postal poetry tag archives

Unconquered

January 16, 2009
This entry is part 15 of 16 in the series Postcards from a Conquistador

Poem: 'Five hundred years, and I'm just learning the land's own name.'

R.I.P. Andrew Wyeth (July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009)

Posted in Greatest Hits, Photos, Poems & poem-like things | 10 Comments

Superstition

January 12, 2009
This entry is part 13 of 16 in the series Postcards from a Conquistador

Poem: 'They used to be superstitious about cameras stealing their souls. Tourism creates jobs, we told them. Don't you want jobs? But now their pictures have been taken so many times, they hardly seem colorful at all.'

Posted in Photos, Poems & poem-like things | 3 Comments

Introspectre

January 5, 2009
This entry is part 11 of 16 in the series Postcards from a Conquistador

Poem: 'I am erratum: the dropped apostrophe, upside-down plane, cow skull in the desert, brown tree snake on guam, and I earn a special place in your honor roll of regrets.'

Posted in Photos, Poems & poem-like things | 6 Comments

Horseman, pass by

January 2, 2009
This entry is part 10 of 16 in the series Postcards from a Conquistador

Poem: 'The horse I rode in on, a proud Andalusian steed, screamed like a native when it was cornered by that rabble of cooks.'

Replacing yesterday’s installment in the series, which is now the focus of an exciting contest: Name the Strange Roundish Object in the Digital Postcard! See comment thread for details.

Posted in Photos, Poems & poem-like things | Leave a comment

Gilt

January 1, 2009

photo of an oak apple gall with a poem about El Dorado

Posted in Photos, Poems & poem-like things | 15 Comments

Misfit

December 29, 2008
This entry is part 9 of 16 in the series Postcards from a Conquistador

Poem:

Posted in Greatest Hits, Photos, Poems & poem-like things | 13 Comments

Legend

December 27, 2008
This entry is part 8 of 16 in the series Postcards from a Conquistador

Poem: 'Because we appeared to have come from where the ocean meets the sky, the Indians thought we were emissaries of the sun. They'll believe anything, these infidels.'

Posted in Photos, Poems & poem-like things | 8 Comments

Knight

December 27, 2008
This entry is part 7 of 16 in the series Postcards from a Conquistador

Poem: 'Grief was the armor I brought with me from Extremadura.'

Posted in Photos, Poems & poem-like things | 6 Comments

Prima materia

December 25, 2008
This entry is part 6 of 16 in the series Postcards from a Conquistador

Poem: 'Before we brought them more specialized tools, they used to make blades and mirrors from the same black stone: blades for killing, mirrors for capturing souls.'

For a larger version of the photo sans poem, see here.

Posted in Photos, Poems & poem-like things | 11 Comments

The birds

December 24, 2008
This entry is part 5 of 16 in the series Postcards from a Conquistador

Poem: 'The forest went halfway to forever. There was a kind of dove so numerous that one flock could darken the sky for a day. It wasn't natural.'

Posted in Birds, Photos, Poems & poem-like things | Also tagged 7 Comments
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  • Smorgasblog

    • Metaphors for the Moon
      Early marriage is a wetland, a marsh
      of co-mingling reeds, breeding birds.

    • Cleaning My Attic
      Cast-iron Royal, weighty and not regal at all but seriously proletarian, ostensibly portable in your anonymous black case: my secret unmusical instrument, which I lugged to cafes before they were wireless or even wired...

    • Clumps and Voids
      The program description, however, devolves into the fey. "The lingam (or linga) is a cylindrical votary object that represents the Hindu god Shiva, and a dispute about its meaning has been going on for many centuries." When a phallus is tagged with the museum label of "cylindrical votary object," I lose hope that the speaker will be introduced as Professor Wendy Doniger: don of dongs.

    • botanizing
      On calm days, the soil swirls and rises in isolated twisters. On a windy day when the wheat is being harvested — a day like today — the soil lifts like a yellow curtain, obliterating the sky.

    • The Twitching Line
      My uncle, gutting a fish:
      removing the fins from either side,
      tipping the knife below

      the little anus, pointing the tail-
      end away, slitting it to the gills,
      then plunging in a hand

      to scoop the organs out, soft
      and scarlet as a litter of kittens.

    • The Ordinary and the Wild
      I had a dream the other night about a tall machine, like a crane or an android giraffe, lanky with angles of metal that reach up to the sky when they should somehow be digging. When I woke I felt taller for a moment, and also deeper, as if the soles of my feet had met up with some spilled honey or errant tar while I walked in my sleep.

    • Busily Seeking... Continual Change
      So the mountain was steep? I threw a couple of windbreakers, yogurts and miscellaneous snacks (really, whatever I could lay my hands on at the last minute), wallet, phone, bottles of water--yes, just the things I thought to grab into a new REI bright yellow daypack--and off we went. That was it. Toss things in a bag and go.

    • Chatoyance
      And on the other side, what I
      set in motion: the open field, the low hill,
      a crease scored in bent blades of grass
      where I forgot the wall stood,
      my footsteps blurring as the
      grass unbends.

    • Velveteen Rabbi
      There are trade-offs: in the womb we knew perfect intimacy, but couldn't meet. Now we are separate, which is at once the source of loneliness (especially for him, I'm guessing) and the source of our ability to connect.

    • Will Buckingham
      My small guide and I then did our double-act of worshipping at the shrine, at which point the monk then declared that, once again, I was not doing it right. There followed another twenty minute lesson in proper bowing -- different from the previous lesson, in fact -- and if I have retained anything it is that one’s feet must be aligned like the lines in the number 8 -- an auspicious number in China.

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  • "On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects."
    — Sei Shonagon, 994 A.D.