AND HERE'S TRISH...

Today I’m featuring a poem by Trish Dugger, Poet Laureate of Encinitas, California.

THE BEST LAID PAMELA

If you’re stepping out of your panties,

it’s too late for Plan B.  Trust me.

Actually, I never had a Plan B or

any plan at all.  I maureened

down the farley path to where his

lips led.  That was humphreys ago.

Losing the keys to my car, house,

indeed my life, ended in reginald.

Had I known the final phyllis, would

I have said, vince instead of when?

His lester and loretta philliped me

with a cynthia I’d never imagined.

Now I’m stranded at the janice craig,

glass shards of yesterday scattered

behind me.  It’s clare that I must brock

and bleed to return to the other side,

to get back to candace where brad

began, before the bruce of bridget.

It would be easy to remain in hillary,

to wendy my time in painless walter.

I’m no good with blood and gordon.

So look for me in the garden of denise.

The weather is pleasantly pauline and

I’m learning to clancy with new clydes.

- Trish Dugger

previously printed in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Fall/Winter 2010 – 2011, Issue 47.

When I asked Trish what had been her inspiration for this poem, she said that at the time she was in a poetry workshop that was reading POETS OF THE NEW CENTURY (a  2001 anthology edited by Roger Weingarten and Richard Higgerson).  She gathered her inspiration from reading Mark Halliday’s poem, “Your Visit to Drettinghob,” whose tone is gracious and welcoming, spoken by the proud owner of the castle.  Scattered throughout the poem are fanciful, made-up words.  [As I could find no online link to the entire poem, I’ll offer morsels so you can get a flavor of Halliday's poem.]

            Welcome to Drettinghob and welcome more specifically

            to the North Transept of Smegma Manor which once formed

the warm-weather dalyrymple for the Prince’s consort’s gardeners

when the West Winkle of the castle was still standing.

…                                    It was the Earl’s morridgemen

who worked the clench-ovens in which these trouted bottles

were shreamed with scatgurry oil to deepen the morlseed flavor

of the local hooch called Dretbrof.  Try a sip!  Ah,

that’s the true Dretbrof….

Trish Dugger’s work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies and was featured on Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry (americanlifeinpoetry.org).  She’s won local poetry slams twice and three times been in the top three in slams.

Click here to go to Trish Dugger's website and more of her poems.