Playing rummy is a lot like music.

Rules to guide you
A pure sequence to bind you
Leeway otherwise, to slide by
A pile to dig from
A companion to play with
(or against?)
And a purpose
to find.

Apr 28
Hi all !

Having a great time here in post-modern poetry.
We’ve been on the island since Sylvia Plath croaked in ’63.
It’s been a bit smoggy, incoherent  and gratuitously cryptic, but the prison-guards are super-nice and they let us write Haiku once in a while. There’s this MFA creative-writing place just up the road from the gulag, it’s really charming. They publish a chapbook that 4 people on the island read. They also host workshops, like How to Find Your Authentic Voice and Pushing Language Beyond the Boundaries. Last night we saw some non-identity-politics-driven verse in the nearby wilderness reserve. It had beautiful plumage and made totally weird sounds. (Hey Dylan, you’re remembering to feed my muse, right? Don’t let her out after 5 since she might stay out all night. She does NOT like the free-verse abstract work. Feed her the structured message-oriented stuff to the right of the editorial literary-elite. Thanks ☺ ) Anyway, we’re trapped on this island so if you find someway to get us off, do your best.
PLEEZ tell the editorial prison-guards that we are working on our English Lit MA degrees.
P.S: send the Maya Angelou and Adrienne Rich books soon !!!!!
                                                       Love,
                                                     ­     Rita Dove’s Bookshelf

I pull my suitcase out
from under the bed
hoping to pack away
the baggage I have been carrying
everywhere.
On it, I see
is a cat
asleep
probably dreaming:
her paws come together
and part
in a rhythm
as if in prayer.
And I think
I'll carry the baggage along
for one more day.