What do you think?
Rate this book
Wild Plums
In this clever, heartfelt collection of poems, Barbara Conrad celebrates the unreal of what is real: a dead father entering a coffee shop, an old lover on bended knees, cedar waxwings in the guise of wild fruit. Whether the focus is time, colors, words, nature, social issues or personal relationships, the whole world seems to spin and startle in these lyrical, yet accessible creations.
94 pages, Paperback
First published January 3, 2013
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 15, 2018
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:
I KEPT MEANING TO TELL YOU
ABOUT THE KINGFISHER AT THE CREEK TODAY
The one roosting on a dead tree
by the stone bridge, first
I had ever seen, much less startled,
the way he jack-hammered
my ears with his rude stutter, banked a 180,
striping the air between us with slate-blue ribbons.
But all day there were interruptions.
Does a thought ever flutter like feathers
in your head, imagined as conversation,
its words and rhythms worked and re-worked
on your tongue until you can taste
the message in your mouth?
Images, inflections, each noun, verb,
appositive phrase crafted, their anticipated tone
mellow as an old Billie Holiday, until by mid-day
you’re not sure if you’ve sung them or not.
Maybe the words don’t matter anyway,
reality being not that blue clay pot
on the kitchen counter next to the crossword,
but the image of yourself molding wet mud,
your arms spattered, loose rotations of your body
as you lean into the wheel’s orbit.
Can’t you tell how all day today
I’ve seemed a little off-kilter? How at the creek
I must have seen something—a kingfisher,
for instance—lift easily from its perch,
flash me a copper eye,
circle up into its own riddle?
SNORKELING THE BIG ISLAND
for my daughters
How limp we’re becoming
in the warm salt broth, our muscles lolling
like spent seaweed.
For a little while now, we’ll not claim the constellation
beneath us. Blues, yellows and reds will dart and nibble at coral
we dare not touch,
unconscious of the colors we’ve assigned them
or the names—trunkfish, yelloweye tang, sabre-toothed blenny—
or dominion.
We glance back. Below us a sea turtle
lifts her great green weight off the sand.
Nimble acrobat,
she rises to the surface, snaps a beak full of what we’ve come
to call our air, returns her ancient bulk downward, unfettered.
For millions of years
myths have named her. Honu. Kauila. Great Mythical Mother.
Always, she’s carried the world on her back.
We float until
we can float no more. Unfolding, we remake ourselves
long and awkward, crawl onto rock ledges, plod across crevices,
unmistakably evolved.
I KEPT MEANING TO TELL YOU
ABOUT THE KINGFISHER AT THE CREEK TODAY
The one roosting on a dead tree
by the stone bridge, first
I had ever seen, much less startled,
the way he jack-hammered
my ears with his rude stutter, banked a 180,
striping the air between us with slate-blue ribbons.
But all day there were interruptions.
Does a thought ever flutter like feathers
in your head, imagined as conversation,
its words and rhythms worked and re-worked
on your tongue until you can taste
the message in your mouth?
Images, inflections, each noun, verb,
appositive phrase crafted, their anticipated tone
mellow as an old Billie Holiday, until by mid-day
you’re not sure if you’ve sung them or not.
Maybe the words don’t matter anyway,
reality being not that blue clay pot
on the kitchen counter next to the crossword,
but the image of yourself molding wet mud,
your arms spattered, loose rotations of your body
as you lean into the wheel’s orbit.
Can’t you tell how all day today
I’ve seemed a little off-kilter? How at the creek
I must have seen something—a kingfisher,
for instance—lift easily from its perch,
flash me a copper eye,
circle up into its own riddle?
SNORKELING THE BIG ISLAND
for my daughters
How limp we’re becoming
in the warm salt broth, our muscles lolling
like spent seaweed.
For a little while now, we’ll not claim the constellation
beneath us. Blues, yellows and reds will dart and nibble at coral
we dare not touch,
unconscious of the colors we’ve assigned them
or the names—trunkfish, yelloweye tang, sabre-toothed blenny—
or dominion.
We glance back. Below us a sea turtle
lifts her great green weight off the sand.
Nimble acrobat,
she rises to the surface, snaps a beak full of what we’ve come
to call our air, returns her ancient bulk downward, unfettered.
For millions of years
myths have named her. Honu. Kauila. Great Mythical Mother.
Always, she’s carried the world on her back.
We float until
we can float no more. Unfolding, we remake ourselves
long and awkward, crawl onto rock ledges, plod across crevices,
unmistakably evolved.
Displaying 1 of 1 review