Annual Sonnet

If one is going to post only 1 poem for NaPoMo, ‘Od’s teeth, let it be a Shakespearean sonnet!  Don’t try this fast and loose version at home, kids.  Your English teacher will give you an “F”!

Oh, Husband…Poetry

This love affair has gone on
… long enough that friends
now voice concern
about my lust.
“Please, leave the house,
go try some other stuff,”
is what they plead.
“Variety’s a must.”
But you and I transcend
what others think.
Inherently, we’re bound
til death and past.
You breathe through me.
You are my food and drink.
“Unhealthy” is a charge
we will outlast. Variety is not
the spice of love–as committing
to a goal is our forte.
Our bond is a rare gift
from high above. Ignore
naysayers. They will go away.
And when I close my eyes
it will be clear that God spoke you
to life. His words are dear!

Mignon Ariel King Features: April and May

Sorry if you missed  The “Boston Poetry Marathon” this year.  It was a blast!  I’m still exhausted after 30 days of writing poems followed by 3 days of poetry marathon pre-activity and activities.  It’s already Wednesday?  I sat in the house in my jammies staring at the rain all day yesterday, yet a sense of refreshment hasn’t kicked in.  What do you mean I have one more feature to go this Saturday before I can rest my brain?!  Tooooo tired.   –”I grow old, I grow old….” (T.S. Eliot)

MAY:

The Poet Populist of Boston presents the Cambridge Poetry Jam, Saturday, May 5, 2012, Cambridge Public Library, Main Branch, 11am-4pm  [Red Line to Harvard Square; cross Harvard Yard just for the view and ask anyone where it is on you rway to Quincy Street to Broadway.  First: www. mbta.com  it!

Mignon Ariel King Features, 2-3 forum: Poetry Music Mash-up. 

Can’t tell you the exact time I’ll be reading.  Be there by 2 if you want a seat as a  lot of popular Cambridge poets will be there.  I’m one of the few brave Bostonians who will be showing up to ignore comments about my accent all day

These are my only two features this year before I batten(sp.) the hatches to finish self-editing two books by 2013 and launch my own small press Hidden Charm Press.  For an unemployed person, I sure am busy!

U.M.Ph.! Prose #9 Online Now

March was rather ugly and less than poetically inspiring, but at least it ends with the latest issue of my phlash fiction and prose poetry journal posting, so I can feel somewhat productive this month   Enjoy! 

http://umph-prose.weebly.com/current-issue.html

A Century of Black Voices 3: 1912-2012 Photos!

Photo by Jack Scully.   Thank you to the First Church in Cambridge!

Toni Bee, Poet Populist of Cambridge, MA; (Bridgit Brown, Boston writer, not pictured; Mignon Ariel King, Boston-born writer and Deliriously Happy Host; Denise Washington, Roxbury writer; Sam Cornish, Poet Laureate of Boston; Charles Coe, Cambridge writer and Event Co-host;  beatrice Green, JP writer and composer.  Aren’t we a stylish group?

Photos by Pat Williams will be added separately when I work out the technical snafus.  For now:  http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150711770136457.454550.749876456&type=1&l=748b100dfa

Thank you to everyone who read, listened, helped.  The reading Saturday was great.  It was a pleasure as always to host and to listen to 7 of my favorite local poets at this annual event.  Old and new friends made set up and breakdown a breeze.    –And Happy Belated Birthday to my big sister!  She gave me the sumptuous sweater in the photo.

Missing Winks (memoir)

All I want to do in February is sleep.  I’d always assumed this was due to the snowy, cold weather.  The cold outside makes settling into soft white socks, heart-printed thermal underwear, and a plush robe a moment of sheer sanctuary.  Armed with a cup of tea, shortbread cookies, and a serious book, I’m a literary woman warrior taking a stand against hostile elements.  There’s also a bit of “back home” nostalgia stirred in to this fantasy.  “Back home in New Hampshire we had to get out of bed in the dark to start a fire. …and at night we’d make a big Dutch ovenful of beef stew and dip biscuits in it.”  I have never lived outside of Massachusetts.  My parents met in Boston in the late 1940s, settled here after marrying.  Yet I was so used to them–having grown up on opposite sides of New Hampshire–refering to that state as “back home” that part of me grew up longing for the deep, dark woods, a creek, or a barn full of chickens.  Being comforted by the indoors is combined with respect for the outdoors and with a love of those mighty winters that give bookish homebodies an excuse to fall asleep reading in an emotional and physical retreat.  Maybe if I close the blinds and drapes I can pretend a blizzard roars without.  I’ll drop marshmallows into liquid chocolate and finally doze off.

One Feb. Feature Down, One to Go!

After a crazy week of a semi-intruder in the house, 4 cats hanging out in the basement, my voice bailing via a headcold so I had to make major poem subs, et cetera, leading up to it — and a friend’s calamity the morning of – I somehow made it to the PTAOW feature.  I don’t remember anything but the good-natured audience and the splendid little girl who gave me Valentine’s candy after, but apparently I didn’t botch it. 

I have a habit of writing myself notes in case stage fright freezes me.  Good thing.  I subbed two poems and tossed in a bar from a Bob Dylan song at the last minute, for reasons I couldn’t tell ya, but I had notes here and there.  Some pushy broad directed “Read_____!”   Whatever possesses me to read in public?  Who knows?   Thank you to the hosts, the open mic readers, and the exceedingly patient audience for making the mad dash to the Red Line on a Sunday worth it.  I missed my co-feature Charles.  If you did too, come hear us in Cambridge on the 25th.  Details are around here somewhere (or go to M.A.P.S.-O.N.E. HQ). 

Thank God I didn’t hear about Whitney Huston until after.  Words might have failed me.

Rock on!

This illustration by Bruce Hammond [Copyright 2011] is based on the last line of my poem “Oxygen & Aerosmith” [Copyright 2009] about a dream I had about Steven Tyler.  Unlike my favorite rock stars, I don’t use illegal substances.   This is what my mind does on valium:

Poetic Halloween

Here I am at Stone Soup’s Halloween eve poetry reading.

“Clara” from the Nutcracker

(and very nice total stranger

 who hopefully doesn’t mind being in this photo)

 

Clara dressed up as a demon because Mignon sang the Annie Lennox lyrics "I used to have demons" in her spooky Halloween poem.

Photos by Stone Soup Poetry host Chad Parenteau

Don’t Try This Without a Mask

photo by chad parenteau, october 2011

 

I’m retiring my creepy rock opera make-up now.  But it’s strange how wearing it allowed me to read whatever the heck I pleased as loud as it came out at poetry readings this year.  My regular make-up made me as stage-frightful as usual.  Curioser and curioser.

 

Mike Amado’s New Book is Available

I was lucky enough to read this collection of poems before the big book release party this past weekend (by proofreading it).  It’s hard to believe the poet was only 33.  This is the first of a series of posthumous collections.

“The Book of Arrows” by the late Mike Amado (of Plymouth, MA), founder of PTAOW, explores “the Spoken Warrior’s” Native American ancestry from a socially-conscious perspective as well as showing off the intelligence and readiness to laugh that made him a dear friend to many of us Massachusetts poets. Now available:

http://www.thelostbookshelf.com/index.html