Crg Hill's poetry scorecard

 

 

 

 

tangenital

    

 

8 of Clubs

 

On the question of whether the S. U. V.'s in heaven will have cup holders

 

Dull, not depression, yet a deepening sense something’s not right,

not full or connected. Was he the fool? Was he the mask

 

sins drums pretenses and fusions fats vents and swines

night harm pretended and film tuned to crude

hinder and smother the sprites of the deed

 

there could be problems with

ground meat, which can be

mechanically stripped from the

bone near an infected part

 

Wind ripped through the gifts. Scattered parts

now lie about what happened. It was you – my sister –

the way my father disciplines me or failed to discipline

me. Yet despite the recriminations, implies or explicit,

shreds of plastic, of wrapping paper, everyone seems reified

 

for the new ‘landscaping plan,’ which

replaces ‘buffer strip’ with ‘sight lines to

the mall.’ Soon there will be little bitty

bushes there, requiring a new water sys-

tem (the mature trees do not need water-

ing), and with a little curvy concrete path

 

In the choice, the chance, the mean waste – I can’t

pick that thought out of a hat, wet towel streaking

floor, chlorine coughing out his eyes. He disintegrates

into thin care, a veneer scrubbed of compassion. Who says

you swear your heart on your leave? You come back

here! You coked your head. You can’t shoot me anymore.

Your loss is my gun. I chose the city while your country bleeds

King of Clubs

 

We've got to reduce our own target. Agression expands

 

‘It was reported as his personal suitcase,’ Hertling said.

‘There were a lot of things that can be exploited’

 

touched a hot stove, ‘Ooh! Ooh,’ in

places where I’d neglected to remember the

lyrics, much the way my Dad used to

 

We thought: think for yourself. The advances of just a

small thought, the brand of the lathe, pushes back

deep trenches. He can’t keep going; it’s not his alone.

Consonant drift, a persistent wind, wrecks his reverie

 

There are many ways of looking at

death, but I like Henry Van Dyke’s image of

a ship sailing over the horizon. Just at the

moment when we, on this shore, say, ‘There

she goes, there is someone on the far shore

 

The stories people tell have a way

of taking care of them. If stories

come to you, care for them. And

learn to give them away where they

are needed. Sometimes a person needs

a story more than food to stay alive

 

In the process, they ran

across another moose in thick

brush and tried to entice one or

both of the rutty bulls out of the

thicket by imitating another

bull with grunts and thrashing

of nearby brush

map out

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the

6 of Clubs

 

intrinsic blue. On the tributary, her facts fall, and she bets

 

Empty Potomac, channel serfs –

who could cross, a ton of dirty laundry on board

 

to pull this one out

lock it up in a box

and throw away the key

 

But too much of the holidays has be-

come tussling meanly with other human

beings in department store aisles to score

unwanted stuff on sale, stuff that winds up

 

‘Booming sands’ are much more impressive in my opinion.

One both hears them in a lower frequency band (50 to 264 Hz)

than ‘whistling sand” and feels them – the ground trembles, the

surface moves and ripples. Thus booming sands have both acoustic and

seismic components and the sound can last for much longer than do whistle or squeaks

 

the instability he created

every terrorist group

is flocking to fit in

the hornet’s nest an absolute

more than the hitherto

abstract necessity

 

Hurry had never been port of a stinger grope. Cracks

shook, load the why dawn stores; lapping, petting go,

and run what nexus, licking lake entrance in a sax-lagged

ruse. Next come profound snaps, drafting weepily

along, his tease heating each stir as they decanted,

healed up by his own wind, which was being painted

at him by service. Hurry and hermeneutics bought up the rare

 

 

one of the best times

to walk Oklahoma summer

is right after rain

easing through layers of cooler air

as earth gives water up to sky

5 of Hearts

 

But the water-cooler definition of news is increasingly lame

 

windows were now a solid, shimmering gray, which gradually

darkened until lanterns flickered into life all along the corridors

 

He hunts down the day’s dark turned back, days

grown longer, larger. Unwittingly, he dumped the memories

of infinite potential into his best friend’s lap, so many now petered out

 

potion to clear up her grandson’s

cough. She also tucked into a

bowl of dark soup boiled with

snake bone and turtle

 

A room at

dawn’s light,

a stoning

from which she steps aside,

aching of architecture

 

Two small heads,

one silver frame:

separate lives, yet no palpable

margins, edges to merriment

or misery, blanket, in this photo, swathing

two echoing, elfin smiles

 

The candles all went out at once. The only light now came from

the silvery ghost, who were drifting about talking seriously to the

prefects, and the enchanted ceilings, which, like the sky outside, was

scattered with stars. What with that, and the whispering that still

.            .            .

The wind was so strong that they staggered sideways as they

walked out into the field. If the crows was cheering, they couldn’t

hear it over the fresh rolls of thunder. Rain was splattering over

 

8 of Hearts

 

But now buzz-worthy restaurants are moving back, museums and performance halls are nearing                 critical mass

 

their innate, affable assurance that they

would not have to struggle for a place in the world

 

exhilaration into chaos:

the story kept right on going

from manhunt to mourning

 

The word 'Trust' hovering over his hed, and his sun-

glasses, one lens red, the other blue, pushed down past

the ridge of his nose so that you can see his eyes, which

are slightly off center. The eyes don’t look at me, though

 

the nicest lady ever. And I like

that that Santa was a little bit

whiny. It just made him seem

human. I like Santas with

human flaws, that have lived

 

the path I followed had much to teach me. That path led

through rapids that sought to swallow me and grind my bones

on the teeth of their sharp stones. It led over mountains so

cold that my blood was ready to freeze, and to the endless salt

water that held more power than I had ever experienced be-

fore. But that path also led into the heart. I learned to see

 

right. Death isn’t wasteful, unless you linger, and then it

wastes time. But if you are lucky, it’s a simple poof, and

then you don’t waste money and paper towels and water

and food for another twenty years. Sometimes she thinks

she is the only person left on earth who has a lick of sense

about not halfway using things and then throwing them

away. Why people don’t have sense enough to hang up

 

Queen of Diamonds

 

eyeballs plucked from their sockets, her fingernails pulled out one by one

 

the Mandan villages. As the wife of a trader, I was no

longer seen as a captive. I was now freer to move about as I

 

Udairis terrain, by compari-

son, is flat and desolate. The

wind blows constantly this time

 

On the Palouse, rivers dry

up in summer. On Market St.,

every night, new ones are born,

running yellow across the brick

 

don’t disguise his

wedge issue

as a ticket to

well-formed molecules

you had your chance

 

Now she works two jobs and has gone hungry

many times to make sure that her children have

proper nutrition. Sometimes she has even

watched as her children missed some meals and

went to sleep with empty stomachs and restless

dreams of abundant food and a secure home

 

            The week began

with the much-ballyhooed drop-

ping of smart bombs and guided

missiles, attacks by helicopter gun-

ships and F-16 fighters – showcas-

es of U.S. technological prowess.

   It is winding down with rockets

2 x 4, in process (7)

 

for Linda Russo

 

1.

Dirt beneath

my fingernails

is earth

my heaven

 

2. 

Squeezed basil

fresh picked

green breath

green hum

 

3.

three varieties

of lavender

fingers full 

of scent

 

4. 

cat slinks

in shade

one leap

from feeder

 

5. 

creeping shadows

crape myrtle

sway of

black oak

 

6. 

Dear MLA

when will

gardening count

for tenure?

 

7. 

Profs, here's

my scholarship

for today:

watering, weeding

 

8.

Bees bouncing

red rose

pink rose

roses rising

 

9.

soiled hands

open notebook

brown smudges

on white

 

10.

I ache

lifting up

the earth

lifting me 

 

11. 

the weeding

never ends

but the

harvest does

 

12.

soil's not

the same

but I'm

still sane