Skirts - a tritina

This skirt was once a go-to item chez nous.

Mall hopping has never been my favorite sport. I don't like the game of upscale, upsale, trendy, latest-thing marketing. I loathe traipsing through shops and shimmying in and out of sale shirts and pants with anti-theft tags. Don't offer me discounts and store credit cards. Don't hover over me with your pearly whites and your headsets. Please just show me the way out. However, air drop me in the center of an unfamiliar town and I'll find the nearest resale shop and select my year's wardrobe in under 10 minutes. I'm funny that way.

Last week I found myself in H&M with a friend and our two tween daughters. We were debating the pros and cons of this season's skater skirts. Are the fitted high-waists and short flared A-lines cute or frumpy? Playful or risque?

I went home thinking, "Who the hell cares?" and wrote this poem.


Skirts

The skirts this year are rather short.
Girls' legs seem longer than last year—
sleek muscles on view. Take a look.

Why is it every time you look
the world spins faster? Breath grows short?
Blink and forgo this current year.

Watch. Skirts will be longer next year.
They'll retreat to a modest look.
Fashion and wiles are fickle and short.

In the span of one short year, the look changes around you, without you.

"8 Ways to Wear a Skater Skirt!" image credits: Teen Vogue

The poem is in the form of a tritina, which is like a sestina but shorter (like a skater skirt!) and composed of three tercets that end on the same three rotating words and roll and flow like waves (or like the hem of a skater skirt!) and a final line that contains all three end words in any order and acts like a coda.

Rispetto for the Stranded Traveler

Sienna, Italy

It's no news that April is poetry month, but it is news to me that I've decided to write a poem a day just to do it. I have the incomparable wordsmith and teacher Allison Joseph to thank. She's announced that she will write a prompt a day this month, and she shared one on Facebook today which I played with for awhile. I wrote a rispetto, an old Tuscan form of verse. Some are in iambic tetrameter, but not all. This one is composed of eight hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) lines, with an abababcc rhyme scheme.

Here's Allison's amusing prompt, in case you're looking for a bit of fun yourself:

"First one is to write a poem in response to the kind of spam email that tells you a friend is out of cash in a foreign country."


And here's my response.


Rispetto for the Stranded Traveler

You've never been stuck in Sienna before.
They'll withhold your passport and throw you in jail
if I don't send you funds. God knows what's in store
in Southern Europe with no one to post bail!
Cash, credit cards, cell—all stolen? And what's more—
your flight's in three hours? There's no time for mail.
I'll wire money, but I've got to confess—
I don't recognize your new email address.

If you write one, I hope you'll share it with me here!

President's Day - a photo essay

This is my 'To Do' pile.

Ready to be folded. It was clean once, but now I spy a pair of pants with a belt still attached. So it is a dynamic, multipurpose pile!

This is what has kept me from that pile.

Words in Scrivener may look pretty, but believe me, this is a pile in and of itself.

This has been a very welcome wintry distraction and a reminder of what a good story can feel like. Icy and warm at the same time.

This is what love looks like on a plate and in a cup with a spot of cream. This is one of the 500 kindnesses my husband performed between the hour of 6 am and now, with grace and sprinkled with cinnamon.

This very moment, my son is sketching downstairs.

My daughter and her friend are up a tree.

"To Do" does not need to be "Right Now." This morning, "To Do" can continue to wait.