Poetry Potluck Writer #2 Margaret Young

Mistake #1, not just getting up to find her books on my bookshelf. (I didn’t want to wake the baby, or the 14 year old.)

Mistake #2, googling her and finding a Margaret Young Festival of her poetry to choose from.

Mistake #3, trying to isolate Margaret when she is so much about her environment, who she is with, what she sees and tastes, much less who she is sandwiched in between at the following link.

Not a mistake #4, spending the morning with Margaret, vicariously through the internet.

I like Ode to Arugula and Radishes.  My formatting has done something funny. So, this only goes from Day 30 to Day 19. The rest is here.

Her books can be purchased here.

Margaret Young-Poet

Links

Bio – http://www.margaretyoungpoet.com/bio.html

Follow this link to two of her poems – http://www.literarymama.com/contributor/margaret-young

One poem – http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/get-used-it

Interview – http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/interview-with-poet-margaret-young

Thirty poems – https://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/3030-project-june-2014/

Welcome to the 30/30 Project, an extraordinary challenge and fundraiser for Tupelo Press, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary press. Each month, volunteer poets will run the equivalent of a “poetry marathon,” writing 30 poems in 30 days, while the rest of us “sponsor” and encourage them every step of the way.
The seven volunteers for June 2014 … and Margaret Young. Read their full bios by clicking here.
Please feel free to acknowledge their generosity and creativity with a show of your admiration and support by donating on their behalf to Tupelo Press. (Click here to donate, scroll down to the form at the bottom, and put a contributor’s name in the “honor” field.) Just imagine what a challenge it is to write 30 new poems in 30 days!

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Day 30 / Poems 30

For Du Fu / by Margaret Young
We’re not after the peaches


of immortality here today

Fame’s just a schooner that shows up


in the distance on calm afternoons

between Marblehead and the Misery Islands


we’re so glad Jan took that for a title

now we can all steer clear of them

write odes to dirty coal and cars

in our corner of the provinces

toasting with paper cups of coffee

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Day 29 / Poems 29
Thinking of Du Fu and Parents on a Summer Afternoon / by Margaret Young
The tide looks permanently high


in Salem Sound today, bright sun

warming seaside towns crowded

with festive visitors in groups

Some poets drive out, leaving

children playing together

Let’s go see J.D.’s play

drink fruity beer at Gulu Cafe

the kids OK, check phones


then an old lady stranger falls

shattering the afternoon with quiet

blood. An ambulance, we wait,

watch people leaving the museum

where seascapes hang alongside

room-sized battle scenes

talking about poetry


and librarians in the sunset
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Day 28 / Poems 28
Four Years / by Margaret Young
I stayed on in the M Street house but moved to its western side. There was a dog named Che that sometimes licked our feet under the table. Other dogs in the neighborhood would howl at distant ambulances. Huge boxes of apricots arrived. Laundry dried outside in minutes, except when it didn’t. Some of us reading Lorca, some bent over bags of dirt.

First in a series of attic bedrooms, that false sense of detachment they bring. All those cardboard boxes bumping up and down little staircases. Like borrowing other people’s dogs: you’ll never have to hold their heads when the needle goes in. The tomatillos practically grew themselves. Somebody must miss smoking in bars.

Drawn to river banks, bridges where I could watch the water slip under. Sometimes a heron pretended to be my mother. Messages got tangled in fences, those grates over storm drains. My glasses fell in, my contact lens. The same page over and over, still not getting it. At least there was good radio, songs that made us tilt heads in the same direction.

The only way to run was in squares around cornfields. I hid from old ladies, exhausted by their cheer. We’d drive to Grafton just to see a waitress frown. Puppets part of a normal workday. You showed perfect timing at the party where my ankle bracelet chimed. I succumbed to the parade and wound foil stars around my bike basket.
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Day 27 / Poems 27
After Alan Michael Parker’s “A Prisoner of Things” / by Margaret Young
If only this tea were icier

if only the history were salt.

The idea here is to dissolve,


says the water—

or to wave at the horizon,


say the trees. Or to hum

until the socks dry,

until the sunset disagrees.

The idea here is to gaze,

says the window.

What’s going down?


asks the frog in every rhyme,

he who spends all summer

chanting OM—

oh hey, the kids in the basement

have killed a spider.

The idea here is to fade

gracefully, says the light.

If you remembered what you needed

would you recognize it now,

says the window.

The chickens roost inside the past.

You’ll understand someday,


says the dirt.

Cool dirt, says the dirt.

Over here, says the horizon.
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Day 26 / Poems 26
Institute / by Margaret Young
One summer I taught Young Writers Institute


in Pittsburgh, at a school on the north shore


of the Allegheny, near the aviary, I lived


in Point Breeze, rode my bike. My co-teacher


was a real teacher during the year, public

school special ed, she spoke very clearly,

overused the word nice talking about poetry.

I wanted to tell her, tell the children

Bertolt Brecht said art isn’t nice but


I was too nice. The classes ended


at lunch, the kids there all afternoon


doing playground things and crafts


but writing teachers headed home,

one day so hot I stopped my bike and walked

into the river, dress and all.
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Day 25 / Poems 25
Bartok’s House / by Margaret Young

A table piled with onions, knives.


Deep red cherries in vinegar, catching

a chunk of late sun from the window.

Out back, violins hide in the hemlock

trees, shake them furiously, then


go all hushed.

Up and down the stairs they go,


the sleepy mice, the sacks

of muddy lily bulbs.

Ghosts in the fireplace doing standup.

Nobody warned us, one goes, we’d miss farting.

Breathing, sure. They crack each other up.

Oboes on the roof with metal pigeons.

Cellos in the cellar with wine.

In the middle of the living room, the grand


piano opens like a huge black oyster.

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Day 24 / Poems 24
Real Estate / by Margaret Young
Another June, the embarrassing roses


brandish their sexual petals, the swan-

necked excavator digs up the shady street

while men in vests and helmets stand


like ruminants among their orange cones.

Elm seeds, brown paper nipples, drift


into piles

.
……………….It’s not enough to live next


to the graveyard: you must take them by

the soft dry hand, the ones standing


among rectangles, spelling out names,

a glance around to try to guess who’s next.
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Day 23 / Poems 23
When We Were Cars / by Margaret Young
We stopped at Quaker Steak and Lube in Erie,


my father likes the Vermilion River one


he drives to in his Porsche Speedster.

Why car theme, asked our five year old

as we sat in booths beneath a hubcap wall

Because it’s cool, said the waitress

(who then carded me, take that, exes)


Because they’re beautiful, you added, pointing


at the red Corvette shell aloft between TV


screens and giant full length Elvis photo.

Nostalgia! We’re teaching it already, like

that’s the guy whose song he danced to


in his class, when he learned air guitar.

We remind him of his first word, uck,

for anything large and wheeled, and second,

cah, for all the smaller ones

and how for two entire years he was

Lightning McQueen, a movie racecar,

and we answered to the names and spoke

in accents of Mater and Flo, the rusty hick


truck who teaches Lightning compassion


and the matriarchal diner owner who served

cars cans of oil they drank in booths like people.
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Day 22 / Poems 22
Ode to Arugula / by Margaret Young
At the first taste

we turned away, troubled.

Tongues burned from green smoke.

Arugula grows arrows, jagged


and vivid, plumage of a bitterbird.

Skunky cabbage, maybe your baby leaves


are all some ever taste, slender digits

no sharper than a spoon.

But as our mouths grow ripe


with frowning, kissing,


drinking and speaking of bitter things

we taste arugula again, now crave


that rank edge, blue note,

foxy strut, a leaf more

wild and rude than lettuce.
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Day 21 / Poems 21
Radishes / by Margaret Young
When I bite your skin

red round radish, crunch

your white insides I hear

Fiona Snowball say


really burnin’ ‘ot

both question and challenge.

Thirteen, from Islington Green


School, one lunch hour she and Angelique


took me to this garden, a strip of green

and flowers that went on for blocks


through the gray city. In our gray

pleated skirts we sat on benches

pink petals drifting around us


and when I ate radishes from a plastic bag


Fiona was incredulous, she wasn’t


really mean, just tough, an alpha girl.

I smiled, said no, not burning


with my Yankee accent, silver braces

and raw roots, crudities

not really hot

but sharp, Fiona.
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