29/30: The Blue Boat

Our tenants, the neighbors,

have purchased a sky-blue boat.

We live in the desert,

it has no propeller,

and they have skipped the rent.

From my window I can taste

the salt spray off the Eastern coast.

Prompt: Kenzie Allen's "No Ideas, But in Things" prompt for Day 27

28/30: What You Gave Me

The best memories involve some blindness.

There’s a reason we close our eyes to dream.

Nightfall, or in this case a matte white mist,

your finger’s point, a hush, a fog-gray fox

who felt invisible beneath our oaks.

Each night, the stories, the self-respecting epics,

nothing with the stink of grade school on it,

another last chapter, until your eyelids drooped,

slowly turning your own words to dreams

as we held in our collective breath.

Dozing in our clothes, waiting for the moon to set

so we could match the punched-out patterns

in empty tuna cans up to the autumn stars.

With handfuls of constellations, we felt

big enough for joy beneath that vastness.

You neglected your yardwork but made a maze

through the head-topping subtropic grass.

We lost each other by flashlight each night,

hoping if we lingered long enough,

our bedtimes and the daylight world of baths,

neat lawns, and back-to-school would fade

like tired fireflies, our mother

would give up calling us and live a life

of clean quiet houses and grownup chats,

and we’d be left to grow shaggy and wild,

to live on berries and the smell of earth.

For my father

27/30: Blackface (Small-town Texas, 1990s)

In our town, there were several types of houses.

Historic homes, with scrollwork under eaves.

Ranch-style, siding or brick. Easter-egg pastels

in neighborhoods where words became palabras.

And over the railroad tracks, where the weeds got taller

the houses got smaller, the paint chipped,

and all the faces on the front porches

were black.

When I was eleven my homeschool group (white)

performed a play about the Underground Railroad,

in blackface. The audience (white) loved it. There was

a newspaper article with proud photos (black and white).

While we waited our turns to go onstage, we swiped

fingertips on the arms of a painted friend, laughing that

when we were little, we thought black skin really did rub white.

After all, “flesh color” is beige for bandaids and pantyhose.

One girl said, I licked a boy in my kindergarten.

I thought maybe he tasted like chocolate.

26/30: What Ifs

I.
I’m sorry I embarrassed you
by calling you out for being
a horse of a different color.
As apology I’ll bring you hay
each day and brush your coat,
check your hooves for stones.
At least you really do look good
in mauve. Your mane is quite becoming.

II.
I have begun to rub off on the people around me.
When I shake hands, a soft peach patina remains.
Joggers behind me slip on freckles like loose gravel.
I repainted the deck chairs the other day,
licked them all a faded coral pink.
It was too late by the time I realized my hands
were the color of dishwater, my irises
the color of windows too often gazed from.

Based on the Fantastical Prosetry Prompt for Day 19 by Kenzie Allen.

Ugh, I feel like the quality of my poems is slipping some days. But, I've almost beaten the 30/30 challenge; I'm not quitting yet!

25/30: Rainstorm

From the foothills launch

a thousand proud-bowed ships. War

on the blue mountain.