Hello to All who are gathered here today in the dVerse Universe, a site of pub talk and poetry. This Monday is where You and Your Muse are prompted to write a Quadrille. The name for the quadrille form is taken from an 18^th Century dance, but as you may know, it is also a dVerse’ poetic form of just 44 words (not counting the title) and includes one word the host provides to you. Today it’s me, Lisa, word provider who is also ready to serve drinks and snacks from the magic cupboard.

Today’s word came to me while working in the yard and cool air brushed my cheek. I like the tactile and onomatopoeiac nature of brush. It’s an action word that conjures so many images. It was fun trying to find poems using some of its various applications. We humans do a lot brushing, don’t we: teeth, hair, under the carpet, with tools, to paint-paint, word-paint, lip-paint, and so on.

Brushing my teeth is not an activity engaged in with my siblings since childhood. Perhaps that is what makes the following poem so poignant to me.

Brushing Teeth with My Sister after the Wake
By Jim Daniels

at my kitchen sink, the bathroom upstairs
clogged with family from out of town
spending the night after the wake
and the after—wake—cold beverages
have been consumed and comfort food,
leftovers bulging both the fridge
and the mini-fridge. In our fifties, both
half-asleep half-awake, we face each
other. My sister’s smile foams white
down her chin at the end of a day
on which no one has smiled. We laugh.
We may never brush our teeth together again.
No mirror down here to see our haggard faces.
We rinse, we spit. As we were taught.

How many of us know the name Bob Ross? How many used to watch his show?

Burning Down Suburbia
By Sjohnna McCray

—an Ode to Bob Ross
When I was younger, I watched the world blend
on PBS. The painter with the Jewfro hypnotized me.
With a thumb hooked through the palette,
he painted forward from the base coat
like a god might use a blueprint.
Behind the image is always the word:
light. On top came tiny crisscross strokes
of phthalo blue. A rapturous pinwheel of words
unveiled sky. Two sharp strokes of titanium white
slashed with gray from the master’s knife
became wings, gulls taking flight. I begged for nothing
but paints that summer. Already equipped -with an afro,
I sat before the paper and the cakes of color
and tried to figure out the path to cerulean,
the wrist twist to evergreens and the motion
for clouds. The oversaturated paper dried and cracked
with the fine lines of lightning. The worlds he reproduced
might as well have been Asgard or Olympus.
How I longed for a visit. Might he come
armed with a fan brush and dressed in a button down?
To be soothed by his voice and taken,
lured from the dining-room table and shown
the suburb’s majesty. Look son, he might say,
at the pile of autumn leaves, the shade
on that forest-green trash bag. Using his two-inch brush
he’d blend the prefab homes on the hill
until they seemed mysterious, folded hues
of Prussian blue, Van Dyke brown, and a blaze of alizarin crimson.

How many of us have brushed away admonitions of a grandparent, parent, teacher, etc.? How many have learned to embrace them?

Don’t Cheapen Yourself
By Jana Harris

You look sleazy tonight
ma said.
Cheap, I said.
I’m doin cheap.
You got any idea
how much it costs
to do cheap these days?
To do gold City of Paris
three-inch platform sandals
and this I. Magnin snake dress?
I’m doin cheap.
You look like a bird, she said
a Halloween bird with red waxed lips.
—In high school
you could either do cheap or Shakespeare,
college prep or a pointy bra,
ratting a bubble haircut
with a toilet brush.
I was not allowed to do high school cheap;
I did blazers and wool skirts
from the Junior League thrift shop.
In high school it was
don’t walk in the middle of
Richie, Leelee, and the baby,
you might come between them.
You look like a skag
wearin that black-eyed makeup,
people are gunna think you’re cheap.
While I poured red food dye
on my hair
to match my filly’s tail for the rodeo,
ma beat her head against the wall,
she said
tryin to make me nice.
I tried real hard,
but the loggers, the Navy guys,
they always hit on me.
Cause you’re an easy mark, ma said.
And I played guilty,
I played guilty every time.
But now, I said
now I’m doin cheap.

How many of us would love to brush our worries away and have faith that things will work out?

300 Goats
By Naomi Shihab Nye

In icy fields.
Is water flowing in the tank?
Will they huddle together, warm bodies pressing?
(Is it the year of the goat or the sheep?
Scholars debating Chinese zodiac,
follower or leader.)
O lead them to a warm corner,
little ones toward bulkier bodies.
Lead them to the brush, which cuts the icy wind.
Another frigid night swooping down — 
Aren’t you worried about them? I ask my friend,
who lives by herself on the ranch of goats,
far from here near the town of Ozona.
She shrugs, “Not really,
they know what to do. They’re goats.”

How many of us have considered the unique context loved ones existed in after they have been brushed from this life?

Rice-Field Road at Dusk
By Suji Kwock Kim

After Ko Un
In the village it’s the season of dried grass,
the smell of   burned dirt,
gaslight glinting through blackened stubble.
I walk home across the rice-fields,
brushing insects away from my face,
remembering old Namdong who was buried yesterday.
What does death ask of us?
I must change whatever it was I was
when the old man was alive.
I keep looking at the rice-fields, glinting in the dark.
Blasted by mildew, more withered than last year —
how much work and love it must have taken.
In autumn, no matter how bad the harvest,
how big the debts —
no thought of   leaving here, no thought of rest.
As life goes on, time isn’t the largest thing to think of,
it’s the smallest.
Growing, going
in drought or monsoon, mold or blight —
what is the rice if  not alive?

The source of the poems are found at the link at the title. Learn more about each of these excellent poets by clicking on the link of the poet’s name.

Once again, we have come to the place where you put your proverbial pen to paper and warm it with your poetic spirit’s will in words.

• Pen us a poem of precisely 44 words (not counting the title), including some form of the word brush.
• Post your Quadrille piece on your blog and link back to this post.
• Place the link to your actual post (not your blog url) on the Mister Linky page.
• Don’t forget to check the little box to accept use/privacy policy.
• Please visit other blogs and comment on their posts!
• Have fun (but only if you want to!)