I recently got a tickle of interest in my 90-minute sonnets from last January and February, so I've been going over them, fixing things, adding earlier sonnets and writing new ones to fill holes in what structure I could create by ordering them. This afternoon I was flipping through what I thought was a finished manuscript when a visual glitch caught my attention. Here's the poem that looked funny flipping by:
Mysterious Ways
I found her on my porch one night, half stoned,
Black-eyed, and broke. I had a sofa-bed,
Where passing out "Will I be safe?" she moaned--
I figured while she snored she wasn't dead.
Next morning came the tale. It was her son
Who'd beat her up and robbed her for cocaine,
And daughter who, not to be outdone,
Had dropped her off with whiskey for her pain.
She wouldn't call the cops, and I got mad.
I didn't see her till the hurricane
Had come and gone and taken all she had:
"My Kenny stole so much from me God swore
He'd send a storm so he can't steal no more."
Now, I'd sent this "sonnet" to several people, it's appeared on a couple of blogs, including this one, I've rewritten it as a triolet, just yesterday I sent it to a thread on hurricane poems at New-Poetry, and no one — least of all me — ever noticed it's only got 13 lines: I screwed up the rhyme and made line 8 the first line of the third quatrain as well as the last line of the second quatrain. Anyone interested in my attempts to fix it can see drafts here. Oh, the triolet's OK. I can count to eight.
More blogs on the left today — nemski.com and Stuart Eglin — and a couple of new poetry sites — Poetic Inhalation and No Tell Motel, which is currently featuring Shanna Compton of Brand New Insects.
5:19:10 PM 
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