Surviving School

 Good Morning, Children

—Photos by Joyce Odam

 

* * *

—Poetry by Joyce Odam and Robin Gale Odam,
Sacramento, CA

 

 

THE CHANGING
—Joyce Odam

In the sweet green air of night
late summer winds rise up—play at dance,
tease the fluttering wings of leaves—
blow the curtains in through open windows.

The cat sits by the screen door,
looking out—
watching the motion of shadows—
the nocturnal mysteries.

The green trees
flicker under the street lamp—
approve the spotlight—
shimmer and preen.

Name it what you will,
there is
a change in the air;
something quickens—makes rumors.

The waves of the sea-painting seem to move,
you watch the motion of the water—
the wet color of the moonlight on the wall
—something you never noticed before.

                                                 
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 6/19/18)

 

 

 

 Good Morning, Miss Flowers

ABSTRACTION
After “Yana Yamaya” by Carina Clavigo
—Joyce Odam

she closes her eyes against the world,
the time of the world,
the guise of the world

she paints her face, her eyes, her lips,
signs her name at the credit edges
of her mind

she borrows a tune to hum,
changes the words,
finds her trance

she does not merge into a wall,
it recedes—recedes—into
a memory of space

she dis-
connects
from the space around her

she is who she will be forever—
forever and now
and the now of forever

                                    
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 11/26/23)

 

 

 

My New Dress

CHANGING THE RELATIONSHIP 

—Joyce Odam

One day she up and changed, became someone
to fear, perhaps, to puzzle over at best, for her
new and ornery ways, the soft and raggedy way
she dressed—all in torn things—pulled from back
hangers.

And it was where she went in bad weather and
came back at odd hours—hours when the clock
showed a particular row of repeated numbers on
the small clock by her bedside.

It was the way she murmured of blue forms by the
window, that seemed to know her, and love her,
and how she went to them in her trance of being
and celebrated with them her sorted miseries, and
how her new name glistened on their lips—and
how she loved the sound of this, and became their
name for her, and it was her own—the one she
chose to be, before you came.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 5/22/18) 

 

 

 

 Mary Brings Her Lamb, I Bring My Frog

ACCORDANCE  

—Joyce Odam

if the last drip
of rain
is to be
my measure,

and rain
is scarce,

why,
to my eyelashes now,
come these tears
that follow
        

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 12/29/20)

 

 

 

Oh, I Forgot

NOT SWIM HERE
—Robin Gale Odam

describe the river homework due
wade through abstract nouns
slippery root words sink and hide
compound sentence branches endlessly
rapid words merge into unruly paragraph
crowded adjectives describe motion
wonder imagines force could tell it better
tangled roots twist in the turbulent deep
opening statement arrives late with
confusing current thick to tread
skim the surface hold your breath
better not swim here wake up
it’s due tomorrow 

 

 

 

 Little Brother Wants To Stay

EPILOGUE
—Robin Gale Odam

Beware, these girls are mean—
I remember them from grade school,
I think I was six.

I watched from the long bench, my
back against the red bricks—I fixed
my eyes just beyond them, as though
watching the bats that swept over the
playground from the terra cotta roof tiles.

I saw the sharing of secrets—the knowing
looks, the telling smiles covered by fingertips,
faces turned just away from my presence,
my imperceptible waters—

deep waters for treading, for paddling
around them if it was not too far—for holding
one breathful of words and gliding just beneath
the surface and around them—or for sinking into—
for sinking, and then away and back to my bench
and the red bricks—to looking past them at the
bats, and waiting for the bell to ring.

                                                 
(prev. pub. in Medusa's Kitchen, 3/21/23) 

 

 

 

 Picture Day

HE HAD A FEELING ABOUT HER
—Robin Gale Odam

She was the one who would lift him up out of the
night of his childhood—the nightmare of falling
from flying above the old schoolyard, above the
huge children who poured from the classroom, who
reached up to grab at his shoes as he floated above
them just barely—their eyes turned downward to
anchor the blacktop, to kick the round ball at the
boy in the playground at recess, at lunchtime, and
after the lesson of numbers to ponder on paper with
lines and the spelling of arguments, words of con-
tention—hello and how are you today, what’s your
name, what school did you come from and where
did you live—you are sitting in someone else’s old
seat.

And there on the bench at the end of the wall near
the fountain of water and clutching a lunch pail of
delicate color—the moon and the owl and the boy—
was the one who would lift him up out of the night
of his childhood. He watched from the top of the
trees.
                 
______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

THIRD GRADE
—Robin Gale Odam

a string of wooden hearts
around her neck, crudely carved

______________________

Thanks to Joyce and Robin Gale this morning for their fine poetry and Joyce’s fine photos! Our Seed of the Week was One Day At School. This week’s new SOW is “Winter Moonlight”. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from. And see every Form Fiddlers’ Friday for poetry form challenges, including those of the Ekphrastic type.

______________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 

 Home Schooling
—Public Domain Illustration

For future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
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UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
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that might pop up
—or get changed!—
 during the week.

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