© 2015 by the poets

The 2015 Annual Co-operative Poem

Serendipity visited these poets one by one. The couplets are arranged by date of receipt; none were revised.

Thank you all for sending in your couplets. Mouse over to see the name of each contributor, or scroll down to see them all listed at once.

Ursula and Marianne and Suzanne wish you a most loving and generous year to come.

 

What I Won't Repeat

The old song plays itself on the radio.
More tea? she asks. No. Thank you.

My resolution to hold my tongue was doomed,
She stilettoed across the room, smirk plastered.

Your name and mine written in blood
whispering forevers in the dark.

Discreet or subtle siloing
of lonely patterned places.

The unrepeatable couplings of eagles—
dead salmon heads recycling in cedars.

The morning after
secrets babbled by Wolf Creek.

That purple we mistook for desire
how easily it made a bruise of the canvas.

She said no he said she said he said,
but I really don't know who to believe.

The plan—aim for a wild scattering of stars,
map all four directions by wandering.

I will no longer repeat: it is clear
it is clear, it is clear

Being the throat singer who sings her puppy
into becoming the lead dog. Nothing but giggles.

Riding the ragged edge of sleep in a strange bed
The moon tags along, chiding me to not repeat

which then, if teased or tousled or tricked, slides forth
(confession being the tender hole we can't but dig).

My tongue across an unwashed
An unwashed across my tongue.

Thoughts, thoughts, familiar, treasured and wily—
North Wind, unleash them.

I keep intimacies hidden behind my eyes.
Some secrets can't be written in twelve syllables.

Every day h/our pattern of life: this c/age of possibility—
until life happens while we were sk/etching plan(e)s.

The madness of that week I spent with you
spellbound by short-lived fantasies of love.

On this day of nothing left to be said, only this:
Open mind, open heart, open up the lonely world.

Losing balance; a ship's tilt to the lee side,
the final wash cycle in frenzied spin.

There's no point making a list of all the things
I won't repeat. I repeat them again. And again. And sadly, again.

How my back bone melted to the ground and you
hovering like a pulsing canopy.

I no longer must follow my childhood heart
into twinings divinely designed to break it.

__________________

Contributors in order of appearance:

Leanne McIntosh | Sandra Dunn | Jessica Gabriel | Leah Hokanson | Susan McCaslin | kjmunro | Daniela Elza | Laurie Smith | Lindsay Glauser Kwan | Ulrike Narwani | Cornelia Hoogland | Heidi Greco | greg blanchette | Sandra Lynxleg | Miki Fukuda | Pat Smekal | Dorothee Lang | Marion Beck | Heather Cardin | Jane Mellor | Barbara Pelman | Janet Vickers | Mark Hein