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The Sunday Poem: Georgia Santa-Maria... Poetry Salon

Did you see that PBS special on Paris between the wars? The salon scene there fostered a mixing of ideas and an energy that was truly amazing. Today's poem has all of that. It sort of reminds me of what "Land of a Thousand Dances" was to Rock & Roll. It is guaranteed to make you smile and ask for more.

Georgia Santa-Maria is an Albuquerque native, born in the old purple brick St. Jo’s on Martin Luther King. Her 5th grade principal at Emerson Elementary said that in 36 years of teaching, she was the worst kid she’d ever known. Georgia decided to take poetry seriously when her senior English teacher at Valley HS told the class that there had never been a woman poet worth reading. She has been published in several poetry mags. Georgia currently lives in Belen.

Poetry Salon

Sit down for 2 hours and read everything

You’ve written since High School, no repeats.
I’m down to that one about having
Sex to Hayden concertos.
I need to write more poetry
I’m going on an all poetry diet. Every time
I want a big juicy burger, I’m writing a poem instead.
And not some fluffy Crispy Creme donut of a poem,
We’re talking low fat poems.
No sugar poems. Low salt poems.
Brown rice poems, back to the land in bare feet.
Little sashimi haikus, no adjectives allowed
Lean meat poems about war and death.
Organic vegetarian poems, full of earthy virtue.
We don’t want any french fry poems
Nor chocolate poems about the feel good of love.
No pickle poems of self-abnegation
(Self indulgent and mostly boring.)
My friend writes green-bean casserole poems.
(Shouldn’t something that smarmy
At least taste great, or be a little naughty?)
I envy Eliot, who wrote communion poems
That taste like wine, but still are wafer lean.
And that hard candy E. E. Cummings
(Never knowing what you might find inside.)
You’ve got to admire the hamminess of Sandberg
The blowzy beer and bratwurst of the Beats
Dickinson’s polite and hungry
Little bread and butter sandwiches,
Jimmy Baca’s astounding enchiladas
And Langston Hughes’s eloquent empty plates.
I could, maybe, write a good solid middle class
Zucchini of a poem. Ripe, Plentiful
Ubiquitous, virtuous and green.
For Christmas, I might write some cookie poems:
Filled with little chocolate bon mots, and
The occasional pecan of wisdom.
(Black walnuts are better, but harder to find
And nearly impossible to open.)
I want to write rice-noodle poems
That explode when they hit the grease.
Form poems that elude the treacherous petit fours
And poems that open themselves continuously
Growing like the macaroni of fractals.

--Georgia Santa-Maria

Poetry submissions are welcome. Email theditchrider@gmail.com.

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Comment by Margaret Randall on December 19, 2010 at 9:21am: This is unexpected and terrific! We're talking low-fat poems, yeah! I love the end, that image of poems that open themselves continuously / growing like the macaroni of fractals! It's always good to see someone truly original on this site, and it happens a lot. Thanks Georgia Santa-Maria. Thanks, Jon.

Comment by JeSais on December 19, 2010 at 9:44am: Georgia this is fun and so are you. I want to make paper hats with you and write lots of cookies too.

and by the way, Georgia writes fantastic short prose pieces and has been selected several times as "Best Of" the Duke City DimeStories. You can hear her read at: http://dimestories.org/live-events/albuquerque/abq-archives-2010/

Comment by Barelas Babe on December 19, 2010 at 9:50am: What a great poem, Georgia - the last lines are sheer genius! But now I am hungry and cannot decide what to eat/read.

Comment by Ben Moffett on December 19, 2010 at 10:34am: Santa Maria!! Glorious, Georgia, and it has a Bosqueno as well as a Bratwurst beat, I do believe. Viva Belen, Valencia County, the Bosque and zucchini in a middle class poem.

Comment by Gabriella Duncan on December 19, 2010 at 1:45pm: Absolutlylisicious poetry girl!!Please forward your recipies and poems to me and we shall have a gathering for the starving poets of Albuquerque....What a feast we shall have!!! Very way awesome!! Tucheee'

Comment by Dee Cohen on December 19, 2010 at 2:20pm: Hello Georgia,

I love the streaming consciousness of this buffet.

My, how your mind works overtime on making some funny yet deep connections in your work.

Yes, keep writing poems instead of everything else.

We're hungry for more... Dee

Comment by Georgia Santa-Maria on December 19, 2010 at 9:04pm: Wow--thanks so much all! You make me feel like dancin'!

Comment by Briana Rose Lucero on December 19, 2010 at 9:28pm: A very edible and delightful poem! Love the way poetry comes together in different forms!! Wonderful!!

Comment by larry goodell on December 19, 2010 at 9:44pm: leave it to the digital revolution to get back to publishing poems in the newspaper whoops! blog . . . good poem Georgia, thanks!

Comment by Ben Moffett on December 20, 2010 at 10:50pm: On second reading, did you have a black walnut tree somewhere near your yard when you were a child? We would put them on a rock, crack them with a hammer, and pick out the little bit of goodies with the end of a bobby pin. Good eatin'!

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