Poetry Friday: Poetry Postcard 1

Next year, I am turning 44.

If I lived in Birmingham, UK, I'd rock in my birthday here:
http://www.route44live.co.uk/pageone.html

This feels like a magical birthday to me. Of course, I spent all of 42 telling my family, "I am the answer to life, the universe and everything," but this is different. If you make my birthday, February 22, into a mathematical equation it looks like this 2 x 22 = 44.

Inspired by artist Sherry Richert Belul's birthday celebration, in which she gave, rather than received gifts, I started planning a birthday poetry project.

I am in the process of collecting 44 antique postcards to use as poetry prompts. The cards, with their poems, will go out as poetry mailbox "bombs" between now and February 22, 2013.

This week, I began working on the first postcard. I found it in a local antique shop with my friend, writer Mindy Abbott.

Ellicott City is famous for antiques and restaurants.

(I live just two miles from old Ellicott City, a historic area of our town dating to pre-Revolutionary times. The town was the terminus of the Baltimore & Ohio's first 13 miles of railroad track in the United States. If you believe in the race between a horse and the early Tom Thumb engine, it happened here. Today, Main Street is filled with antique shops, boutiques and restaurants. Not too upscale. Just about right for a day of wandering.)

The cards I have chosen so far are blank on the back, since I'll be filling in the poems. But I couldn't resist this card, maybe because of the writing.

The majority of the cards I found were from the 1950s. Not this one. When I got home, I turned it over and found the cancellation: May 29, 1908 (the year my grandmother was born).

What I found fascinating was the play of sounds between "Morris" -- who the card is addressed to -- and "Maurice." I pictured Bertha (she's marked "Berks, C.O." on the bottom of the card) intoning "Maurice" to romanticize plain old Morris back home in Lenhartsville, PA.

Here is the poem I started this week: 

Postcard, 1908

by Laura Shovan

Maurice, Maurice --

thirty-one beauties call your name.

Their megaphone hats echo

from Bertha in Berks, Colorado

to you, Morris Bauscher,

in Lenhartsville, PA.

Maurice, how tempting, the shape

of a girl’s lips as she speaks

this version of your name.

Surely, Bertha in Berks intoned,

“Morris, Maurice” as she licked

this one cent stamp. I hear her,

though I’m crouched in an antique shop

a century past your cancellation date.

Who knows, maybe Morris/Maurice will end up in your mailbox.

If you'd like a poetry postcard for my birthday, send me an email with your mailing address. If you have some antique postcards you'd like to donate or get rid of, send me an email and I'll get you my mailing address.

Have a great Poetry Friday! Our host today is Amy LV at the Poem Farm.

P.S. After I wrote this post, my husband said, "Why don't you search Morris Bauscher?" Good thing I keep him around. I never would have thought of that! I'll post an update on Morris tomorrow.