Friday, October 04, 2019

Stone Soup Croutons, 10-2-19, Self-Critique



Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title (and sometimes the rest of the poem) later. You can read the other ones I've done since 2015 here. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, this poem doesn't go up because it's ready, it goes up because it's Friday morning.

Sophia Marshal featured and presented this year's Jack Powers Stone Soup Savor Poetry Prize to Bil Lewis.  This week's turnout was...uniquely low for a September  (scroll down to the last photo to see how low).

I was very happy for Sophia and Bil, and they were happy to be there. Still, what follows is one of those poems I write when I start questioning why there are slow nights after so much promotional legwork. Or ask why after updating over a half-dozen web pages and uploading flyers to almost twice as many groups, someone still asks you what day and time Stone Soup meets.

Thanks to Bil and Sophia, I was able to add a little humor and end with cat imagery, so that means by default it's happy.

For such low attendance, this poem threatened to go  all over the place. More so than poems inspired by longer open mics. Hopefully, I was able to reign it in. Thanks for reading.


 Self-Critique

You trip a booby trap
as fifty wild boars
spring out with shotguns.

Your ex-girlfriends arrive
to remind you they were right.
You need to beef up security.

To stress the point, they dance
on a pin's bottom, its head
stabbing down on your hand.

They give you kisses
to take your mind off the pain
Angels are duller anyway.

It ends as it started,
mostly alone, except for
the one river to nowhere.

And the cat whose paws
shoot out to stop your pen
that would otherwise never stop.


Sophia Marshal presenting Bil with the Jack Powers Stone Soup Savor Poetry Prize.

Well, at least the number one spot got filled.

Special thanks to Erik Nelson, Bil Lewis and Gordon Marshall. 
 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Another really good poem, Chad.I have my own issues with attendance, but I certainly appreciate your dedication to our community of poets.
Gawaine