Tag Archives: poetry practice

Everything seems to shift in September. The angle of the sun is distinctly different, the amount of daylight is perfectly balanced, and the temperature and humidity become once again bearable. Everyone is in school and we can settle into a productive routine.

To that end, I’m setting myself a writing challenge for the month: produce 30 poems in 30 days. This year’s NaPoWriMo was a terrific warm-up for Lexington Poetry Month, and I hope to use this month to do the same for NaNoWriMo in November (though I have no intention of working on a novel). I even created my own logo! 

So here is the first poem, a found poem from “Thinking Outside the Bots,” by Gary Shteyngart, in the June issue of Smithsonian Magazine (p. 80).

Seonbawi (Zen rock)

a weather-eroded rock formation that looks
like two robed monks, said to guard
the city – where women come to pray
for fertility, often laden with food
offerings for the spirits (Sun Chips seem to be in abundance
on the day I visit) the women bow and pray
intently – one young worshiper, in a thick puffy
jacket and a woolen cap, seems especially focused –
squarely in the center of her prayer
mat she has propped an iPhone

later I ask why – one tells me
the young woman was recording to prove
to her mother-in-law that she went to the fertility
rock and prayed for hours
another suggests that the phone belonged
to a friend – the woman is creating
a connection between the timeless and immortal
spirits and her childless
friend – this explanation I like the most

the young lady journeys from her city of 25 million to spend
hours on a mountain in the cold, promoting
her friend’s dreams, hands clasped
tightly in prayer: in front of her, a giant
timeless weather-beaten rock and a small
electronic device steer her gently
into the imperfect world to come