A Tidings of Magpies

by Erin Davis She Cradled the frozen bulb in her mouth Swaddled it in the velvet of her tongue Awakened it with the warmth of her breath Then Braced herself for the birth Thrust the shoot through the gap in her teeth And watched the bloom part her rounded lips Please note: photo by John C. Finlayson & poem from freckled writer , thanks for letting me share it here

From a hilarious blogsite, OVERHEARD LINES ... 30 March, 2009 Half-Full, Half-Empty Girls Girl 1: "Oh look, those people are camping!" Girl 2: "No, they're homeless. People don't camp by the freeway." OVERHEARD BY MARGOT

Excerpt from; Pride and Prujudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith As Mr. Darcy walked off, Elizabeth felt her blood turn cold. She had never in her life been so insulted. The warrior code demanded she avenge her honour. Elizabeth reached down to her ankle, taking care not to draw attention. There, her hand met the dagger concealed beneath her dress. She meant to follow this proud Mr. Darcy outside and open his throat. But no sooner had she grabbed the handle of her weapon than a chorus of screams filled the assembly hall, immediately joined by the shattering of window panes. Unmentionables poured in, their movements clumsy yet swift; their burial clothing in a range of untidiness. Some wore gowns so tattered as to render them scandalous; other wore suits so filthy that one would assume they were assembled from little more than dirt and dried blood. Their flesh was in varying degrees of putrefaction; the freshly stricken were slightly green and pliant, whereas the longer dead were gre...

..and I've got a lot of things I wanna say. And if I'm gloomy, please, won't you listen to me till it's all, all talked away. Well, that's how it goes, And Joe, I know, you're getting anxious to close. So thanks for the cheer, I hope you didn't mind my bending your ear... CollegeGrrrl has come home and gone already. Came for the ballet on Saturday--the Distracted Grrrls have a subscription this year for three seats in the nose bleed section. The ushers are very nice and usually let us slip down to unoccupied seats closer to the stage. Yesterday's performance was touted for The Sinatra Suite which was quite nice. It's Old Blue Eyes, can't go wrong there. However, it was two other performances that blew me away, La Belle Danse choreographed by Jessica Lang and World Citizen, choreography by Devon Carney. Those two dances were spirit-lifting, transcending. If you hear of either ballet coming to your hometown go and see them. This morning, I've j...

Suddenly by Louis Simpson The truck came at me, I swerved but I got a dent. The car insurance woman informs me that my policy has been cancelled. I say, "You can't do that." She gives me a little smile and goes back to her nails. Lately have you noticed how aggressively people drive? A whoosh! and whatever. Some people are suddenly very rich, and as many suddenly very poor. As for the war, don't get me started. We were too busy watching the ball game to see that the things we care about are suddenly disappearing, and that they always were.

Meditation on Ruin by Jay Hopler It's not the lost lover that brings us to ruin, or the barroom brawl, or the con game gone bad, or the beating Taken in the alleyway. But the lost car keys, The broken shoelace, The overcharge at the gas pump Which we broach without comment — these are the things that eat away at life, these constant vibrations In the web of the unremarkable. The death of a father — the death of the mother — The sudden loss shocks the living flesh alive! But the broken pair of glasses, The tear in the trousers, These begin an ache behind the eyes. And it's this ache to which we will ourselves Oblivious. We are oblivious. Then, one morning—there's a crack in the water glass —we wake to find ourselves undone.

Jesse Lee Kercheval To be here is to be where fruit you have never seen before grows on equally strange trees. The fruit is not, as you first thought, oranges, though it is orange in color. Nor is it a tangerine or some strangely colored apple. Then you see it in the market, each soft fruit cradled in its own nest of woven plastic. Cachi, the sign reads, 200 lire. You hold out a palm of silver, and let the cashier pick warm coins from your waiting hand. Then she wraps your cachi in white paper like a present, which you carry to your hotel, hoping cachi can be safely eaten raw. In your room, you slice it open, lift the cachi to your lips and find it sweeter than any fruit you've ever tasted, half watermelon, half pressed roses. Only when you've finished, do you think to look up cachi in your pocket Italian dictionary which says it means persimmon. And you remember as a child picking a persimmon at a friend's house, then leaving it all afternoon in your mother's stand-up...

by Shoshauna Shy 1. check out catalytic converter 2. coil@ Home Depot 3. call re: mortgage 4. Denny about tickets 5. take care of boat hoist 6. the wife situation I'm a list person. Love to make lists, and even better I love to mark off when I've gotten each task done . Sometimes I cross through the DONE items in a different colored pen. That way I know without question those jobs are really done and shall not need to be thought of again. Until maybe next week. Same time, different paper. I think that's why writing, and especially blogging is so appealing. Writing allows me to open the windows of my right brain and see what's going on over there. I get tripped up when I start wondering what's the goal here, what's the outcome, what do I have to show for it?? Oddly, I don't feel that way about dancing. Don't know why. Luckily, Hubby is much more laid back and thinks that writing for the sake of writing is a worthy pursuit. And, as I rack up more years wo...

by Meg Kearney I have a ticket in my pocket that will take me from Lynchburg to New York in nine hours, from the Blue Ridge to Stuy Town, from blue jays wrangling over sunflower seeds to my alarm clock and startled pigeons. If I had a daughter I'd take her with me. She'd sit by the window wearing the blue dress with the stars and sickle moons, counting houses and cemeteries, watching the knotted rope of fence posts slip by while I sat beside her pretending to read, but unable to stop studying her in disbelief. Her name would tell her that she's beautiful. Belle. Or something strong, biblical. Sarah. She would tolerate the blue jay and weep for the pigeon; she would have all the music she wanted and always the seat by the window. If I had a daughter she would know who her father is and he would be home writing letters or playing the banjo, waiting for us, and I would be her mother. We'd have a dog, a mutt, a stray we took in from the rain one night in November, the only ...

Sitting here and wondering--how do all of you manage your time if you do other writing?? I'm certain there's an easy answer, perhaps, "Step away from the computer. There's nothing to see here, folks." But maybe a more palatable one?? Just asking. And, while we're at it, some of us should, very slowly, step away from the Aqua Net.

"When the snow went away--in a rush, just as it came--it left behind the lawn, the garden, the pastures, the barnyard. It also left behind locust pods, fallen branches, last falls's leaves, snowplow scrapings, mire, and muck--the debris of a disordered season. The snow's erasure has itself been erased. Everything is matted to the earth or anchored in the mud except the ridges an eastern mole has made while tunneling round and round. The early buds seem desperate just now. Nothing else catches the hint of spring from them."------Verlyn Klinkenborg, The Rural Life

by Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, 'We are All Writing God's Poem' by Barbara Crooker Today, the sky's the soft blue of a work shirt washed a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. On the interstate listening to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist say, "The universe is not only stranger than we think, it's stranger than we can think." I think I've driven into spring, as the woods revive with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy scarves flung over bark's bare limbs. Barely doing sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound, and aren't we just? Just yesterday, I read Li Po: "There is no end of things in the heart," but it seems like things are always ending—vacation or childhood, relationships, stores going out of business, like the one that sold jeans that really fit— And where do we fit in? How can we get up in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do, put one foot after the other, open the windo...

in Just- by E. E. Cummings in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it's spring and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee please note: photo by hoveringdog

THE CALIPH'S HOUSE by Tahir Shah Many have written about their experiences after moving to a foreign country, recounted adventures in remodeling, and meeting the new neighbors. Having Jinns inhabit your home, however, puts a whole new wrinkle on it. There wasn't anything I enjoyed more after a grey and rainy day in CinCity where my adventure for the day was running up to the local grocery store for the foods I needed for dinner than reading about the latest obstacle in making Mr. Shah's house liveable. The cars, the customs office, the search for building supplies and the descriptions of all the nooks and crannies of Morocco took my mind off the last claws of winter stuck in our local landscape. Quintessential Sentence : "We could sell this house and do it all again," she said. Favorite Word(s ): "Bidonville"--love the sound of it & "Bismillah"--love the concept of it

by John Updike The room darkened, darkened until our nakedness became a form of gray; then the rain came bursting, and we were sheltered, blessed, upheld in a world of elements that held us justified. In all the love I had felt for you before, in all that love, there was no love like that I felt when the rain began: dim room, enveloping rush, the slenderness of your throat, the blessèd slenderness. please note: art by Max Buten

Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggest they are about to die. --Matsuo Basho Some deaths seem more tragic than others. Pointless in the ensuing loss of intelligence, kindness, talent, future of someone who should have had more time. But the life we face does not play by those rules, and death comes as it will, often without warning. Natasha Richardson's death seems ridiculously cruel following a fairly undramatic bump to the head. I imagine we'll hear and read a bit more about whether a helmet could have prevented injury and it's a fair subject for discussion. However, the truth of life is that there are no guarantees. No day is promised to us. As much as I joke to my grrrls about wearing helmets and life jackets when they leave the house, there is no absolute protection from living. John Travolta's son died from a traumatic brain injury after a fall in the bathroom related to a seizure. I cared...

by Dorianne Laux They brushed a quarter with glue and glitter, slipped in on bare feet, and without waking me painted rows of delicate gold footprints on my sheets with a love so quiet, I still can't hear it. My mother must have been a beauty then, sitting at the kitchen table with him, a warm breeze lifting her embroidered curtains, waiting for me to fall asleep. It's harder to believe the years that followed, the palms curled into fists, a floor of broken dishes, her chainsmoking through long silences, him punching holes in his walls. I can still remember her print dresses, his checkered Taxi, the day I found her in the closet with a paring knife, the night he kicked my sister in the ribs. He lives alone in Oregon now, dying of a rare bone disease. His face stippled gray, his ankles clotted beneath wool socks. She's a nurse on the graveyard shift, Comes home mornings and calls me, Drinks her dark beer and goes to bed. And I still wonder how they did it, slipped that quart...

Celtic poem from 10th century Ireland I would like to have the men of Heaven In my own house: With vats of good cheer laid out for them. I would like to have the three Marys, Their fame is so great. I would like people From every corner of Heaven. I would like them to be cheerful In their drinking. I would like to have Jesus too Here amongst them. I would like a great lake of beer For the King of Kings, I would like to be watching Heaven’s family Drinking it through all eternity. please note: some attribute to St. Brigid

I wandered afar last evening and found myself in North Carolina where flowrgirl has actually seen and captured a bit of sunlight. There are shadows and everything. I have forgotten just how bright the day could get. The Yankee sun is much more of a slacker or has an abhorrence for wild swings of lighting display. Could be on even billing...

Some horrific misalignment of the stars and my schedule has me working 2 Sundays in a row. I can see we may have some shoppers stopping by. See you Monday.

NEW YORK NOTES by Harvey Shapiro 1. Caught on a side street in heavy traffic, I said to the cabbie, I should have walked. He replied, I should have been a doctor. 2. When can I get on the 11:33 I ask the guy in the information booth at the Atlantic Avenue Station. When they open the doors, he says. I am home among my people.

The Friday the 13th Edition-- AGAIN please note: I'm pretty sure this photo is from Vengeance of the Zombies , but could just as easily be my living room and Revenge of the Man Cold .

Maureen Micus Crisick the ghetto stars pinned to cloth could lift from history like angels soaring to the sky. The air which holds cinders of Buddist robes, burned hair of ones who doused themselves, set fire, suppose the plume of smoke becomes clear and white. What did I say? I said: what if Sarejavo is not burning and no city is burning and in the market square no human head is impaled upon a stick or mute limbs strewn on streets, and no fingers exist without hands. Suppose grenades side with sunlight. Bullets in boxes become chocolate wrapped in gold foil, and in Guatemala, the men come back from their disappearance, and in the morning, wake in their own beds because love is the white moon and light moves in us like blood. Yes there will be holes left in clothes but not from ripped stars, only from wear, to let the darkness out. please note: art by Marc Chagall

please note: music and choreography by Ethan Philbrick HoneyHaired and I see Hat Guy almost every weekend as he walks back and forth along Central Parkway.

When I posted the prayer to St. Anthony of Padua I had no idea about the shootings in Alabama and Germany. Maybe they hadn't happened yet. Maybe it was that day. I don't know. I've been working the past couple of days and despite 12hrs of asking each and every patient each and every hour their name and the day, month, and year it all tends to run together. I knew about the murder here of a 13yr old girl which has deeply grieved our city. I didn't know her or the family. She went to school with the children of two of my neighborhood girlfriends; in the same grade as Lisa's son. Although I know it's not their child, irrationally my heart feels otherwise. The arresting officer is the daughter of another friend of mine. She called her mother that night wanting to make sense of the senseless. What can you tell someone who has looked into the black void of a nightmare? To hear and see two more tragedies makes you wonder what the hell is going on? This isn't tragi...

by David Shumate I am seduced by trains. When one moans in the night like some dragon gone lame, I rise and put on my grandfather's suit. I pack a small bag, step out onto the porch, and wait in the darkness. I rest my broad-brimmed hat on my knee. To a passerby I'm a curious sight—a solitary man sitting in the night. There's something unsettling about a traveler who doesn't know where he's headed. You can't predict his next move. In a week you may receive a postcard from Haiti. Madagascar. You might turn on your answering machine and hear his voice amid the tumult of a Bangkok avenue. All afternoon you feel the weight of the things you've never done. Don't think about it too much. Everything starts to sound like a train.

by Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes s...

We've had a terrible tragedy in my hometown. I won't pain you with the details, every city has their share of senseless crime and some hit closer to one's home than others. My thoughts are with a mother who now knows where her missing daughter is and two others who may see justice done. Prayers to all those who have suffered loss or loss of any hope.

Wish I could tell you how many times Barbie accompanied us to Sunday mass clutched in the small hands of a much younger College Grrrl. No matter what ensemble she arrived in, by the time communion rolled around Barbie was buck naked. So off we'd go, waiting our turn to the front of the line--me holding a little Grrrl who's carrying Naked Barbie and offering her to the priest. He blessed them both every time, although sometimes half a smile snuck by. Happy 50th you old broad. I'm putting some money down on how long those outfits stay on.

by Robyn Sarah It is possible that things will not get better than they are now, or have been known to be. It is possible that we are past the middle now. It is possible that we have crossed the great water without knowing it, and stand now on the other side. Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now we are being given tickets, and they are not tickets to the show we had been thinking of, but to a different show, clearly inferior. Check again: it is our own name on the envelope. The tickets are to that other show. It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall without waiting for the last act: people do. Some people do. But it is probable that we will stay seated in our narrow seats all through the tedious dénouement to the unsurprising end — riveted, as it were; spellbound by our own imperfect lives because they are lives, and because they are ours.

Bees by Jane Hirshfield In every instant, two gates. One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell. Mostly we go through neither. Mostly we nod to our neighbor, lean down to pick up the paper, go back into the house. But the faint cries—ecstasy? horror? Or did you think it the sound of distant bees, making only the thick honey of this good life? Few thoughts to get out today. Again, I so appreciate all the new visitors and commentors and want to thank you all. I'd like to respond more timely to the comments, but if I am to get anything done I have to "step away from the computer." My Pasta ala Fridge does not make itself. To answer two questions though, I do not take the photos on this blog site. Maybe a few were taken by HoneyHaired, but for the most part they were retrieved from various Google searches. If I can find an artist I try to include a name or website. Believe me, if I could take photographs like some of these I would quit my job, sell my art, and most likely l...

HoneyHaired Grrrrrl and her dad went to the circus tonight. After 12hrs of Neurodramaville I've had quite enough of high wire acts for a day and an evening. I dropped by our favorite neighborhood bistro after work and picked up the dinner special, mahi mahi over Mediterranean pasta, to eat at home, blissfully alone, in my PJ's. It's 60 degrees in my hometown and folks tonight are wearing flip-flops with their jean jackets. There's a pirate moon out hiding in the clouds. I'm on the couch with a full stomach, a cup of tea, and a cat and dog snuggled against me. Hard to tell if it's love or love of my fish dinner, but no matter. I stole, yes, stole , an O magazine I found in the unit's break room. It's the one from September 2008 with articles about 48 Solutions:Love, Money, Work and 12 Ways To Unclutter and Too Busy To Live? I desperately need to read these articles in the quiet of my empty house. I promise I'm gonna take it back on Sunday when I ...

by Carl Dennis The big smile the waitress gives you May be a true expression of her opinion Or may be her way to atone for glowering A moment ago at a customer who slurped his coffee Just the way her cynical second husband slurped his. Think of the meager tip you left the taxi driver After the trip from the airport, how it didn't express Your judgment about his service but about the snow That left you feeling the earth a tundra Only the frugal few could hope to cross. Maybe it's best to look for fairness Not in any particular unbiased judgment But in a history of mistakes that balance out, To find an equivalent for the pooling of tips Practiced by the staff of the coffee shop, Adding them up and dividing, the same to each. As for the chilly fish eye the busboy gave you When told to clear the window table you wanted, It may have been less a comment on you Than on his parents, their dismissing the many favors He does for them as skimpy installments On a debt too massive to be pai...

I'm either receiving spam or have a very ardent admirer from a foreign country with a made-up alphabet. Thus, the word-verifier. Hope it isn't the straw to break any backs today.

by Ellen Bass I'm not well. Neither is he. Periodically he pulls out a handkerchief and blows his nose. I worry about germs, but appreciate how he shares the armrest—especially considering his size—too large to lay the tray over his lap. His seatbelt barely buckles. At least he doesn't have to ask for an extender for which I imagine him grateful. Our upper arms press against each other, like apricots growing from the same node. My arm is warm where his touches it. I close my eyes. In the chilly, oxygen-poor air, I am glad to be close to his breathing mass. We want our own species. We want to lie down next to our own kind. Even here in this metal encumbrance, hurtling improbably 30,000 feet above the earth, with all this civilization—down to the chicken-or-lasagna in their environmentally-incorrect packets, even as the woman behind me is swiping her credit card on the phone embedded in my headrest and the folks in first are watching their individual movies on personal screens, I...

Three young paramedics walked into the unit yesterday, clipboards in hand, and looked around a little uncertainly. They explained they had just dropped off three teenagers to the ER and wondered if they could see the young man they had brought in nearly two weeks ago. Another unrestrained teenage boy in an MVC in almost the same exact location as the crash tonight. I took them into the room to see our star patient just one day off the respirator and sitting up in a chair thanks to PT/OT standing him up for the first time. He looked around at his visitors, bewildered as he has been all day at the fuss, the tears of his parents and grinning wonderment of the nurses and docs. He's able to answer the questions about place, person and time, but recites them like he's memorized them for a test, smart kid that he is. Already accepted to the Pharmacology College at the University before jumping into his car and not putting on his seatbelt. He was late meeting his friends, he was drivi...

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Runner-Up, 2008 "Hmm . . ." thought Abigail as she gazed languidly from the veranda past the bright white patio to the cerulean sea beyond, where dolphins played and seagulls sang, where splashing surf sounded like the tintinnabulation of a thousand tiny bells, where great gray whales bellowed and the sunlight sparkled off the myriad of sequins on the flyfish's bow ties, "time to get my meds checked." --Andrew Bowers How often have I thought the very same thing?

Wanted to thank everyone again for the all comments and kindnesses sent my way. And please, let me dispel any concerns out there...we DO NOT eat from these plates at work. That would simply be tacky. And we don't have enough for everyone.

please note: photo by girlfriday, St. Louis, Mo., 1983

Holy Moley. Blog Of Note. What a stupendous surprise! And a little overwhelming. I woke up, grabbed the laptop to give my site a quick look-see before doing some writing and found 23 comments. That's not the norm for me so I clicked on warily thinking it was some weird spamming mix-up with made-up psycho/creepy words. Not a mix-up at all. What a gloriously lovely way to start the morning. Next came a knock at the door for the group photo with recent Blog Noters and we get to keep the orange jackets. This day just gets better and better. I'm hoping one of those little chickadees lets me borrow their fancy sash to wear to work tomorrow. Warm welcomes and thank you very much for your comments and kind words. I am truly thrilled to meet you all:>) and, what I had planned on posting today... "One day soon the rain will let up, and the frost will leave the ground as stealthily as it came. There will be yielding all around and a sudden insistent adhesion in the barnyard....