“POEM MAKING” by George Ella Lyon

230 Replies

How do you make a poem out of calendars
and phone calls? Dental appointments?
Plane tickets, parking permits, weeks spent
standing in line at the pharmacy? Like this
evidently.

You see that the calendar looks like an ice
tray, words written on each cube. You recall
the cloth-covered cord of your childhood
telephone, the operator’s nasal “Number Please,”
how in an emergency, you could actually talk
to her, a woman in front of a switchboard
downtown. Joyce Hester’s mother, in fact.
And your dentist who murdered his little
girl, then himself. No. Let’s get out of this
poem. Let’s check the mail for that parking
permit. Let’s pick up that prescription. Let’s
be a Jesus bug, pond water tight against our
filament feet.

-George Ella Lyon

230 thoughts on ““POEM MAKING” by George Ella Lyon”

  2. Rudy Thomas

    You began with a question–always a good beginning & then answered it until it began to cause angst. You got out when it was right to do so & left us knowing that poetry can be written about anything, on computers as well as paper of any sort.

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