Patchwork Prose and Verse
Amber from Oklahoma is our host today for the fourth day of the February Open Write. She inspires us to write observational haikus, just as the main character in Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo does. You can read Amber’s full prompt and the poems of others here.
life rhythms in taps
fingers counting syllables
taking it all in
making sense this way
of all that’s illogical
poems can do that
Our host today for the third day of the February Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Britt Decker of Texas. She inspires us to write poems of hurt and healing You can read Britt’s full prompt and the poems of others here. Britt inspires us to write a poem in any form we’d like that considers a moment, object, process, relationship, or anything else, that has simultaneously acted as a healing and hurting agent.
depths of forgiveness
understood, finally, as
she welcomed her child
Stacey L. Joy of Los Angeles, California is our host today for the second day of the Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. She writes, “Back in April 2021 for Verselove, our Ethical ELA friend, Dr. Kim Johnson, prompted us to write a mirror poem by finding words from another poet to use in our original poems. I fell in love with You, too, Can Fly by Zetta Elliot. And I fell deeper in love with the Etheree as my form. It’s Black History Month, and my heart longs for hope during such difficult times. I know our ancestors left us with hope. It’s up to us to find it and spread it.”
You can read Stacey’s full prompt and the poems of others, along with the process for writing an etheree here.
I used two of my favorite black poets’ works today, and one favorite of Mexican-American descent, to blend an etheree in celebration of all strong women of this nation: Lucille Clifton (won’t you celebrate with me) and Maya Angelou (The Human Family), two strong women whose poetry modeled what our reigning US Poet Laureate Ada Limon meant when she wrote How To Triumph Like A Girl. And here we are, standing on this bridge together.
Lifting Our Shirts
take
my hand
celebrate
togetherness
strength in unity
we are more alike, my
friend(s), than we are unalike
the human family survives
on this bridge of lady heart triumph
just lift our shirts and see to believe it
Donnetta Norris of Texas is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com with a LOVEly invitation for this Saturday morning in February to kick off this month’s Open Write. You can read her full prompt and poem here. Her Paul Laurence Dunbar-inspired poem Invitation to Love in turn inspired me to mirror a poem by a favorite black poet. I love so many – Jericho Brown, Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Clint Black, and many more – – but of course, Lucille Clifton captures my soul in every poem. I fell in love with blessing the boats (at St. Mary’s)when its final line was chosen for the National Poetry Month theme a couple of years ago. She inspired me to lower case my letters in an e.e. cummings style, and I have been doing that ever since in most poems I write. Here is Clifton’s mentor poem I took from The Poetry Foundation as my inspiration for the prayer poem I wrote today:
blessing the boats
(at St. Mary’s)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
Here is my prayer poem, filled with love:
blessing the children (and theirs)
may these prayers
offered each morning
whispered Heavenward
from the Rav4 road to work
(my prayer chamber)
multiply exponentially
with peace, health, safety,
sobriety, love, joy, provision, and
all good things
may these intercessions
meet you where you are and
keep you in God’s grace
may they stir in your heart
blessing you and yours
with a holy head kiss
divine in all love
lingering through the years
forever
Amen.
tax returns
sleeping in
cleaning
audiobooks
vet visits
dog play
for every meh there’s a yaaay
{{{winter break begins today!}}}
First, I checked the library, and there were dozens on the waiting list for the ebook and the audiobook. It would be months before it would be available.
Then, I checked my local bookstore in my small town. They were all sold out.
I kicked myself. I’d had my hand on a copy in a mega bookstore two weeks ago and had put it back, thinking I’d wait and either check it out to read it for free or support my small town bookstore instead of purchasing it right then and there. as I’d really wanted to do – to dive into it and lose myself in the words and the affirmations and head-nodding I knew would happen in those chapters. Lessons I needed and lessons I already knew.
Then came the first phone call. My husband’s brother’s wife, whom I still call my own sister-in-law and who’d read the book after she’d written her own on a similar topic just months before, had good things to say.
Then the second phone call. My brother’s wife, too, was in the thick of chapter 4 and couldn’t put it down.
I hung up and ordered a copy, which arrived on Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon, I was halfway finished – and my husband had been as interested as I was once it arrived, so I used an Audible credit to download it so he could listen as I read (note: the Audible version, read by the author, doesn’t follow the book exactly – – it’s like an engaging conversation, and it pulled us both right in).
And here we are, all the better, with a new mindset.
I’ll let them do it.
I won’t try to persuade them.
I’ll mind my business.
I’ll stay in my lane.
I’ll flash my own turn signals.
I’ll drive my own car.
I’ll map my own route.
I’ll schedule my own detours.
I like scenic routes.
I’m out of the fray.
I’m not making their choices.
They’ll have to do that.
.
.
Fitz wants proof
the bagel is
really truly gone
climbs on chairs
stands on tables
wants the evidence
it’s all gone ~
hops back down
food dreams deferred
I worry about this one
this sweet little fawn who
used to have a twin
when they
still
had
spots
we’d watched them
from the window
for weeks
clumsily playing
beside mama
just yards
from our front door
near the edge
of the woods
before spotting one
crumpled on the road
near the driveway
near their
dense thicket
and now this one
with her rumpled rump fur
comes calling
alone
so close
to the house
as if she’s trying
to
say
something
Have you ever seen a dog that can flatten himself right into a chair, a bed, or the floor? If our Ollie were a poem, he’d be a skinny poem. He could win an upside-down limbo contest and beat a snake at it.
he flattens out
Ollie
rescued
schnoodle
skinny
Ollie
abandoned
neglected
adopted
Ollie
he flattens out
Taken from The Skinny Poetry Nation blog: The “Skinny” is a short poem form that consists of eleven lines. The first and eleventh lines can be any length (although shorter lines are favored). The eleventh and last line must be repeated using the same words from the first and opening line (however, they can be rearranged). The second, sixth, and tenth lines must be identical. All the lines in this form, except for the first and last lines, must be comprised of ONLY one word. The Skinny was created by Truth Thomas in theTony Medina Poetry Workshop at Howard University.
Last week, I heard them before I saw them – which is rarely the case. Usually, they’re perched up on a tree limb or on a wire watching for the slightest rustling in the underbrush below, looking for living snacks. Not last week, though. The house was quiet, when out of nowhere the familiar cries came nearer. Soon, they seemed right overhead – and sure enough, I stepped out onto the front porch, glanced up, and saw them.
I feared for our families of rabbits and our raccoon (which may actually be one of a pair with little ones) that has just checked in to live among the wild critters at the Johnson Funny Farm. We have a revolving door for all kinds of furry and feathered and scaly and armored friends, from armadillos to foxes to possums to raccoons, to rabbits, field mice, bobcats, fox-squirrels, chipmunks, owls, herds and herds of all-day-deer, rogue donkeys and wayward cattle (even bulls, yes), escaped horses, dogs, snakes, skunks, coyotes, birds of all kinds, and feral cats. We have even had wild boar come through years ago, and a mysterious creature that my parents swear was a Florida panther back in 2010, even though I still question that. We believe we have had a bear, too, on the wilder side of the farm where hunters once took the back gate down and began dumping deer heads and wild hog carcasses like it was a regular landfill back there before we reinstalled a heavier gate and an old non-working camera with a No Trespassing sign.
Seeing hawks, though, as often as it happens, is always a bittersweet sight. I love the majestic presence, but even as I near the age of 60, I am still skittish about the brutal cruelty of nature. And so much of it goes on right here in the woods.
Just like the regular world we live in, where most of us feel more like rabbits right about now.
Red-Shouldered Hawk pair
circles overhead, seeking
unsuspecting prey
Common Threads 