Hi Heather,

Can you send me the poem a day website?


Thanks,
Mill

-----Original Message-----
From: Heather Taylor <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 8:32 am
Subject: Day 3 & 4



Day 3:

The Problem with Giant Gobstoppers

Our parents direct us towards the
5-minutes-in your-mouth-and-their-gone
variety but we move slack jawed
past ping pong, golf and tennis ball sizes
to the granddaddy of them all.

We jump, dance, stomp, point and pout
until it is bagged and thrust into greedy hands.
Howling children with unwanted coke bottles
and sour soothers are dragged past us
their fingernails digging into the floor,
hands wrapping around doorframes,
the gobstopper prize still in sight.

At home, we tuck ours into bed with us,
half wrapped in plastic and lick until
sleep takes us and mornings come with
sticky faces, our cheeks dyed to match
the layer we got to, our tongues like
sandpaper, our stomachs sick with sweet.

DAY 4:

(today we had to do a poem about an animal so I thought I'd do an acrostic
using the animal with the longest name...)

Soldier Fly
Paths to the bin
are zig-zagged with your
relatives and you
arial trapeze stunts done at
supersonic speed
through the space between noses and
rails of backyard fences:
a cacophony of buzzing
tickling my senses.
I never liked you,
overpopulating the earth from your home in
south and north america then
pushing eastward, westward to make
homes of Europe, India, Asia and
even Australia.
Can't you find a resting place
only one continent wide,
make a pest of
yourself
in a land far far
away from where I'm living?

Such fantasies would rid the earth of your
talent: 15 kilograms per day of
restaurant left overs per square meter,
a 95% reduction in the weight and volume of
this waste we need ridding of and every 100 lbs of garbage
I make, you'll leave only 5lbs behind.
Only now I think of you as a necessity
stuck with Soldier Fly/ Stratiomyid Fly nicknames instead of
Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides which
has the ability to
evoke terror into even the most well-read teacher
converging upon a class with a register in hand
over pronouncing names to
maintain the highest standards
yet would stumble over your name,
illustrate their inability and
only y
ou and they would know their misstep, both of you
ill at heart wanting to
die, the floor to suck you in
evolution to forget about your existence, clock hands
slowly ticking to class end.