Poetry from Mary Crockett Hill

Mary Crockett Hill's A Theory of Everything was released this month by Autumn House Press. I'll post an interview with her next week in honor of National Poetry Month, but for now please allow this poem, which appeared in Pank before it became a part of the Autumn House collection, to serve as an introduction. (It's not exactly for the kids, so I'm not linking up with the Poetry Friday crew...)

Why I Gave Up on Astral Projection

My body, when was it
I realized you are so full
of shit? Literally. Shit.

The food and the churnings
-- all the blood-heavy
mass of you. The old binding

between us, now fixed.
There was a time I did not know
I even had a body.

I was all in my head,
nouns vibrating
like tiny harps.

It seemed inevitable to float
above those organs, that skin
so likely at any moment to slip

from my supine shell
and surge into the universe.
(I dreamed I could leave

then come back.
Will such faith also return?
The whiskered self

shaved clean again
by the cutting ache
for flight.) There is a blue cord

holding me back. And more --
the children, the child in me
who now knows what she eats,

my neighbor's dying lover, his rickety
lawn chair, the bend of my mouth saying no,
the waiting, the laundry, the need

to spoon and stir in a room
that will not be the moon
no matter, no matter how I worship it.

poetry friday and saving money

For poetry Friday I'm posting a link to $1,000 Down, a poem that's up this month on the Literary Mama web site.

I'm also posting an offhand remark from my friend Naama, who said she figured she'd save up to $50 a week if she just didn't sharp at Target. As we're still in a state of Financial Lockdown, I decided to try out her theory. I managed to stay away until this morning, when I had to pick up a prescription. Now I'm back on the bandwagon. It's not saving $50 a week, but it's definitely saving something...

dreidels and moles poetry friday

I KNOW Chanukah's over and it would have made sense to do this for poetry Friday a couple of weeks ago, but
1. since Christmas hype lasts for three months and
2. "day late, dollar short" is my M.O.
I'm doing it TODAY.

When I talked to my son's class about Chanukah, we made up new verses of the dreidel song. Why? Consider this oft-ignored, actual second verse:

It has a lovely body
With legs so short and thin
And when it is all tired
It drops and then I win.

Do dreidels have legs? I think not.
You can find alternate verses all over the net and I thought some new verses would be a great way to work with the kindergarteners on rhyming. My son's verse was:

I have a little dreidel
I made it out of slime
I put it on a tree
To see if it could climb!

On car trips, we do the same thing with the song "Mole in the Ground" by Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Each person takes turns coming up with a new verse.

I wish I was a grape on a vine
I wish I was a grape on a vine
Grape on a vine
In time I'd turn to wine
Oh I wish I was a grape on a vine. (Okay, that was mine and not from a 5-year-old. I wrote down the best ones they came up with from various trips, but who knows where that paper ended up. Maybe the glove compartment.)

More new verses (to either song) welcome here.

poetry friday

You might be asking, if you ask yourself such things: What is Poetry Friday? And isn't it Thursday?
And I might be answering, if I answer such things:
Poetry Friday is a day set aside for blogging about poetry -- by kids, for kids, for grownups, for geese -- from the people who blog about that sort of stuff anyway (and from the people who blog about that sort of stuff as it relates to kids lit in particular.) I blog about that sort of stuff only sometimes. In fact, I blog only sometimes, which is why I'm writing this on a Thursday. Who knows where I'll be tomorrow?

Today's poem is by my 3-year-old gal, who has recently been learning about rhyming. She meant it to be a song lyric:

I fly high
up in the sky
I bumped my head
and I didn't cry