"... friday is for fishing those struggling words out of the dishwasher ..."

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Kate Chenier recommends these on line literary sites.

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Kate Chenier

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Nomenclature

Your name lurches into
my kitchen and sits silent, two
random syllables
jointed too loosely.
You supply the contextual bones,
when you're willing.

I write you with blocked capitals,
edgy pairings,
you skulk between the lines, unruly,
unsubdued by blue-black blood magic.
I know no spelling potent enough
to excommunicate you.

Your touch recalls a sleepy lesson
a sun-shot afternoon blackboard
laced with vocabulary unremembered.
Although the repeated cadences, codas,
slip under my archaic skin.

You are a poem imperfectly translated,
a shift from a mellifluous language
I no longer speak.





daybook

wednesday is for burnt toast and
         losing their shoes before the dinner-bell, it's
         barefoot promises in the street, then
         I'll have scrambled priorities on my toast and I want
         my plastic plate with pirate ships, please, because
         I like to make french fries walk the plank

         friday is for fishing those
         struggling words out of dishwater, to
         cling on envelope backs in iridescent crayon, sometimes
         later, I even understand connections between
         charcoal and laughter and
         lupins and desire

         sunday is for sitting in the
         kitchen, we're making kites while
         my mind collects feathers, she says
         why don't people have beaks? she's
         eating stickers, I'm chewing a poem

         tuesday is for baking and the
         measured radio voices, it's
         an interview with a blind mollusk researcher that
         catches and holds on too long, he says
         he distinguishes seaweed by smell, and
         we're floury, yeast everywhere, then
         some mariachi music, so we danced with
         fruit on our heads and the bread was
burnt.