Month of Poetry 2012

This month I'm going to join in Month of Poetry 2012 that Kat Apel is coordinating. The idea is to write a poem a day for the month of January, which I'll post each day here (could be interesting as I don't have internet on at home yet).

So that I don't cheat and write ahead (I tend to cheat), I'm going to set myself a procedure a bit reminiscent of my #poemsbyrequest jaunt earlier last year. Each day I'm going to ask Twitter to provide me with a random phrase (5-6 words-ish) from a book, that I'll use to write a poem around. What could possibly go wrong?

Today's suggestions are:

@kirsty_l: "It was twenty minutes to ten" (From Jonathan Franzen's Freedom)

@ernmalleyscat: "Pretty mouth and green eyes" (From J.D. Salinger's Pretty Mouth & Green Eyes)

@dogpossum: "She wanted to make it rain" (From Penni Russon's Drift)

@timsterne: "It's a rotten thing to have a soapy neck" (From George Orwell's Coming Up For Air)

So! Here is poem #1. Happy New Year.

Apples

All week dragging clock hands behind me

minute hand in one, hours in the other.

When she let herself in it was twenty minutes to ten,

half past a wash and not quite conditioned to her hands

on the taps, sharpening the waterfall into pins

she wanted to make it rain.

Fingers smooth as a shell or a new fruit

she sloughed away the week's decay

it's a rotten thing to have.

A soapy neck slid under my mouth

I buried my face in her wet hair like treasure

shampoo breaths of clean Granny Smiths

pretty mouth and green eyes,

how you like them apples?