Carnival of Poets

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Location: United States

Friday, April 15, 2005

Carnival Number One!

Well, here we go. Lets start off with a couple bloggers whose work I noticed on alt.arts.poetry and rec.arts.poems. I asked them if they wanted some of their work published here, but they preferred to post on their own sites.
Another poet, Leila, doesn't have a blog, and asked that her poem be published here.

Arizona Rez
I met a woman once
her name was pawnee
her boots were lizard
she kicked stories out of crossroads dust
and made flutes from sparrowbones.

They fascinate, these people bred
Into the rock and the twisting dry wind
As though we can't comprehend
Sacred anymore.

It's this terracotta earth
That spawns them
People of the mesas
made of adobe.

Her crows-feet ran deep
As irrigation channels,
Still-nimble hands knotted as sage
That burns prayers to the four winds.

She knew my name when I came.

She made me hot sweet tea in her airstream
Where a twist of herbs burned
Under a fleamarket picture of Mary
Full of grace.

Smiling, she fingered the eagle feather in her hair.
The spirits did not leave us,
She said,
We only renamed them.

Interesting visuals, and especially interesting to me, since I know a number of First Nations People who became Christian.

Also found only on a rec.arts.poems, Ilya Shambat posts a recreation of twinkle twinkle little star.

Of course, what posting on Tax Day would be complete without a poem about soaking the rich? From DoggerelPundit we have this gem of a first stanza:
Tax the Rich! Tax the Rich!
The fat sheep flee the herder!
Call your Senator! —sire or bitch—
They’re getting away with murder!

As always, Stephen measures up with great lines, so go and read it all.

We also have some Milblogger poetry. Russ Vaughan gets a poem of his posted by Greyhawk over at Mudville Gazette, inspired by this editorial. We also have American Soldier with Crazy Talk - Shadow, which describes (in part) the monotony of an Army Sniper. True, its a bit morbid, but then again, Army life can do that to you, sometimes.

In the "Shameless Self Promotion Dept.", Kathryn Jean Lopez flogs the National Review meetup in Atlanta using limericks and haiku.

Speaking of haiku, we close with three insightful entries from Anthroblogology.

insert dictator
claim victory in failure
tout deadly results

Che Guevara
Killed a lot of people
face on a t-shirt

Mao Lenin Stalin
Which was the Economist
Maybe Trotsky was

That's it for this carnival, hope you enjoyed it. The next will be here at Carnival of Poets, on April 30th. Entries are due Friday the 29th at high noon MST to carnivalofpoets at gmail dot com. Posting will be on the 30th at noon(ish).