Category Archives: Belonging

School Feeding Pts 1 & 2- un-formatted

acceptance, anti-racism, Barbara Turney Wieland, Beginnings, Belonging, Birds, Change, Endings, Food&Wine, Napowrimo, nostalgia, Poetry, truth

SCHOOL FEEDING pt 1

England

 

The bell’s gone. We are wide-mouthed frogs, riveted like cracked open birds waiting for worms.

 

Stand in line. Wait your turn.

 

line

line

line

line

 

A boy’s socks fall down while standing upright.  It’s my itchy thick tights that go south. My mouth waters. We inch forward.

forward

forward

 

Will there be custard? Mysterious pudding lurks beneath. Make no sudden moves.

 

Being served from the hatch where the dinner ladies skulk takes its toll. More than one child this term has lost control of a bladder.

 

You wonder, will there be bread rolls today or squishy buttered Wonderloaf. Bread’s the best bit.

 

I hate gravy i hate gravy i hate gravy i hate gravy i hate gravy. Lumpy

 

Big boys pull my pigtails. They pick their own scabs and eat them. Big boys laughs. What does this mean?

mean

mean

mean

 

Hunger is constant, factually. Something pure in the strange world of the dinner hall. I am very small.

small

small

small

small

 

 

SCHOOL FEEDING pt 2

Australia

 

Change of continents entails change of lunch habits. It’s not even called dinner here.

 

Crack open a window, Let the heat out, matey. It won’t go. Lumpy

 

Hey you, pinkie, say sommat. ( pause for laughter) Are ya Pommie or sommat? Ya gotta be kiddin’.

 

Drones on. The teacher. The flies. The booming swells of air that’re as solid as the sweaty upper lips and arm pits of kids.

 

It’s clear I only remember summer dinners. They were perhaps the hottest. 1976 was the longest.

long

long

long

long

 

I’m shameless in my envy. Clots to the colour of thick meaty gravy.

 

How we stay friends when she gets her name scrawled on a greasy paper-bagged tuck-shop order, I’ll always wonder. She sinks her tiny teeth in. I get none. Hoarder

 

i must not swear. i must not swear i must not swear i must now swear

sook

sook

sook

pom

pom

pom

 

The smells of Balfour’s piespastiessausagerolls wafts in form the corridor. Enters the stifling classroom, bows, lift up out of the crates, breaks my heart, makes me levitate.

 

My package of sandwiches (fritz and sauce), sits limp, squashed, tepid at the bottom of my school bag. I hunt them out with foetid fingers when the bell goes off.

 

Released into the quadrangle, we squabble over frozen Farmer’s Union iced coffee. Vying for a lick, it is eaten granita stylie before my envious eyes and dried up lips.

 

Seagulls circle overhead, gawping, squarking, diving bins. My stomach gnaws.

 

April 9 2020

btw

 

P-s Why won’t WordPress accept my formatting!!!??? aargh!

 

http://www.napowrimo.net

Glopowrimo / Napowrimo 2020

Day 9.- Today’s resource is Kirsten Kaschock’s chapbook, Windowboxing. Kaschock, a dancer as well as a poet, titles her poems using neologisms or portmanteaus, and each one proceeds as a series of essay-like sentences. The poems are interspersed with drawings, and some are even formatted in the shapes of boxes, forcing the reader to turn the book (or their head) and engage with the poems as they move through space.

Our prompt for the day (optional as always) is inspired by Kaschock’s use of space to organize her poems. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a “concrete” poem – a poem in which the lines and words are organized to take a shape that reflects in some way the theme of the poem. This might seem like a very modernist idea, but poets have been writing concrete poems since the 1600s! Your poem can take a simple shape, like a box or ball, or maybe you’ll have fun trying something more elaborate, like this poem in the shape of a Christmas tree.

Unlike swans, i dance

Beauty, Belonging, Birds, Dance, Dream Imagery, Narcissus, Poetry, Sadness, Sylvia Plath

http://www.napowrimo.net

Glopowrimo / Napowrimo 2020

 

Day 8:- asks you to peruse the work of one or more of these twitter bots, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem.

Today’s poetry resource is a series of twitter accounts that tweet phrases from different poets’ work. The Sylvia Plath Bot, as you might expect, tweets snippets of Plath.

Plath snippet :- Unlike swans,

 

Unlike swans,

i dance

what a lovely creature, a swan

quiet, sedate, white

what wings, so neat

folded, elegant

until they beat

water rhythmic

in an effort to lift

their bodies, but only just

 

listen, a swan

thrums,

thrum thrum thrum

if only i was one

aloof, untainted, unthirsty

untouched unless by chaste water

unmated, unruffled, undusted unless behind

cabinet glass, perhaps, an unwanted gift

a vision

 

what a fine thing, a mirror

smooth, unopinionated

divested of majestic longing

though learns to listen for the longings

of reflexions of others

unlike me

 

i dance before this

song of a swan

an ugly thing

lifting distance

only just

a drift of pale gray feathers

falling

 

April 8 2020

btw

 

 

super-consciousness meeting

acceptance, Beginnings, Belonging, Change, conversations, gratitude, Haiku, health, Meditation, Poetry

what about if all

of us agreed to sit still

just to breathe a while?

.

haiku

.

N.b we’re all in this together on some deep level 2020 vision

N.b collective creative souls find solutions to paradigms that are tired and old

N.b open up your minds to possibility during this shift in thinking. or stay a dinosaur… your choice

N.b bless you all collectively ❤️❤️❤️🙏🙏🙏

thanks for attending the meeting; for your presence.

Who’s taking notes?