father.
Goodbye, he says.
Goodbye.

3)You cry too much

You cry too much
he says,
you take it too much to heart.
It’s true, I know.
My heart is an open door, the least thing
strikes me to the core, I cry
at commercials, for god’s sake.
Some part of me tasting the sorrow like
fine wine, some part of me liking
the ache in my throat. Grief
like an addiction, or an answer

to the persistence of tragedy.
Negation through acceptance, submission

that never ends. Turning over and over
in my mind old pain like a stone
worn smooth and gleaming.

4)Pain.

The body betrays us
by not being what we expect.
The elderly know this. Pain
and failure, the weakness of
flesh - truths that they lie
in bed with every night, their
cartilage and fluid and tendon
all moaning into the dark, their
mind still wondering where ease
went.

Even young, we are
betrayed - the snap of bone,
the fleeting reel of balance, blood
pooling beneath the skin. A stranger
with a knife takes away your surety,
breaches your last defense and leaves
you lying in a hospital, unable
to forgive. Trust is gone, your
blinders ripped away, the utter
fragility of the world laid
bare before you.