Dana Goodyear

A couple Dana Goodyear poems:
http://www.poems.com/twop2goo.htm

Oasis

We found (like the deserting) spacious calm,
drank a pair of Arnold Palmers underneath a palm.
Went for massage and mud, lacquer, love,
overheated minerals, a stimulating rub.
Then — as if it could be used, as if for art —
I placed a grain of doubt in your open-pored heart,
and watched what had been small dilate
and everything else evaporate.


Day and Age

Skimming by,
the milky spill of my old eye,
the mute white cat
now skirts me at the store.
Retarded and alert.

What good are instincts anymore?
Who does the math
for lengths of desperation
and how far to the door?

A woman, pregnant
like a red wool bud,
is circling the rink.
Catastrophe, I think.

...Ya, it reads like light verse, but it's fun! She doesn't contort her syntax or make anything overly complicated. This is supposed to be precise, light, and fun to read. If you're gonna play with rhyme sans meter, might as well go for broke. Note that she keeps it small and image-based, though--this isn't an abstraction fest. "red wool bud"; "milky spill"; "mud, lacquer, love"--there is precise joy to be found here.

~Dani