My Poetry

This is a sampling of my original poetry written over the last few years.  Please refrain from copying or posting/publishing it elsewhere without my permission.  Thank you, and please leave me a comment if you are so inspired!  To find a larger selection of my poetry, and to view some of my photography, you can visit my blog.

–Anacelie Verde-Claro

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FEBRUARY HEART

Spring is curving like a drum

and my heart pounds

in rain on petals,

my hands open

to beat the pulse,

beating on the cold air

by my knees, hips, waist,

beating where the flower heads

will soon be vibrating

from the waves I make,

their raindrops flying off in riffs,

their scent stretching

paper-thinly into sky,

the sky stretching even further taut

beyond where I can see or hear,

where I hope grazing birds

are pecking sun with their beaks,

light falling down their throats,

where I hope they hear

the beating echoes

and hear echoes as real,

where I hope echoes

make echoes and, finally, horizon

fastens to ground in round rivets

that I hope are humming seeds.

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DUST & GLITTER

When the decades-old dust on the lady’s gloves

you adorn tickles your nose, what do you get?

Vintage sneeze.  And when the fur coat is so old

the animal would have lived out its life,

anyway?  Your conscience is retro.

If the 60’s dress fits over your ripped jeans

and you set a 30’s fur shrug on your shoulders,

you have just clothed the generation gap.

If you don’t know how the necklace clasp,

watch clasp, or bracelet comes undone,

this is called a period puzzle.

If the polyester blouse with polka-dots

and faux-diamond snaps makes you laugh

so hard you can’t breathe, be careful—

you could start epoch-ing.

You might say the standing oval mirror

creates, for you, a cameo.  And the sunlight,

coming through the shop’s front window,

mixes nostalgically with the dusty era.

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DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS

Grandfather, I am not able

to be at your grave

to clean it, to adorn it

with flowers, to kiss it,

to say a prayer on top of it,

so I will do what you used to do

every November,

I will put the garden to sleep.

I’ll break off the last squash,

set the remaining tomatoes

(yellow, green, red),

on the kitchen sill,

cut down the bowed sunflowers,

scatter their seeds,

pull up the dried plant roots,

shake the earth from them,

look up into the thin blue,

say thank you for this work,

thank you for this rest.

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ODE TO MY HAIRDRESSER TO WENT TO ANOTHER SALON

and left no forwarding number.

Arms skinny as hairbrush handles,

hairdos and outfits that change

like tv commercials–

these are the features I remember

from my place in your chair.

(Other than your voice–you laugh

like you’ve just eaten a teaspoon of honey.)

And in my periphery, the image of your hands

somewhere lost in thick layers.

You’re the only one in the city not afraid

to navigate the waves of my deep-ocean hair,

not worrying that you don’t know

how you might get out of them.

There was the man before you

who quit his job after two and a half hours

of trying to trim a straight line,

and the woman who replaced you,

who must enjoy skinning small animals.

But your fingers dove under and through,

and the waves curled playfully

like surfer’s waves.  I loved

your scissors, snipping crisply, the ends

of my hair like clean, wet snap peas,

and forgive the salad of metaphors,

but that’s just it–with you, my hair

was messy and unplanned and, for once,

recognizing its true self.

Perhaps you went off to sail schooners

or teach waterskiing–you should.  You said

you like to roller skate, well, thank you

for knowing fluidity, for knowing curves

and turns and the perfect tangle

that movement makes, and art makes,

and the ocean, and my hair, (our homage

to these elements), and the air around,

and wiping out, and leaving and going

to who knows where.

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POEM #3 IN A SERIES IN SEARCH OF A COMMON THEME

Rain is falling out of this poem’s window.

Rain makes me think of time, which makes me think

of how I get in and out of things.

For example,

what do I say, and where do I go,

now that I have said this, about rain?

It doesn’t matter when it’s raining.

Somehow we get here–.

I have the rain to thank for this.

It is still falling.  I want this ink to run

and see where my thoughts go…

I think window will mix with here,

poem will bleed with still,

matter will come to thank.

Gratitude does matter;

it is the answer for many things.

What happens when it stops raining?

The ground absorbs what it wants

(thank you), gives the rest to the street

(thank you).  Eventually, the land dries up

and flowers wait for clouds

with open mouths (thank you in advance).

I feel like a cloud.

I wonder if I am allowed to move, a single cloud,

of its own accord (while others stay still).

I have the feeling I’m supposed to wait

for a collective sky pick-up, move together,

like a symphony.

I want it to be enough:  desire to move,

even if it isn’t time.  I want it to be true:

we move in stillness.  The sky is so huge

that moving looks still.

Things change, even if I am just thinking

about the ground when it is wet

and I know a seed has been lying there,

its moving-still patient grace.