Janet Nodar

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

recent posts

  • Pollen Season (after Frank O’Hara)

    Pollen Season (after Frank O’Hara)

    O it’s pollen season in Mobtown                Bienville Square
                   coated with yellow-green powder                           
                                  the trees             backlit calligraphy
    the azaleas: pink! red! fuchsia!
                   tourists feeding peanuts to our conceited squirrels    
                                  I sneeze and am blessed by a homeless man
     in a mountainous coat                   I am blessed
                   the air soft and luminous              off I go to meet Wayne for lunch
                                                    
    a percussive thudding emanates from Water Street     the whine of saws cutting concrete
                             they are driving pilings on the waterfront
                                                      — don’t worry the port is fine         —  extant       — unbombed
    for a new quay to handle all the cargo expected
                             back when our economy was flourishing

                                                      imagine
    but don’t worry nothing is on fire here no black clouds no scorched lungs hands heads
                             no one is screaming             no one is falling to their knees
                                                      before small bodies wrapped in white sheets
    everyone is going to and fro in safety in the US
                             we are destroying Iran this week but everything is fine here
                                  there is some concern about gas prices                  the supply chain
    the stock market               next year’s food              but anyway


    Wayne is already at a table by the blue piano at Roosters
                             I order shawarma tacos and a cup of elote
                                                      We discuss our book clubs            the poetry we’re reading 
                             the botanical photographs
                                                      he makes with turmeric salt sunlight alchemy
    the bill arrives cloaked in a middle school paperback
                             we walk to the Exploreum 
                                                      oak leaves crunching like peanut shells  

    Wayne tells me about Galileo inspecting the moon, which is not perfect, turns out
                             artisanal planets hang from the Exploreum ceiling in their particular and beautiful order
                                                      the real planets are all out there swinging around like always

    we were never the center of the universe             so hard to believe!
                    Galileo (bit of an ass, TBH) invented the scientific method
                                 observing                           what makes the world happen as it does    
    he saw what he saw        I’m no genius but even I know
                   there is no such thing as unkilling             as undestroying

                                  as we go to and fro in relative safety in the US 
    everything has changed               
                   what are we now            
                                   we are now   
                                  what are we


                                                                          
                         

    Author’s note: Mobtown is a nickname for Mobile, AL, my hometown. I like writing ‘I do this/ I do that’-style poems about daily life in the spirit of Frank O’Hara.

    Header and footer photos were taken by me in Bienville Square and at the Mobile Exploreum.

  • Fan

    Fan

    A hot afternoon in Magnolia
    Cemetery. The pastor is
    speaking. A stranger nearby
    cools herself with an over-sized fan
    I brought home from Antwerp
    years ago and gave to Goodwill
    this past spring. Its pleated
    Chinese landscape wafts from side to side
    in the viscous air.

    We are together in the city of the dead,
    where we all have been or will be.
    This time, my own heart has not been broken. 
    But the woman with the fan is bowed with grief. 

    Author’s note: “Fan” was published in Emerald Coast Review XXIII in October 2025. Learn more on my Publications page.

  • At the Beach

    At the Beach

    A drunk woman has been crying by the pool.
    Noisy all afternoon, now she is
    wailing. My father; my father.
    Her friends cluster soothingly.
    Her daughter, silvery minnow,
    runs down the wooden bridge to the beach.

    At sunrise I walked
    between the condos and the gulf.
    A molting heron, 
    its bleak yellow eye flat,
    unfathomable.
    Blue-green water endlessly
    turning over itself.
    A couple fishing companionably in the surf.

    Now the drunk woman’s voice
    echoes in the well of the pool deck.
    Her daughter is a speck out on the beach.
    I close my book and watch her at the water’s edge.
    It’s strange to be together in this place.
    Aware of each other, or unaware.
    Breathing together, or apart.



    Author’s note: This poem was published in Heavy Lift and Project Forwarding International, July/August 2025 issue, pp. 91. I believe this to be the most unlikely poetry publishing credit I’ll ever boast. See my Publications page for more info.

  • SNOW POEM  (after Frank O’Hara’s POEM—Khruschev is coming)

    SNOW POEM  (after Frank O’Hara’s POEM—Khruschev is coming)

    Jeb’s birthday is happening on the right day!
                                                                brittle blue light
    shimmers through our sedate neighborhood
    and this shocking snow is melting, dripping into the
                                                 ditches
    everything but the party line, my cousin Steve-o
    is miserable because his wife is crazy
                                                                she talks of nothing but Jesus
                   and does nothing but lie
                                                                with her lipstickied mouth
    when we met years ago she said I was an Azalea Trail Maid!

    tonight we’ll go to Jeb’s party and eat Thai
                                                                and talk about New Orleans
    and people skiing on Bourbon Street last Wednesday 
                                                                              Crab Rangoon
    and young Lucy at the Christmas party, singing and shaking a
                                                                tambourine, bells
                                                                               in her hair

    We walked to the creek, snow over our boots
                                                                               snow changes everything
    cars were creeping up our little hill and sliding back down, rotating like turtles
                                                                all Wednesday evening
    they kept hoping they would make it 
    the most snow since 1894 maybe; I guess people didn’t really keep track
    tho surely the old-timers had ways to measure
    towns had their own time zones back then
                                                                you could time travel riding the train
                                                                               sort of

    The snow makes me doubt the sodden heat of summer
                                                                maybe I’m just imagining it
                                                                               ice glittering under the oak trees
                                                 the moon
                                                                and the snow illumined the night
    I woke up and thought it was morning and then thought of politics
    our lying relatives and all these icicles
                                                                what will happen to us
    everyone screaming         it’s as if
    we’re trapped in the Jerry Springer show
                                                                where is the paternity test that settles
                                                 the question                      reveals
    the real father and then everyone jumps up and down and shouts
                                                                I told you I told you I told you
                                                                                              you liar     


    Author’s note: I wrote this poem in January 2025, after an epic 100-year snow storm — eight inches in 24 hours — in my subtropical hometown of Mobile, AL. This poem was published in Emerald Coast Review XXIII in October 2025. Learn more on my Publications page.