Jo Chern

Category: Poetry

  • Villanelle For “The Black Dog” (version 2)

      You’ll go through each motion, one by one, As dark night gives way to blacker day. You begin with “I’ll live,” as you’ve always done.   Pull the cord, raise the blinds, turn away from the sun. Step into the shower.  Coat the  pain in wet spray. You must go through each motion, one…

  • Not All Days Are Today

    Each goes to our own corners, This welcome May-warm April Sunday. My husband claims the bed, Supine, hands crossed over belly, Feet crossed at ankles, A double helix at rest. The old, skinny cat A circle in his heated bed. No day too warm for his frail bones, Head resting on a catnip mouse almost…

  • Villanelle For The Black Dog (First Draft)

      You will go through each motion, one by one, As gentle night gives up to brutal day. And repeat, “I’ll live.” As you’ve always done.   Pull the cord of the blinds, turn your back to the sun, Step into the shower, dissolve in the spray. You will go through each motion, one by…

  • NaPoWriMo: Not Just Late But Dead In The Water

    I have fallen so far behind on my poem a day schedule that I’m likely to end up with something more like a “National Poetry Writing Week and A Half.” But I’m promising myself that I will step it up and get back on the horse: more mixed metaphors anyone? So I go back to…

  • NaPoWriMo: Too late, too late; no time, no time!!

    Sunday. Isn’t that supposed to be a day of rest? Apparently not for a Jewish-Taoist because I was running most of the day. For good purpose. My late afternoon QiGong class was attended by lovely people who needed the unwinding at the end of the day: a woman who works with dementia patients; another who…

  • NaPoWriMo Day 5: Backpedaling

    After saying I didn’t think I’d 8979o–excuse me; cat on keyboard–use many of the daily prompts, I’m going back to one from an earlier day: writing a spell or incantation.  People always have said I’m a bit witchy–I think that was the word they used–so surely this is appropriate.  Onto my spell.     An…

  • NaPoWriMo Day 4: Prompt-ly

    I didn’t think I’d be prompted by NaPoWriMo’s daily prompts but, indeed, today’s I especially like: writing a “lune,” a three line stanza reminiscent of haiku but not forcing our non-syllabic language into syllabic form so natural for Japanese. Instead of the 5-7-5 syllable count, lune uses a 3-5-3 word count. And since that reminds…

  • NaPoWriMo Day 3: A Descent Into Silly

    Back to my original plan of dabbling in forms, rhymes, rhythms, poetics. While an appreciator of limericks, I–quite simply–suck at them. I can never get the saucy air, the lilt that carries the reader along line to line hanging off the side of the horse, as it were. But I need to write one so…

  • To My Hospice Cat

            All hip bones and sagging skin Hollow eyes, naked ears. Still chasing leaves As if running down prey; But time to go, time to go Listen to the Buddha: Everything changes.

  • Why Write If You Can’t Write Anything Nice

    NaPoWriMo: Day 1. Oh, grand. I’m supposed to write a poem a day in April and I’m already out of ideas. But that never stopped me before. So I’m going to start with a short rhymed–abacadaea–piece about something I heard listening to an audio of a Alexander McCall Smith story the other day. Is it…