T’was the night before Easter
and time to dye eggs
a holiday activity
for which my daughter always begs.
Because we’re just three
a dozen’s all I bought.
Not enough to share
both my daughter and I thought.
So I said she could do them,
each one and all,
and I would watch her,
and we’d have a ball.
She makes them precisely.
It takes her all night,
and so I’m not bored,
I decided to write.
I got out the words
to make me a poem,
and we both took our time
it was really slow goin’.
Now she has her eggs,
and I have some words.
They say Easter’s for bunnies;
I think it’s for the birds.
And now, without further ado, I present… my poem!
Of course, with magnetic poetry you’re limited to the words they give you, but, sometimes, just having a physical word there, in your hand, moves your brain.
This is my (final version of my ) poem, as I would type it out, and adding, in a few bits that I could not find magnetized:
The Persistence of My Memory
Hello remembered rain, flowering my vision
with your pattering
against a delicate purple
window of poetry called the past-
each yesterday
going easily slow,
always abundant,
full
filled
delicious, fluid with music.
But the photos-
the photos contrast,
look rough,
ugly,
taste weird.
No poetry of purple flowering,
just tarnished silver halide-
No rain pattering-
no sound on muck
mucky
gelatin emulsion.
And Kodak never lies.
Screw memory,
that drunk companion
not at all companionable,
& a week’s worth of wages
for an empty seat
lugged around forever, and forever again
tangling up the turnstiles,
a heavy, broken, ghost.
Dianne Pearce Writes 