January 2015
I live and write in West Caldwell, NJ. As the community Poet Laureate, I run two annual events: Girl Talk: A Poetry Reading in Celebration of Women’s History Month and the West Caldwell Poetry Festival. I am the author of The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop (Wind Publications, 2013) and three poetry books, most recently Temptation by Water. My previous books are What Feeds Us, which received the 2006 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize, and Eve's Red Dress. My poems have been included in such journals as Harvard Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. My work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Gwarlingo, and The Writer’s Almanac.
I send out a free monthly Poetry Newsletter to which anyone may subscribe via my blog, Blogalicious:http://www.dianelockward.blogspot.com/
Link to Amazon for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop
I send out a free monthly Poetry Newsletter to which anyone may subscribe via my blog, Blogalicious:http://www.dianelockward.blogspot.com/
Link to Amazon for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop
The First Artichoke
Though everyone said no one could grow
artichokes in New Jersey, my father
planted the seeds and grew one magnificent
artichoke, late-season, long after the squash,
tomatoes, and zucchini.
It was the derelict in my father’s garden,
little Buddha of a vegetable, pinecone gone awry.
It was as strange as a bony-plated armadillo.
My mother prepared the artichoke as if preparing
a miracle. She snipped the bronzy winter-kissed tips,
mashed breadcrumbs, oregano, parmesan, garlic,
and lemon, stuffed the mush between the leaves,
baked, then placed the artichoke on the table.
This, she said, was food we could eat with our fingers.
When I hesitated, my father spoke of beautiful Cynara,
who’d loved her mother more than she’d loved Zeus.
In anger, the god transformed her
into an artichoke. And in 1949 Marilyn Monroe
had been crowned California’s first Artichoke Queen.
I peeled off a leaf like my father did,
dipped it in melted butter, and with my teeth
scraped and sucked the nut-flavored slimy stuff.
We piled up the inedible parts, skeletons
of leaves and purple prickles.
Piece by piece, the artichoke came apart,
the way we would in 1959, the year the flowerbuds
of the artichokes in my father’s garden bloomed
without him, their blossoms seven inches wide
and violet-blue as bruises.
But first we had that miracle on our table.
We peeled and peeled, a vegetable striptease,
and worked our way deeper and deeper,
down to the small filet of delectable heart.
—from What Feeds Us (Wind Publications, 2006)
Invective Against the Bumblebee
Escapee from a tight cell, yellow-streaked,
sex-deprived sycophant to a queen,
you have dug divots in my yard
and like a squatter trespassed in my garage.
I despise you for you have swooped down
on my baby boy, harmless on a blanket of lawn,
his belly plumping through his orange stretch suit,
yellow hat over the fuzz of his head.
Though you mistook him for a sunflower,
I do not exonerate you,
for he weeps in my arms, trembles, and drools,
finger swollen like a breakfast sausage.
Now my son knows pain.
Now he fears the grass.
Fat-assed insect! Perverse pedagogue!
Henceforth, may flowers refuse to open for you.
May cats chase you in the garden.
I want you shellacked by rain, pecked by shrikes,
mauled by skunks, paralyzed by early frost.
May farmers douse your wings with pesticide.
May you never again taste the nectar
of purple clover or honeysuckle.
May you pass by an oak tree just in time
to be pissed on by a dog.
And tomorrow may you rest on my table
as I peruse the paper. May you shake
beneath the scarred face of a serial killer.
May you be crushed by the morning news.
—from What Feeds Us (Wind Publications, 2006)
The Jesus Potato
. . . the sight of their savior in a potato has
reinvigorated their faith and their desire to help others.
—FoxNews.com
She wants to believe in miracles—
Mary in a grilled cheese or Jesus in a potato
once intended for a picnic salad.
Her doubting spouse says those weren’t miracles.
If Jesus hid in a vegetable, it wouldn’t be a potato.
For a second coming, he’d pick something less solid.
She’s as likely to find saints or martyrs in marbles,
he adds. She skins, boils, and cubes potatoes,
and silently craves a man less stolid,
one who’d lift spirits, not simply pass the Miracle
Whip and karate-chop potatoes.
She remembers their salad
days, so raw and green it seemed a miracle,
and the Sunday joy of a thick potage,
the dressing on their salad,
and then the undressing, the miracle
of their uncanonized bodies, the piety
of two pairs of lips sealed,
St. Elmo’s Fire on the skin, as much a miracle
now as stigmata or Christ on a potato,
altered, anointed, and dumped in a salad.
She envies women the signs in their munchibles,
the St. Petersburg woman who saw Jesus in a potato
chip, crisp wafer preserved like a relic, but salted.
She needs no Michelangelos,
just a split bagel imprinted with a pietà,
served with flutes of wine, Salud! Salud!
She looks for the Virgin cradling Jesus on pretzels
and chicken breasts with the face of the Pope,
and she prays for vegetables maculate and soiled.
—from Temptation by Water (Wind Publications, 2010)
Anniversary
Tonight, on this darkest night of the year,
after a satisfying meal,
we will eat bocconi dolci.
We will not speak of sadness.
We will not remember.
The antique clock will stop tolling.
For once the chimes will be still.
For this one night only,
earth will defy gravity,
and turn the other way.
I will slice bocconi dolci,
place it on pale bone china.
We will be ravenous
for meringue, the three shells
piled on top of each other,
for the cream I whipped,
the ripe strawberries picked
from our garden. The buds
on our tongues will blossom
under delicate layers of chocolate.
And if the doorbell rings, we will not answer.
We will dance until we are dizzy.
We will dance as if we were young,
but quietly, quietly,
as if somewhere in the house
a small child slept,
a child who might be wakened by laughter.
—from What Feeds Us (Wind Publications, 2006)
Though everyone said no one could grow
artichokes in New Jersey, my father
planted the seeds and grew one magnificent
artichoke, late-season, long after the squash,
tomatoes, and zucchini.
It was the derelict in my father’s garden,
little Buddha of a vegetable, pinecone gone awry.
It was as strange as a bony-plated armadillo.
My mother prepared the artichoke as if preparing
a miracle. She snipped the bronzy winter-kissed tips,
mashed breadcrumbs, oregano, parmesan, garlic,
and lemon, stuffed the mush between the leaves,
baked, then placed the artichoke on the table.
This, she said, was food we could eat with our fingers.
When I hesitated, my father spoke of beautiful Cynara,
who’d loved her mother more than she’d loved Zeus.
In anger, the god transformed her
into an artichoke. And in 1949 Marilyn Monroe
had been crowned California’s first Artichoke Queen.
I peeled off a leaf like my father did,
dipped it in melted butter, and with my teeth
scraped and sucked the nut-flavored slimy stuff.
We piled up the inedible parts, skeletons
of leaves and purple prickles.
Piece by piece, the artichoke came apart,
the way we would in 1959, the year the flowerbuds
of the artichokes in my father’s garden bloomed
without him, their blossoms seven inches wide
and violet-blue as bruises.
But first we had that miracle on our table.
We peeled and peeled, a vegetable striptease,
and worked our way deeper and deeper,
down to the small filet of delectable heart.
—from What Feeds Us (Wind Publications, 2006)
Invective Against the Bumblebee
Escapee from a tight cell, yellow-streaked,
sex-deprived sycophant to a queen,
you have dug divots in my yard
and like a squatter trespassed in my garage.
I despise you for you have swooped down
on my baby boy, harmless on a blanket of lawn,
his belly plumping through his orange stretch suit,
yellow hat over the fuzz of his head.
Though you mistook him for a sunflower,
I do not exonerate you,
for he weeps in my arms, trembles, and drools,
finger swollen like a breakfast sausage.
Now my son knows pain.
Now he fears the grass.
Fat-assed insect! Perverse pedagogue!
Henceforth, may flowers refuse to open for you.
May cats chase you in the garden.
I want you shellacked by rain, pecked by shrikes,
mauled by skunks, paralyzed by early frost.
May farmers douse your wings with pesticide.
May you never again taste the nectar
of purple clover or honeysuckle.
May you pass by an oak tree just in time
to be pissed on by a dog.
And tomorrow may you rest on my table
as I peruse the paper. May you shake
beneath the scarred face of a serial killer.
May you be crushed by the morning news.
—from What Feeds Us (Wind Publications, 2006)
The Jesus Potato
. . . the sight of their savior in a potato has
reinvigorated their faith and their desire to help others.
—FoxNews.com
She wants to believe in miracles—
Mary in a grilled cheese or Jesus in a potato
once intended for a picnic salad.
Her doubting spouse says those weren’t miracles.
If Jesus hid in a vegetable, it wouldn’t be a potato.
For a second coming, he’d pick something less solid.
She’s as likely to find saints or martyrs in marbles,
he adds. She skins, boils, and cubes potatoes,
and silently craves a man less stolid,
one who’d lift spirits, not simply pass the Miracle
Whip and karate-chop potatoes.
She remembers their salad
days, so raw and green it seemed a miracle,
and the Sunday joy of a thick potage,
the dressing on their salad,
and then the undressing, the miracle
of their uncanonized bodies, the piety
of two pairs of lips sealed,
St. Elmo’s Fire on the skin, as much a miracle
now as stigmata or Christ on a potato,
altered, anointed, and dumped in a salad.
She envies women the signs in their munchibles,
the St. Petersburg woman who saw Jesus in a potato
chip, crisp wafer preserved like a relic, but salted.
She needs no Michelangelos,
just a split bagel imprinted with a pietà,
served with flutes of wine, Salud! Salud!
She looks for the Virgin cradling Jesus on pretzels
and chicken breasts with the face of the Pope,
and she prays for vegetables maculate and soiled.
—from Temptation by Water (Wind Publications, 2010)
Anniversary
Tonight, on this darkest night of the year,
after a satisfying meal,
we will eat bocconi dolci.
We will not speak of sadness.
We will not remember.
The antique clock will stop tolling.
For once the chimes will be still.
For this one night only,
earth will defy gravity,
and turn the other way.
I will slice bocconi dolci,
place it on pale bone china.
We will be ravenous
for meringue, the three shells
piled on top of each other,
for the cream I whipped,
the ripe strawberries picked
from our garden. The buds
on our tongues will blossom
under delicate layers of chocolate.
And if the doorbell rings, we will not answer.
We will dance until we are dizzy.
We will dance as if we were young,
but quietly, quietly,
as if somewhere in the house
a small child slept,
a child who might be wakened by laughter.
—from What Feeds Us (Wind Publications, 2006)
©2015 Diane Lockward