Your Daily Poem

This site exists for one purpose only: to help dispel the ugly and absolutely untrue myth that poetry is boring. Granted, a lot of poetry is boring, but you won't find it here. At Your Daily Poem, you'll find poetry that is touching, funny, provocative, inspiring, uplifting, and surprising. It may punch you in the gut, it may bring tears to your eyes, it may make you laugh out loud, but it most assuredly will not bore you!

Poetry on YDP—by poets living and long dead, famous to completely unknown--is specially selected for accessibility and appeal. Thanks so much for visiting—and remember: a poem a day keeps the doldrums away!

Sizing Down in the Driveway
by
Ellaraine Lockie

The lady lays a quarter on the card table
An autocratic offer for an antiquated edition
of Betty Crocker basics
Betty and I go back to my bridal shower
The book is more than a two-bit buy
I say to the Saturday morning insult
Bittersweet menus from a first marriage
flavoring my bargaining ability
But she's already thrashing through
a throng of scarves
Separating silk wheat from synthetic chaff
Faint whiffs of Ambush fragrance
trapping memories with olfactory talons
That drop me on a Montana farm
Where a fourteen-year-old dabs her first perfume
Reverie interrupted when the skinflint
singles out six scarves and says they stink
So will I settle on fifty cents for the stack
Ambush isn't manufactured anymore
so the smell is collectible I contend
As her son in one sadistic twist
separates a jewelry box from the ballerina
that once danced my daughter to sleep
And Mr. Scrooge caresses a 22-caliber rifle
Wants to know its past before he purchases
As if a possible heinous act
might haunt him posthumously
But I'm the one besieged by effigies
Of a deer carcass swinging from a barn ceiling
And a father queuing tin cans on a fence
before he teaches his daughter a soft trigger touch
Just the image I need to open fire
With verbal violence aimed inward
Vengeance for pricing my past
Pardon possible when I post a sign saying
Former Lives Free For All
And I leave the nettling family
To negotiate the here and now
To meet the future halfway

First published by PWJ Publishing.
Used with the author's permission.

Photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Ellaraine Lockie grew up in a Montana farm town and writes at her local Starbucks every morning because it feels like one of the friendly coffee shops where she grew up, a place where everyone knew everyone else who came for coffee and camaraderie. Along with publications in the standard journals, Ellaraine's poems have appeared on broadsides, buses, rented cars, bicycles, cabins, greeting cards, key chains, bookmarks, mugs, coffee sack labels, church bulletins, radio shows and cable TV.
Ellaraine serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, LILIPOH.

Jo:
Oh Ellaraine, This is a terrific poem. Have relished your sharp-witted tongue.
Posted 07/27/2014 05:22 PM

Cindy:
Yes! How can you sell a memory?
Posted 07/27/2014 08:44 AM

mimi:
as always in your poetry, Ellaraine, you've captured life perfectly...so true--love it! - Sharon Auberle
Posted 07/27/2014 07:52 AM

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