Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: poetry


by Leave a comment

Lunch poems.


I suppose we all gravitate toward the accessible… which makes me think, are we paying enough attention to being that. Being welcoming. A gentle place to land. 

I mention it, sitting it beside my pocket series book of Lunch Poems, by Frank O’Hara. What could be less threatening than lunch? 

My grandma used the term all the time. It could be 10am, or noon, 2pm or 4, and though she framed it as a question, she was never really asking when she said, “Should we have a little lunch?” That could mean anything from a root beer float, to a sandwich, to a bag of toasted marshmallows while shopping at Jerry’s Jack and Jill. (How could it be shoplifting if we were just having a little lunch?) 

Who doesn’t love a soft place to land? A welcoming of kindness. That was my Grandma Elsie. Nothing, no one was shooed away. Even before dishes were cleared from noontime’s feeding, a neighbor would stop by and be offered a plate of coloches or, as luck would have it, lunch sticks. She was, and is still, my swinging door. 

My mother’s table was filled less with food, and more with books. She opened me to pages and poetry. She made them “lunch poems” decades before I had even heard the term. 

How different they were in their offerings, my mother and grandmother. But how similar they were in letting you in. Each, with the best of what they had said, “Come in, you and your heart sit down.” 

These words I offer daily. These paintings. For you, the lunch I was taught to share. 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

From one to the many.

When they asked Muhammad Ali to give them a poem, he offered up two words. “Me. We.” Just two simple words. But oh, how much they said. ‘Me We’ is a poem about one man’s transition from one to the many, singularity to plurality, and selfishness to altruism.

It’s a reminder to me, how little it actually takes. To make someone’s day. To let them know they are not alone. To give them hope. A smile. It’s a small space from me to we, easily traveled, if we simply remember to take the step.

When I think of my best moments. They’ve always been with someone. It makes me wonder, does anything really happen unless we share it? I’m not sure. I’m not willing to take the chance. 

I remember early on, speaking to a group of young school children. I was humbled that they knew the answers to their own questions. After a reading, one student asked why I didn’t use any names, just he, she, they… Without missing a beat a little girl raised her hand and said, “Because it could be anyone.” I’m still smiling. The answer remains the same, this movement from singularity to plurality. We can all do it, take the path, from Me to We.

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Je m’appelle Emily.

Before I had finished the page in my sketchbook, it had become an Emily Dickinson poem. “In the name of the Bee,” — a poem that had been passed around between my mother, my ninth grade English teacher, my friend David, two books on my shelf, and the path that I walk daily. 

It was another Emily who asked, 

“EMILY: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?”
STAGE MANAGER: “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”

– Thornton Wilder, “Our Town”

Wanting to get to “some,” and realizing my limits for sainthood, I try to walk in the poem each day.

I said once, on the days that I can’t create something beautiful, at least give me the wisdom to see it. Yesterday was busied with a trip to Marseille. We had an appointment at the Hopital Conception. We were greeted at the entry with a poster of Rimbaud, the French poet. While others sat in the waiting room. I sat in the poetry. I looked around to see if others were held in the syntax, hoping, wishing, they could feel my Emily within their Rimbaud. That maybe we could all live together in the magic of the word, maybe not “every, every minute,” but for this moment, the magic of this collective poem. 


Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

The center cannot hold.

If we are to take any comfort from the Yeats poem, in times of unrest and mayhem, there will always be a force bringing about a new age, and we will continue “slouching towards Bethlehem.” 

I had first read it in college, but as with any art, it takes on new meaning as I, we, bring new meaning to the words. And maybe it was Joan Didion who brought the most understanding as she wrote under those same words in a collection of essays. Didion begins with a series of essays set in California, her home state. She paints a vivid picture of the Golden State, capturing its unique blend of beauty and decay. She explores the lives of those who live on the fringes of society, from Haight-Ashbury’s hippie culture to the world of migrant workers in the Central Valley.

Perhaps we romanticize everything. Perhaps we have to. Visiting Haight and Ashbury yesterday, it is filled with thrift stores — adorned by the colors of being hippie. And I too am woo-ed like the other tourists. But the daily news looms over our heads. You can feel it. There is an unrest that no tie-dye can calm. Yeats writes, “Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.” He says, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” And daily, we have to decide who we are.

I thumb through the rack of colorful t-shirts. I’m looking for answers – but there are none in my size. So I keep writing. I keep painting. I keep believing. Hoping a word, a stroke, will straighten my stride, strengthen it. 

Walking away from Haight. Running away from hate. Slouching towards Bethlehem. 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

The wax and the walk.

It was an Italian woman who sent a message to me in France,  after purchasing a picture of mine in the USA — the piece, “On her way.” There are no barriers of language or obstacles of distance, when we speak and listen with the heart. 

Yesterday I bought wax to seal envelopes, with the symbol of a laurel. Knowing the words are indeed the laurels, the symbols of triumph, that we must never rest upon. It’s easy to forget about the handwritten letter, when it’s so simple to text, to email, or to do nothing at all. And I am just as guilty. Oh, I still wish for the letter each day as I head to the mailbox. But it’s rare that I send one. But I was fueled by the words in Italian and French and English and I was indeed on my way. Laurels at hand and heart.

I need to do it more often. It feels so good. To take the time. I smiled seeing the dancer on the front of my card, picturing her at her recital. Tickled when I found the purple marker, recalling the color of her bedroom walls. Writing slowly without distortion, knowing she would be sounding out the words in English, her newly second language. Heating the wax. Pressing in the laurel. Walking to the mailbox, just after the untimely rain. My heart was on its way.

I like it when you tell me that you sit down each morning with your coffee. Open your tablet or phone, and read the words I have written. In a sea of posts that are meant to offend and humiliate, to separate and push, please know that my effort is always meant to include and gather, to connect and lift. I may not always succeed, (“get there” as they say), but if you can see me, within the wax and the walk, you will know my heart is on the way. 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

There is motion at your front door.

Maybe it’s because I want to hear it. Maybe it’s because Mr. Iverson told us in the first grade that they could be about anything, the poems that he wanted us to write — the poems that he would inscribe neatly on the black board and our hearts, measured out note by note. And they were special. Lyrical. The ordinary things, our houses and shoes. Our games and basements and cars and trees. They all became magical because we called them poetry. 

We recently got a new doorbell for our gate. It is connected to our phones. It gives us the alert whenever motion is detected, even when it’s us. When I go for my morning walk, just past the gate, she pings in my ear and says, “There is motion at your front door.” And every day it is the poem that starts my journey. There IS motion at my front door – and isn’t it a good reminder! I always smile. Because isn’t it what we’ve been told in movies and books. By philosophers and teachers. “When you stop learning you die.” “It’s over when you stop dreaming.” “Sharks never stop swimming. You gotta keep moving.” The list goes on. It’s all about motivation. And could there be a better place to start than your front door? So I hear it. I feel it. There IS motion! I AM alive! And so I begin with my doorbell’s poem, off in search of another. Because we get to decide. We hold the chalk that turns the cursive words into prayers and sets the path of our journey. 

I have to go now. Begin. Create something. There is motion at my heart’s door. 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

The romance of the keys.

We learned to type on electric typewriters at Jefferson Senior High. You could hear the click of the keys from down the hall. It was located on the other side of the school building from the band and choir rooms, but there was a music to it, all the same. 

I certainly don’t miss the “white out,” or replacing the ribbon. But there was an art to it. Even when we were all typing the same thing — “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” — we would make our own mistakes, different letters would be painted over, then typed over again and each sheet was an original, with it’s own look, it’s own sound. 

I type now on my iPad. It can go with me anywhere. I can correct mistakes in an instant. There is an ease, a freedom, unmatched. But I must admit, there is a tiny part of me that longs for the music. The romance of the keys.

I want to allow for this in my daily life. I want to see the romance in all of my mistakes — and oh, I am making them for sure — daily tangled in my not so quick brown foxes. I, we, need to see the beauty of the learning. 

Today’s blank sheet opens with the sun. I set off, not in search of perfection, but poetry. Click, click, click, begins my imperfect heart. 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

A love song in silver.

I raced the stairs to his class. He was a stickler for detail. One must be on time, or you will get a “greenie.” A greenie was a small piece of green paper, denoting some poor behavior – like being late, talking out of turn, not doing an assignment. And a certain amount of greenies resulted in detention or grade reduction. Of course this was incentive enough to race the halls of Central Junior High and up the stairs to his classroom, but it was more than that, I was excited for his class, English Literature. I was excited to see him. He postured straight at the front of the class. Suited and bow-tied, a pocket filled with green paper, one finger pressed to lips like a conductor waiting for the orchestra of the English language to begin.

In his fitted plaid lime green jacket he introduced us to T.S. Eliot. He read to us in perfect pitch “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The boys giggled. Mocked. Rhymed words with “frock” and quieted down after receiving their greenies. “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” the lyrics danced in my heart. Never to be careful, ordinary, predictable, monotonous — this was the lesson. I put it in my heart and quietly vowed the same.

In my mother’s silverware drawer, there was one spoon different from all the rest. Before I knew of words and poems, or even what was ordinary, I loved this spoon. It was the only one I ever used. My mother made sure that for each meal it was clean. My spoon. My different spoon. Not matching. Not safe. Extraordinary.

When I moved to France, the hardest thing, (the only thing that could have made me stay) was my mother. In the first weeks, my lonesome heart ran through the doubts. Had I done the right thing? No one can give you life’s permission, but I waited for a sign. A letter arrived. Small, but an odd shape. I opened it. My spoon. My different, glorious spoon — a love song in silver.

It sits by my desk. Telling me daily to choose the extraordinary. The sun comes up. I race its stairs to the beautiful unknown.

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Already flying

.

The groups had already formed in high school. In this small school of a small town, the grouping off included — the athletes, the musicians, the scholars, and the good looking, the smokers, the rich, and the poor, and the religious and the lost. We disguised all the groups, covered up the broken hearts and broken homes with silk graduation gowns and marched through the gymnasium. We flung our tasseled hats as they flung us out the double doors, and we began again.

Dorothy Parker wrote the words that I copied from the school library and placed in my pocket —

“Once when I was young and true.
Someone left me sad —
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.”

I crumpled the paper and left for college. It was freeing this life. To begin again. To learn again. But still the groups formed as we thought we were making such grown up choices. Gown and hats, this time in the outdoor courtyard. They said words I don’t remember in microphones and flung us off again.

Without knowledge or permission, I began living the second half of the poem,

“Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.”

So if I wasn’t to be flung, or do the flinging, where did I fit in?

We are all trying to find our way. We get tossed into groups and stereotypes. Lost in should-haves and supposed-tos. And the only way that I can see to survive is to keep learning. What a glorious thing to keep learning. To get beyond the first half of the poem. Beyond the second. To write your own. And write it again. No more gowns to hide behind. No more, this need to be flung…because I was already flying, no need to fling, there was room for all of us.

What a thing it is to fly. I write the words, and begin again.


by 3 Comments

The poet.

The poet.A cow hung from the tree outside my grandparents’ window. It swayed without skin. Raw. I knew how this must feel. To be without skin. My mother told her parents that my father had left.

They say when you lose one of your senses, the others become stronger. It was not one of the five, but I had lost my sense of comfort, and all the others were working in overdrive. I could hear the flies buzzing, the tears falling. The gray clouds were palpable. The slightly forever over-cooked pans on my grandma’s stove wafted in the thick air. I stared at the cow. I stared at my grandfather. Back and forth, as if to ask if this was my mother’s fate. My grandfather said very little, ever. So when he did, you listened. “No,” he said, “this will not break your mother.” He found the words. The ones I needed.

Today we are living without hugs. Without touching. Displays of comfort hover somewhere in between six feet of social distancing. We need to find the words to take their place. We need to find the words that hold and gather. The words that offer the “there, there.” The words that fall into each other’s arms with laughter. The words that smile and hold and forgive and offer hope. We have the words. Let’s use them.

Adrienne Rich writes, “It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment–that explodes in poetry.”

Let yourself explode today – offer the words of kindness and strength. You are the poet. Find the words.