Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Drafting
today a sinuous slipstream of poems
roared onto the straightaway
each drawing the one that followed
so close there was no wake
each pushing the one before
ever faster toward the finish
Tag Archives: writing practice
Unprompted poetry: jury duty
Jury duty service this week has provided surprising opportunities for poetry, with new people and settings, lengthy silences, and stretches of solitude.
Reflections
move like smoke across the glass
neither inside nor outside
trapped between worlds
phantoms
Posted in Poetry
Tagged jury duty, poetry practice, spontaneous poetry, unprompted poetry, writing practice
Prompted poetry: 5 a.m./supermarket in California
Some of the prompts from 30/30 Poetry have seemed a bit strange to me this year, but I’ve decided that’s a good thing because it stretches me. Yesterday’s prompt (supermarket in California) just left me scratching my head…until I glanced back at Thursday’s prompt (5 a.m.) and something clicked.
The supermarket at 5 a.m. is a place of quiet
industry. No elderly couple blocks the aisle
to argue about gefilte fish. No piercing
toddler wail tracks a mother’s progress
through the building. No man consults
a cell phone before a confounding wall of soup.
Stock clerks tidy shelves. The bakery fills
the air with delicious warmth. Sprinklers
hiss softly over the produce. Slicers whir
behind the deli and meat counters. Voices
rise and fall, indistinct above the gentle
drone of the refrigerated cases.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged 30/30 Poetry Challenge, National Poetry Month, poetry practice, prompted poetry, writing practice
Prompt: anywhere out of the world
This was Thursday’s prompt from the 30/30 Writing Challenge. I thought it was kind of awkward, but the discomfort led me to play with it a bit more than I might have done with something more straightforward. Hey, it’s practice; it’s all good.
No Escape
the world is anywhere
but out, a roundness looping
back on itself like a snake
swallowing its own tail
or that nifty paper trick
from grade school wherein
a single twist is all you need
to model infinity
Prompted poetry: walkers at dawn
It’s still National Poetry Month! Above is yesterday’s prompt from WordXWord’s 30/30 Poetry Challenge (http://3030poetry.com/). Below is yesterday’s poem.
The Dawn Walkers
We follow the terminator’s endless
sweep, throw long shadow
legs over mountains, span plains, leap whole
valleys, stride through forests. We skim
oceans, dive from shore to shore, not quite touching
the surface, ours the flight of night and day, ever
tumbling as the round world rolls.
Prompted poetry: child’s garden
April is National Poetry Month, and I signed up again to receive daily e-mail prompts through WordXWord’s 30/30 Poetry Challenge (http://3030poetry.com/). This is what I did with yesterday’s prompt.
Unattended
I had thought to leave the child
to play in the garden, safely
fenced around and gated, but the child
had other ideas, found an old spoon
and tunneled down through the loose
soil of the carrot bed, all the way
to China.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged 30/30 Poetry Challenge, National Poetry Month, prompted poetry, WordXWord, writing practice
Prompted poetry: crickets
The good news is that I’ve been writing again after my lengthy (or so it feels) and unplanned hiatus. The bad news is that there has been little worth sharing; I don’t seem to bounce back very quickly in any area of my life these days. I tender the following as proof.
Moonset
a cradle moon hangs low
in the west, shallow horns draped
soft with mist — night’s own child
sleeps there, breath like the slow
churring of cold crickets
Prompted poetry: wolf bite
Today is Poetry Wednesday at The Write Prompts, and the assigned form is haiku. I decided I could manage haiku this morning — just seventeen syllables (if you disregard the finer points of the form, which I did.)
the winter wind howls
down the valley as it leaves
toothmarks on my neck
Posted in Poetry
Tagged prompted poetry, The Write Prompts, writing practice, writing prompts
Riff poetry: Daisies
This may be more of an echo than a riff, as much of the wording matches that of the poem that inspired it, Roxi St. Clair’s “Pushing Up Daisies.” Please visit her site to read her original poem. I give Roxi full credit for the word choice here; I merely tinkered with the arrangement. I especially love her use of the word “ogham.”
Daisies
I lie beneath the weather
beaten and faded
with each season passing nobody
knows me but I
know every time footsteps sound
above my joy
trembles with yearning for this
glimpse of presence
enclosed my spirit loses
the meaning of its blossoming
in this dark place as roots
till the soil I no longer stir
to mimic life
on rainy days you can smell the wet
earth where I live when clouds sob
tears of spring and butterflies
spread sail upon the breeze
I remember the Milky Way
aglow in the heavens and Heaven
too a place that aches with meeting
and parting you can lose
time in a place like that for we dance
briefly on the edge of life like water
drops on the tip of a leaf
but here roots grow die shrivel root
again like fingers marking
the passage of time in oghams
of earth and bone I read in solitude
seasons of seed sprout
bud blossom for you to pluck
their beauty and carry
me through the years
Prompted poetry: dreaming dead
I found this while flipping back through my journal. It seemed particularly apt for All Saints Day/The Day of the Dead, when people of various cultures celebrate the blessed memory of those who have gone before.
Dream life of the dead
what dreams dog the dead
in their eternal sleep?
for even those cut off
by dismembering violence
rest in the end
the dead are not uneasy
but in the imagination of the living
whose envy cannot bear
the thought of such abiding
peace
if the dead stir, they merely telegraph
their dreams in cryptic twitches
and inscrutable murmurs, as sleeping
dogs before the hearth
of a winter’s night
Posted in Poetry
Tagged All Saints Day, Day of the Dead, dreams, poetry practice, prompted poetry, writing practice
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