Skip to main content

Call It Time



Time it, call it: last image from the bath,
camera already checked in, 
grades...I guess they're fine,
no one stopped me to talk
before class. And Shelly's gone again;
caught her when she was 
back for a weekend
but there're no jobs here.
She's left for some campus
where the gates are high
as the bars.
Last Saturday we were at the pool
and only this smelly square
remembers.

Greetings and salutations. Inspired by the image provided by the wonderful Shay at The Sunday Muse for The Sunday Muse #160 and the beginning of summer here on the verge of the edge of the Texas Coast. The dogs are confused by why the door doesn't stay open half the day anymore and why we seem to have taken up slapping ourselves when sitting on the patio (mosquito season!) but the plants that have been lurking are beginning to bloom and I'm not unhappy about that. I'm still thinking about a writing accountability partner because I've fallen off the Nameless Project schedule again and that's about the time I start thinking "hmmm...a new notebook would be inspiring!" Help. 

Hope your week is inspiring and on track and the mosquitos lose your scent!

-- chrissa

Comments

  1. Gillena CoxMay 16, 2021 at 6:21 AM

    Nice one Chrissa

    Happy Sunday. Thanks for dropping by my blog today

    Much💚love

    ReplyDelete
  2. FireblossomMay 16, 2021 at 6:24 AM

    You build this by increments, not to a crescendo, but to a sigh. Makes me think of my 6 years in Texas.

    ReplyDelete
  3. SunitaMay 16, 2021 at 7:14 AM

    The sense of being midway. The grueling times and the repercussions are playing hide and seek on the mind. My daughter is in the US and we in India. Your poem hits home, Chrissa.

    ReplyDelete
  4. HelenMay 16, 2021 at 7:15 AM

    This left me wanting to know more, much more ... about Shelley, the protagonist, the weekend, the pool ..................

    ReplyDelete
  5. hedgewitchMay 16, 2021 at 7:30 AM

    Ingenious narrative poem that blends stasis, inevitability and change very deftly.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Susie ClevengerMay 16, 2021 at 9:31 AM

    You progressed through so many stages of a life. I really, really feel this one. I feel that over the past few weeks I've lived a lifetime.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Carrie Van HornMay 16, 2021 at 1:41 PM

    This is a poetic photograph that is like life flashing before one's eyes. Love this Chrissa! Yes it is getting Summer like in Texas for sure. I can relate to the new notebook fancies...🤓 Wishing you a mosquito free week...but with all the rain forecasted that may too big a wish. 😭

    ReplyDelete
  8. qbitMay 16, 2021 at 1:45 PM

    "Last Saturday we were at the pool / and only this smelly square / remembers." -- that's fantastic.

    ReplyDelete
  9. purplepeninportland.comMay 16, 2021 at 5:42 PM

    Nice one, Chrissa!

    ReplyDelete
  10. ms_liliMay 17, 2021 at 11:42 AM

    A wonderful coming-of-age story. Adulthood ain't all it's cracked up to be...

    ReplyDelete
  11. indybevMay 17, 2021 at 1:32 PM

    Well, I want to hear more about where Shelly has gone! A titillating poem.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turn Away

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the  pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm.  Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story.  Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in...
15 comments
Read more

The Soul and The Spine

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #195 . Come and share! When it blew out the candle, It began to speak, voice low,  eyes dimmer than flame. Jenn believed, once upon a childhood (she's still there... but it's waning), it inhaled fire. Spines, tonight. Gears ladder bones and metal and plastic, all that lived, rungs to heaven. Heaven is a level of space where you can't breathe  so they used to send the dead. When the flame goes, it takes our memories with it. But not bot files. Maybe it believes  she'll sleep easier if bots go breathless, too. It continues murmuring and she pretends she's hearing a confession in a box Like the song her mother plays when the dark stretches  between signals We can handle shocks. She can handle the dark, the small  not-flame of its eyes. It's finally winter!! Which means bitmapped frost on the roofs, cold mornings, and a table full of succulents that are pretty much glaring at me because the kitchen window isn't the same as full su...
14 comments
Read more

A Single (Terrible) Poem

 I did not buy the poetry book whose sample Was page after page of essay and praise. I'm not following the trumpets. Today I follow the ringers-- Huzzah and call out the streets! Lift your arm, swing the bell; Call out the quiet, call out the neat Call out the loud, call out the bold Call out the wrong, call out the wise We remember the bells We shiver the skies.    This isn't about...anything. It's not about nothing. It should go without saying that a poem shouldn't need an essay or a textbook to be what it is. And I'm not sure why, with a stack of poetry at hand to be read, one silly Kindle sample (and writer's block and anxiety and...) would push my buttons so badly. But seriously. Where is my parody book full of fake blurbs that runs for 50 pages and ends with a single (terrible) poem?  -- Chrissa
11 comments
Read more