Tag: poem

Morning Meditation, My Poetry, New Orleans4 Comments

Morning Meditation: Moments

Charlotte Hamrick

Where do those moments go, the ones where you feel perfectly content, like your place in the world is perfect and guaranteed and you are where you’re meant to be? They appear so unexpectedly: looking out the window at the kitchen sink as you pour your second cup of coffee, beneath the old magnolia with your hands in the dirt, on the ferry landing at the clang of the streetcar and the river breeze in your face. The sun shines on your head and you feel it’s soothing warmth traveling to the ends of every nerve in your body, a … Continue reading Morning Meditation: Moments

My Poetry, Poetry2 Comments

Live Luscious

Charlotte Hamrick

I always chop the olives by hand. I like a rough chop that says someone still cares about the preparation of food instead of settling for little identically square bits popped out by a steel thing attached to a cord that gives it life. The knife and I give new life to these olives; messy, uneven life such as it is. The earthy texture of the black and the pungency of the green will soon mix with onion, pimento and the special piquant of a home-canned Gardiniera. Aaron Neville croons “Tell It Like It Is” in my ear as I … Continue reading Live Luscious

Poetry2 Comments

Unsettled

Charlotte Hamrick

No matter how old you get the nightmare still horrifies the scream for help is just a whisper the thrashing in hostile arms hopeless but still… there’s a last hard push for recognition and the strangled cry for “Mamma!” that awakens and you turn on the light with heart to bursting and wild eyes searching dark corners and the smell of fear in the room. What does it mean that in your fifth decade you still cry for mamma in the middle of the night? _____________________________ So, yes, I had a terrible nightmare last night. The kind where you don’t want … Continue reading Unsettled

Poetry4 Comments

Selective Mirage

Charlotte Hamrick

I want us to sit on the sofa with popcorn salt on our lips watching a foreign film with subtitles, arms and legs all a-tangle, hands rubbing thighs, contentment on our faces – you know, like those commercials on TV where all the couples are perfectly in sync gazing with adoration into each others eyes. But I don’t like popcorn and you can’t sit still and all those TV couples are only figments in the minds of pampered old white men looking down from their castles in the sky. Continue reading Selective Mirage