August Postcard Poetry Fest

In 2007 I participated in the first August Postcard Poetry Fest, organized by Lana Hechtman Ayers and Paul E. Nelson. What follows are all the poems I sent to participants, the recipient’s names and locations (as of 2007), plus other occasional notes. In some cases I sent two poems. I received poetry postcards from 26 of the 30 other people on the same list as me (including two poems from one poet), and still have them in a box—the postcards, that is, not the poets. I imagine the four missing postcards are stuck behind a sorting machine in Toledo or Umatilla, to be discovered some distant day by a postal archaeologist. Here, though, you can read the poems I sent (just 30 instead of 31, since I myself was one of the 31 poets for the month of August). Some of them have been published, as indicated. I’m unlikely to publish any of the rest of these poems, so I’m sharing them here. The poems include mostly haiku and tanka, but also some longer poems that still fit on a postcard, plus a few anagrams. In some cases, as I recall, the poems were inspired by the postcard image, but I have no record of any of the postcards themselves. Gone with the postal wind!

        For me, this exercise is a spur to creativity and connection. Its goal is not to produce fine poems, but to trust spontaneity in response to a postcard, one’s own sense of place, or the person receiving the poem. Many poems are acts of play, and perhaps nothing more. As such, the August Postcard Poetry Fest honours process over product, and it’s a pleasure to know that the recipients mentioned below each received a postcard I sent, and spent a moment reading what I wrote. I too enjoyed reading what I received, not just for the value of the poetry but for the value of personal interaction (often with strangers) and as a shared celebration of poetic expression.

        In 2017, to mark the fest’s tenth anniversary, Ina Roy-Faderman, Paul E. Nelson, and J. I. Kleinberg published 56 Days of August (available on Amazon), collecting poems from the 2016 postcard fest. The August Postcard Poetry Fest continues to be held every year. Visit the website for more details, or visit the Facebook page (in fact, it was an invitation to join this page in 2007 that prompted me to join Facebook in the first place). Perhaps you might participate in the August Postcard Poetry Fest one year yourself.

        1.

unshaved—

the eye of my webcam

keeps staring at me

        Sent to Lana Hechtman Ayers, Kirkland, Washington

        2.

rain falls

at their 60th high school reunion—

old friends apologize

for forgetting

each other’s birthdays

        Sent to Kim Bridgford, Wallingford, Connecticut

        3.

drifting, drifting

over the center line,

the tennis ball truck

        Sent to Holly Anderson, Jackson Heights, New York

        I confess that this poem mystifies me today, but might make more sense if I could remember the image on the front of the postcard

        4.

breaking the tension

beside the water-strider,

your acorn cap

        Sent to Janet McCann, College Station, Texas

        5.

finding them by touch

under the paisley couch . . .

newborn kittens

        Sent to Pit Pinegar, Plainville, Connecticut

        6.

I take the knife in my hand,

wish I could undo

the breaking of the licked seal

on that letter I wish

you’d never written,

wish I could mail it back,

return to sender,

let you keep the dark ink

on those once-wet pages,

let you think I didn’t care,

didn’t know how

to use this knife.

        Sent to Brendan McBreen, Auburn, Washington

        7.

Yes, that’s me,

with the yellow eyes,

in the corner,

staring at you

reading this postcard.

        Sent to Robin Cherney, Redmond, Washington

        I found it hard to resist being self-referential regarding all the postcards I sent

        8.

red dragonflies

on the Bible

copulating

        Sent to Raul Sanchez, Seattle, Washington

        9.

why did she mail it,

this French postcard

from the past,

from a time when we

were not yet lovers

        Sent to Brent Allard, Manchester, New Hampshire

        This poem was published in Skylark 3:2, Winter 2015 (England)

        10.

for your eyes only,

she says with a shy nod—

I think about this

then raise a hand to caress

her remaining breast

        Sent to Lois P. Jones, Glendale, California

        This poem was published in Gusts #26, Fall/Winter 2017 (Canada); the original said “surreptitious” instead of “shy”

        11.

faint cirrus clouds—

a shiny penny

still on the train tracks

        *

on the just

and unjust

the sun shines

just so

        Sent to Peggy Miller, The Villages, Florida

        Two poems sent

        12.

blowing leaves—

for once I let them go

into the neighbour’s yard

        Sent to Iris Dunkle, Washington, D.C.

        13.

collapsed freeway—

genders and crosses

painted onto concrete

        Sent to Jessea Perry, Oakland, California

        Because the recipient lived in Oakland, I thought about the Cypress freeway structure that collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing 42 people—it was sobering for me to visit the collapsed freeway shortly after surviving the earthquake myself       +       +

        14.

         what’s left

                            of our sailboat’s

                                                         wave

                                      disappears

         in the freighter’s

wake

        Sent to Marit Saltrones, Bainbridge Island, Washington

        This poem was published in American Tanka #25, June 2015

        15.

lord of car

floor card

coral ford

rod or calf

old for car

        *

my bumbershoot is made of rice

rice is made of pythons

pythons are made of trivia

trivia is made of pulleys

pulleys are made of marmalade

marmalade is made

        Sent to Carol Dorf, Berkeley, California

        Two poems sent; each line of the first poem is an anagram of the recipient’s name

        16.

trial by trail

doom by mood

die by dei

        Sent to Jennifer Flescher, Arlington, Massachusetts

        A variation on anagrams here

        17.

i

in

tin

ting

getting

forgetting

forget

forge

for

or

o

        Sent to Paul E. Nelson, Auburn, Washington

        18.

Narcissus

     the

       I

      of

     the

beholder

        Sent to David-Baptiste Chirot, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

        19.

my muse returned

from vacation today,

leaving me

dormant seeds—

I water them with this ink

        Sent to John Davis, Bainbridge Island, Washington

        20.

no thing in nothing

nothing in no thing

             ~

hinting night noon

ninth hinting goon

             ~

toning, thinning, oh

hinting, nothing on

        Sent to Rochelle Nameroff, El Cerrito, California

        21.

Anagrams

auk piñata chi

aha, I pick a nut!

ha, a pain! I tuck . . .

I huck paint—aa!

a nick-it-up aha

I, a kaput chain

Captain Haiku

        Sent to Frances LeMoine, Nashua, New Hampshire

        Anagrams of my own nickname, Captain Haiku       +       +       +

        22.

rusted spurs

hang from a rotting rafter

foreclosed farm

        Sent to Tara Betts, Pearl River, New York

        23.

reading it first at the mailbox—

the colourful postcard

with a foreign stamp

        Sent to Valerie Fetherston, Victoria, British Columbia

        This was the first of two names on my list that required more than a domestic U.S. postcard stamp, since I was mailing it to Canada, which inspired the poem—either that or receiving a postcard from Canada

        24.

Difficult News

a stamp licked

for the poetry postcard—

all the news that fits,

yet people die every day

for lack of what’s there

        Sent to Jenifer Lawrence, Poulsbo, Washington

        25.

folding laundry—

a wad of what’s left

of her love note

        Sent to A. K. Allin, Seattle, Washington

        26.

Tanabata festival—

forbidden lovers meet

at the Japanese garden

        Sent to Julene Tripp Weaver, Seattle, Washington

        27.

Teck Cominco Anagrams

Mike, concoct!

Neck to comic,

met cock icon—

mock conceit!

        Sent to Linda Lee Crosfield, Castlegar, British Columbia

        In the summer of 1984 I had tour of the Cominco mining facility in Castlegar, the home of this poem’s recipient, which inspired these anagrams

        28.

baseball record book—

a black boy asks his grandfather

why his name has an asterisk

        Sent to Ruby Kane and Ami Eaton, Seattle, Washington

        29.

the roar

of motorcycles

down the nearby freeway . . .

      I ponder my grass

in need of a mow

        Sent to Mathew Timmons, Los Angeles, California

        30.

Explaining Everything

If the universe

is infinite in all directions,

then the center could here,

even in the middle of me,

or anywhere.

My teenager thinks he

is the center of the universe,

and maybe, just maybe,

he’s right.

        Sent to John and Roberta Olson, Seattle, Washington

        When I wrote this poem, my son was just four years old, so not yet a teenager