9:37 p.m.

Some of the most wild and crazy days are the ordinary ones. Today, for instance. This morning I woke up and remembered to say, “Good morning.” Which is unusual for me. Usually, I begin with a complaint. A bad dream or an ache from sleeping in the wrong position. Today, I had my customary breakfast, bran cereal with blueberries. I broke a few pecans over the bowl. I vary the fruit or the nuts, but the regular weekday thing is bran. That is unusual, to have anything customary. Having grown up in a severely dysfunctional home, the only thing that could be counted on was the fact that I did not know whether or not my mother would be home that night or the next day. It has only been the last three or four years, at the age of fifty, I have really noticed “customary”. Routines have slipped into my life, and for the most part, I welcome them. It is my custom to wake up and eat breakfast. It is my custom to follow with coffee, if I am lucky—deep, savory, French vanilla. It is my custom to sit in the parlor, read bits of the paper, end with Dagwood or Zits and glance out my bay window at the summer-high grass or the trees that fill out the frame. I dental floss now fairly regularly, something I previously thought myself incapable of doing. My socks always match. Despite all this, my husband reflects that I am never boring. His tone makes me wonder if he is being entirely complimentary. Nevertheless, I have learned how lovely boring, or at least run of the mill, can be. No cracked dishes. Routines. Emptying the dishwasher, setting the table. The important thing, not to forget. Not to forget the beauty of a bowl brimming with breakfast, the luxury of cream, or the cardinal at the bird feeder. Also, not to forget my brothers and sisters waking up, just hoping the new day will not hurt so much.

En dash

A dash one en long.
Random House Dictionary

Amy Genova (1958–)

I always thought compound words cozied up
friendly: armchair, brotherhood or cowslips,
but then--other words prison. Like en dash,
a small wall compounding adjectives or granting

equal muscle to words: the Israeli–Palestinian
fracas, this hour to the next red–blue state
contenders & the Bush–Cheney axis. En dashes
in encyclopedias are as patient as open graves--

ready for the end of every genius. Except Jesus--
unless like an atheists or en dash fans, you accept
nails for periods. Even if you find faith in Good
Friday’s benevolence or are at home with infinity,

there is no doubt

an en dash--scrawnier than a minus-exes through
all our a.m–p.m.'s: going to school, getting married
... owning dogs. Succinct as a noose, an en dash
has less hold than a hyphen,

much less than a hymen--a line that bleeds
when crossed. The atheist’s only hope--extend
the life-line--if not, find World War II gratitude
in crackers or the odor of milkweed, rank & pungent.

Unlike clerics, en dashes yield only clarity
or ashes. Think 1958–

New Harmony, Disrupted

New Harmony is located in the southern most part of Indiana on the Wabash River. It is a town that was originated by two utopian societies, the New Harmonists and the Owenists. To be brief, an understatement, the Harmonist was your typical Puritan-like sect, in my mind, who were bought out, perhaps in more ways than one, by secular humanists and suffragists, among others.
Today, the retreat town bears the fruit of both heritages.

The town radiates a kind of justice to the eye in its beauty. Everywhere one looks there is either a piece of sculpture, a beautiful quote to read, a sanctuary garden, a fountain, or a bench to sit on. Not to mention the town's period buildings, such as the Granary; or the Roofless Church, the Labyrinths, the Workmen's Institute and the modern architectural prize, the Antheneum. And yet there is something "Steppherd Wivesy" about the place. There are only 700 or so denizens, who get around in gold carts, and wave and smile like the inhabitants of the village in the 1960s TV series The Prisoner.

Some of the writer's wondered where all the children were. The absence of laughter or the sound of dogs, made it seem as all the boys and girls and pets were secreted away, only allowed out at night. After poking around, I did locate a child friendly street. I walked to the very southernmost block in the town, before the cornrows begin. In a town the size of New Harmony, it isn't hard to do. However, I did notice the gardens in the front yards were not so nearly as meticulous as in the blocks before. Three bikes were tossed carelessly on the ground in front of a trailer house. Furthermore, two middle school boys, one pudgy specimen with a falsetto voice, walked up the street towards me. Obvious nerds, I longed to join in their smart sounding conversation that belied their John Deer hats and wife beater t-shirts (don't blame me for the sobriquet). Continuing up the street, one young girl about 11 in a flurry of pink shorts passed me. As I turned to head back to the Red Geranium for supper with several adults, I spied a blue, plastic, swimming pool with fishes on the side, tucked reassuringly on the lawn of a backyard.

The interesting thing about the workshop--it seemed to be a proving ground for student writers to fawn on established luminaries. Children after all. (Perhaps a misplaced modifier.) Even so, three different young people said to me that I reminded them of their mothers. I remain deeply touched. One lent me three of his own poetry books for three years. I am not kidding about the three's. Inside one of the books was a typed, but personal letter of encouraging words. No one has ever favored me in this way. Again, I felt moved.

Ironically, I left the retreat a day and a half early. My own daughter needed me. And as always there is so much more to tell.

Sharp

by Amy K. Genova

Thirteen hawks fly
with their hawk hearts
over the crepuscular river
where dormouse is all
breast & shivers like
Mahler’s woodwinds

Their hawk eyes say much
while ragweed rags
& maples hum—
the dormouse should
be feldspar
should be wings

should be civility

But dormouse is dormouse
and hawks are hawks
all eye & muscle,
with hearts in their beaks

Even if there were pencils
and thirteen hawks idled
over musical arguments
or notes of clouds,
dormice are syllables

& hawks have so much to sing

Past Past

Past the clinks of the metal bat, the high school boys running bases—fielding something, past the flirty girl in pink, still. Past the fat mother and her baby on her lap, swinging together, stretching the strip of rubber suspended by chains. Past the river that’s lost it’s sway, bent straight by men and edged with concrete, broken concrete. Past the curiosity of the concrete, past the young man smiling at his woman, her lids half lowered. Past her face, smooth as a nickel. Past sheets and skin and the jelly roll. Past the usual line of five o’clock cars snagging the walking-bridge joy. Past the White River. Past loneliness and lolling on a log by the river, past eyeing a knob. Smooth, beneath the fallen tree. A shell or a snail. Past leaning forward for it’s touch, the bump’s touch, the unexpected polish. Past not caring. Past dying—not past here. In thoughts and ant hills. Feeling spring in the nose, the weariness of bones. Half in dreams. Half in memory. Wondering what it means. How to get it back.

Shadows

Hillary outlined a plan. Mentioned standing up to China, not holding hands with the Saudis. Mourned magnets we manufactured in Muncie for guided missile systems, out-sourced along with the factory to another country. Her blazer was smart. Gold. My new haircut slopes to the right. Trendy. I peer through the small hoops of my Walgreens glasses. The left side of my body hurts. And my heels. On the way home from the hairdresser, yellow sprigs of forsythia bouqueted the sides of chipped houses. Magnolia trees dropped wax-like leaves here and there and deep red branches of roadside bushes opened up with pink or white blossom. Winter so tight with gray, made me forget. Indiana can be beautiful. The potholes hurt my self-esteem. Maybe forever. Now, the sun streams in from the kitchen window. Over my kitchen sink. Over my left shoulder. Winks back at me from my computer screen along with my wavering shadow. Strange things shadows, like mute mountains. Witnesses without tongues. I almost believe they are spirit, like I did at eleven. My daughter is eighteen. Same age as my husband, when I met him. How odd. I may never get to Europe. Hillary may beat me to it. One way or another.

Before the gods were invented

Before golden rains or swans sullied maidenheads—
earlier than Mary’s Mother-of-God-swansong
or Woden’s bartering an eyeball for wisdom,
Before the golden calf, Loki, or Abraham’s covenant
with God—prior to Jesus, Joseph Smith
or Durga’s ride on a white tiger
Before Siddhartha’s footprints dimpled the earth
from India to China under the trunk
of an elephant-headed god, whose broken tusk
still waxes over a thousand Hindu thresholds
from the Malay Archipelago to Brooklyn,

Before the Renaissance’s Amida Buddha’s bronzed
hands poised in a mudra of contemplation,
or his eyes bent on a dogma of devotees
chanting: Amida, Amida, Amida—open
the pure land’s gates,
Before Dante’s hell yowled for the wailing whirlpool
of weeping sinners, before the invention of gods,

Maybe, they fished. Caught spotted catfish or silver trout.
Watched the birds. Sure, there were divisions—
but nobody divvied up heaven’s devotion of the earthy world.
Before the gods were invented, maybe they listened
to the wet, soily days of spring
and accepted death—dying like animals do.