Penelope Connor — ink girl poet
I feel conflicted about the
name of my adult life so far.
No one but me knows… I can’t
bring myself to get out of my head.
Would you like to discuss grief?
It’s like trying to eat a sour rock
to alleviate inner pain. Almost
every day, around people, I hide.
Always, I am wearing my secret —
poetry dripping from my tongue,
making people want to kiss me.
like a peach from the fridge.
All the time knowing — time
must come first — at the moment,
you are able to see my body,
to drink of its passion.
I struggle with this wish — to feel
and not feel — old but comfortable,
a yellow t-shirt in a paper bag,
in a mental hospital, reading, reading.
There was all that time, it was most
important to be shown that you matter.
And I think about doing it again —
instead of being what you want.
Gray shades of writing, and wearing
a blue sweatshirt, you are gorgeous.
I tell you, I think about it every night,
the first time I tasted you.
Not forbidden for me, but not good
for me –I’m not sorry, I’m grateful
for the way you stay with me,
forever in the best odds and ends.
—–
POETIC FORM: A Conceptual Poem
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PROMPT:
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PoMoSco (Poetry Month Scouts)
Found Poetry Review’s 2015 National Poetry Month Project
– April 2015 – 213 poets joined together as a troop to earn digital merit badges for completing experimental and found poetry prompts.
– Prompts are divided into five categories – remixing, erasure, out and about, conceptual and chance operation.
– Each category offers six distinct badges to be earned.
– Poets choose their own source text.
– For more information, check out pomosco.com.
A dear friend and fabulous poet, Von Thompson, is a participant. When she told me about the challenge, I decided to play along at home.
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SOURCE:
a favorite
dotted blue
scoop dress
filled to
half- hide
heaping hills
tossed over a bed
made this farmer’s
head shake
melted this
frozen heart
made red
cherry bomb
magic
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POETIC FORM: An out-and-about Poem
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To earn the “Order’s Up” badge, visit your local restaurant, bar or coffee shop and snag a copy of the menu. Write a poem using only words and phrases found on the menu. Get a picture of yourself taken sitting in the location to post alongside your poem (selfies allowed for the less intrepid). Cite your restaurant, bar or coffee shop name and location at the bottom of your post.
—–
PoMoSco (Poetry Month Scouts)
Found Poetry Review’s 2015 National Poetry Month Project
– April 2015 – 213 poets joined together as a troop to earn digital merit badges for completing experimental and found poetry prompts.
– Prompts are divided into five categories – remixing, erasure, out and about, conceptual and chance operation.
– Each category offers six distinct badges to be earned.
– Poets choose their own source text.
– For more information, check out pomosco.com.
A dear friend and fabulous poet, Von Thompson, is a participant. When she told me about the challenge, I decided to play along at home.
—–
SOURCE: The Hideaway (Hideaway Pizza), Cherry Street, Tulsa, OK
As a kid, I would count backwards
from ten and imagine at one,
patience and love agreed
to meet at a set time and place,
beneath the questions you
had never asked.
His voice in this room,
her eyes a closed book—
“I barely know you,” she says,
voice heavy with sleep.
“I don’t know,
no one truly knows,
who they are,” he sighs.
The glass bottle does
anything and everything,
always seeking.
Dawn turns to day —
it happens like this:
One day you meet someone,
and for some the answer is
“Yes, always yes! I cannot
deny you anything!
You — do you remember
our first day? The fog lifted
and all around us,
I saw a dream.
We said hello at half past one.
It was one of those nights
that you are not altogether
sure, really. I did not know —
perhaps I never loved enough.
As the earth began spinning
faster and faster, we floated.
“Be careful about giving your
heart too quickly,” I was told.
“Love a girl who writes.”
There is a tide that rolls away,
like time suspended —
the path from you extending.
For all the time I’ve known you,
in a sea of strangers,
you were the one —
A midnight scribble
stretching out from here to then,
You were faultless.
Do you see?
You may not know.
You are the moment before
the sun sinks into the horizon.
The timing is irrelevant when
two people are meant for each other.
It’s your love I once surrendered.
Do you remember
what you once said to me?
“When two souls fall in love,
there is nothing else
but the yearning—
sorrow tells stories.”
I wonder if there will be a morning
when you’ll wake up missing.
Do you know that feeling—
when it’s like you’ve lost something?
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
“There are people I will never know—
I am somebody else’s story.”
—–
POETIC FORM: A Remixing Poem
I bring in my cupped hands
barely a swallow of water
thick with salt —
I carry it to you from
across a sea of longing
coughed up from lungs
that have too long tried
to breathe beneath
the weight of fifty-foot
waves of want.
I walk these sands
with sunburned feet
seaweed strands tangled
in my sun-bleached hair
fiddler crabs scuttle
in my wake, and the
lonely cries of seagulls
echo in my bones.
If I get to where you are
without any spills,
will you sip, won’t you
drink from my fingers
share this taste of
longing with me —
be for me the hurricane
that redefines my
shoreline, will your
winds carry me?
—–
POEM A DAY APRIL 2015 – PROMPT:
For today’s prompt, write an across the sea poem. This could be a love letter, an electronic submission through cyber space and time, or a travel poem (by air or sea, though probably not car). Modern travel or back in the days of rugged explorers. Wandering or wondering, your choice. As always, the prompt is just the springboard to your poem; feel free to bend and break.
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(for Charlotte)
(provided words: sea, bird, smile, sing, story)
@ConnorPenelope on Instagram
You stare into my eyes a little too much,
I am a wildfire — and you may well be
———-
POETIC FORM: CENTO
A poem composed of lines from other poets’ poems.
(http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-cento)
THANK YOU TO – #poetsofinstagram:
@ntrldisaster, @romance_blows, @soulsandstardust, @ghoshbaba, @a.cup.full.of.poems, @inthegardenwild, @vav.ava, @imlightbulb, @momentsgone91221, @craig.t.rudge, @highpoetssociety, @papercrumbs, @wanderlustpoet, @tdj.poetry, @jbsuperman
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@ConnorPenelope on Instagram
(for Nadine)
you might not notice me
here as I sip my tea, again
pondering this cold rain
you might think me too plain, but look
you’re clever as a rook
I watch you, with your book — pages
turning — passing ages
weathered like old sages, at sea
POETIC FORM: LUC BAT
luc bat – (Vietnamese: “six-eight”) Alternating lines of 6 and 8 syllables. The rhyme scheme renews at the end of every 8-syllable line and rhymes on the 6th syllable of both lines: xxxxxA, xxxxxAxB, xxxxxB, xxxxxBxC, xxxxxC, xxxxxCxD, xxxxxD, xxxxxDxE. No set length or subject matter.
Pen's Ink 