Therese Sellers

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Twelve Short Poems for Poets...

Advice to a Poet

write tiny poems
and slip them through keyholes
remember Metis,
the fly-sized first wife of Zeus?
she conceived fierce Athena

In the Labyrinth

these few syllables
I grasp uncertainly, thread
from Ariadne

How to Succeed as a Poet

don’t knock on the door
of Poetry. use your gift
pass through the keyhole

Fashions in Poetry

hipsters write sonnets
grandmothers write like Ginsberg
me? I tweet haiku

Staying in Shape

morning exercise
a haiku written in bed
the poet's bench press

Science Experiment

Stop, poet, stay still
crystals will begin to form
as on careful string
suspended in the solution
of your dissolved memories

Open Sesame

you need a password
in seventeen syllables
to unlock morning

Poetry Workshop

They broke me of rhyme and meter,
They stripped me of punctuation
They took away my classical allusions
and left me in a room with no walls

Instructions

How to write haiku:
stay very still and concentrate
let one teardrop fall

Query

Poetess, why do your roll
your best verses into scrolls?
To put them in glass bottles,
to send them out to sea.

On the Fragility of Inspiration

mysterious source
of my poems, how I fear
your mortality

Untitled

like condensation
on the windshield of being
a poem begins

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Seventeen Morning Haiku...

1
Tender cardinal
In a city tree. Poet,
Wake up, start to sing.

2
Black and white morning.
Beware the red-eyed spider
In her world wide web.

3
Quickly, write your words,
Send your urgent birdsong out
Before the day begins.

4
I wake to haiku.
Will I ever learn to write
More than single chords?

5
Sweep the apartment,
Close down Facebook and Twitter,
Pray in the shower.

6
The iron’s sharp nose
Starts at the corner, nudges,
Smooths my wrinkled day.

Comments?

7
Wastepaper basket
Oval-shaped and slightly bent
In my childhood room.

8
Morning’s memory:
A woman making a bed,
Smoothing the bedspread.

9
Gentle reader, you
Make the verse worth living,
The day worth writing.

10
I show up at work,
Sit down on the worn tripod
Tweet Apollo’s words.

11
What are you doing
Staying in your house all day?
Waiting for the tide.

12
I’d forgotten crows.
Their loud argument woke me,
Freed me from myself.

13
Wake in the country,
Light rushes in like the tide
Through curtainless windows.

14
Wind from the ocean
Howls over the barren earth.
All it knows of love.

15
While a cold rain tries
To erase what’s left of snow,
I vacuum the rug.

16
Muse, take up your pen,
Stop inspiring others,
Tell your own story.

17
Glass screen in my palm,
What is my lifeline? Tell me,
Who is the fairest?


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