When Kind of a Hurricane Press put out a call for
coffee-themed poems, I submitted three poems, including this one:
October
Morning
It’s
been months
since
I noticed
steam
rise
from my coffee.
This
morning, as I set
the
hot cup
on the table,
gray
ascends
in
undisciplined columns,
waving, folding,
unfolding,
so
dramatic
I
expect a genie to emerge.
I hesitate to drink,
not
wanting
to interrupt
the
lava lamp patterns,
amazed at how long
moist
air rises
into
dry, heated air.
What
will this crisp
cool
autumn
draw from me?
~
Wilda Morris
I tried to make the layout for this poem reflect the steam rising from my
cup.
When Sherri, my oldest daughter, was living with me a
couple years ago, we had separate coffee pots. She says I don’t drink coffee.
She says I don’t even drink flavored water; I just drink slightly tinted water.
I say the coffee she makes doesn’t just crawl out of the cup, it jumps out and
takes off through the neighborhood. She is so tied (may I say “addicted”?) to “high
octane” coffee that her children once scolded me for saying the word “decaf.”
Sherri had told them that "decaf" is a swear word, and they should never say
it!
One of my coffee poems was as much about writing poetry as
it was about coffee, but it also it certainly reflects my preference for flavored
coffee. I’m especially fond of hazelnut, chocolate raspberry, and chocolate cherry,
but I want the flavor brewed into the coffee, not added as a syrup. Avid coffee
drinkers have their own favorites and their own coffee-drinking routines.
Morning Brews
Poems percolate like coffee
in this woodland hideaway:
French vanilla this morning
or chocolate cherry
to which I add a little sugar,
writing for someone I love;
potent expresso
as I pen lines about evils
reported on television news;
lattés
after a porcupine
rattles branches and I watch
it climb a tree.
A doe slips into the clearing,
stands with ears perked,
almost willing, I think,
to listen to my latest poem
and sip cinnamon hazelnut
from my steaming cup.
~ Wilda Morris
For the same call for coffee poems, Karla Linn Merrifield
submitted a poem with coffee and love intertwined. Coffee shared between lovers
becomes part of their joint story.
Since Today is the
First
Full Day of Summer I
Envision:
for Roger M. Weir
a kiss, my husband’s, dewy,
first thing this sultry morning.
one full of steamy promises & coffee,
two day’s whiskers, tongues, a tear.
& more coffee, then another kiss,
our ritual goodbye in the garage
before he motors off into the heat,
errands to run, doctor to see.
& because the first two kisses
of summer were so sublime (must be
the French roast java), I imagine a third –
a trio, trilogy, triptych, trinity kiss –
like a dragonfly’s to still water,
swallow’s to calm air,
the sun’s to his planet Earth,
my man’s to me.
~ Karla Linn Merrifield
Mary Jo Balistreri’s poem is also a poem of relationship.
She focuses not on the coffee, but on what is shared by two women over a cup of
coffee. They open up to one another, sharing their histories and feelings. They
discover they have more in common than they previously realized. “Double Perk”
may be the name of an actual coffee shop, or it may be poetic license. At any
rate, serves a metaphoric purpose in this poignant poem, as French Roast Java
did in the previous one:
Coffee at the Double
Perk
Neither of us is prepared for the curve in conversation.
As my friend struggles with words, the story begins
to emerge. It’s as if an aftershock tilts our world.
It was twenty years ago. And it still hurts.
All the time we had mourned privately, got lost
in the questions:
Why our bodies betrayed us
How our boys were dying inside us, quietness
deemed normal because they were small,
with small heart beats
How the doctors were not concerned until it was too late
Fissures crack open. We exchange our boys’ names,
say them softly, almost shyly. Swapping stories, we begin
to interrupt each other, eager to share.
Andrew comes
to me when I’m doing laundry,
sometimes in the garden.
Danny visits
when I’m making dinner or at the pond.
We both agree our boys like quiet and often come at night.
We walk toward the exit, arms around each other’s waist.
Halfway out the door my friend stops – Were we the dead
ones?
The door bangs shut behind us and we start to laugh. The
reservoir
we though empty begins to bubble like a fresh water spring.
~ Mary Jo Balistreri
All the poems in this post are from Something’s Brewing, edited by Al J. Huffman and April Salzano (Kind
of a Hurricane Press, 2014). Each poets
owns the copyright on her poems.
Looking for a gift for a coffee lover? Package a copy of Something’s Brewing (ordered from Kind of a Hurricane Press)
with a pound or two of organic fair-trade coffee. If you can’t purchase it
locally, consider ordering from Dean's Beans
(or google “organic fair trade coffee” for another dealer). I single out Dean’s Beans only because my church has an
annual fund-raiser during which we sell their coffee. We have found them very
nice to work with, and their coffee (especially the hazelnut) is very tasty.
On-Line Coffee Poems
(There are many - some good, some not so good. Here are just a few you might want to read):
A Prose Poem, The Morning Coffee by Ron Padgett
A long narrative poem, Coffee by Richard Brautigan
A love poem, The Sun, the Moon and the Starbucks by James Novis
A somewhat humorous poem with a surprise ending, Better Beans by
Nick Usborne
February Poetry
Challenge:
You guessed it! The poetry challenge for February is to
write a coffee poem. It may be a poem about coffee: how and where it is grown,
how it is processed, decaffeination (no, “decaf” is NOT a swear word!); the
senses awakened by a cup of hot (or iced) coffee; or even why you don’t like or
drink coffee. But you can also write from a broader definition of what might
constitute a coffee poem, as in some of the examples above. Coffee can be a
metaphor for something else. But coffee must play a significant role in the
poem.
Submit only one poem. The deadline is February 15. Poems submitted after the February 15
deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no
monetary rewards; however winners are published on this blog. Please don’t
stray far from “family-friendly” language.
Copyright
on each poem is retained by the poet.
Poems
published in books or on the Internet (including Facebook and other on-line
social networks) are not eligible. If your poem has been published in a print
periodical, you may submit it if you retain copyright, but please include
publication data.
How to Submit Your Poem:
Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”) . Include a brief bio which can be printed with your poem, if you are a winner this month.
Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”) . Include a brief bio which can be printed with your poem, if you are a winner this month.
Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted
on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name (exactly as
you would like it to appear if you do win) at
the end of the poem. Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an
attachment. Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if
you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem
left-justified; title in bold (not all in capital letters); your name at the
bottom of the poem). Also, please do not use spaces instead of commas in the
middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique; I sometimes
do it myself. However I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain
extra spaces.
Poems shorter than 30 lines are generally preferred. Also, if
lines are too long, they don’t fit in the blog format and have to be split, so
you might be wise to use shorter lines.
© Wilda Morris