It’s Day 5 of the Slice of Life Challenge at Twowritingteachers.org, and as I move through the month of March celebrating living poets, I think back to the summer that Penny Kittle invited readers to engage with You are No Longer in Trouble during the Book Love Summer Reading Club. I was mesmerized by the prose poems that Nicole Stellon O’Donnell wrote as she told of her life growing up a Principal’s kid and later becoming a teacher herself. This book is a treasure, and one in which I believe we can all see ourselves at some point of our lives. For me, it’s the poem Marriage, about second graders getting married in “a rash of weddings” at recess with flowers pressed into aluminum foil bouquets. Sheer treasure!
Nicole Stellon O’Donnell of Alaska is a master of prose poems! You can read more about her at this link.
I’ve used this collection to write a Cento by taking lines of her existing poetry and rearranging them into a new poem.
Tips for Not Sagging
Even the waitress at the post-funeral reception noticed
nothing about me sags.
Bag sagging between her hands,
it’s in the steps, in the motion of go, in the bent knees, the swing of an arm.
Never forget that.
Taken from these poems, in this order: Excuses for the Pilgrimage; A Teacher Playing a Movie Star Playing a Teacher; At Least Name What it Is; No One Takes Attendance at Commencement; What Not to Say to Your Students at the Juvenile Detention Center.
Common Threads 
O’Donnell’s book sounds like a “for sure” keeper! Then, your poem takes me into an unexpected scenario of how we all act and react in the end of life scenario. It is in the “motion of go” that I guess some of us can “literally” reduce sags! As always, thanks for the book resource
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Kim,
Love this cento and the titles of poems you selected are fabulous. I like prose poems but do question some that wear that label because I want tightly structured prose poems w/out being verbs. I have so many thoughts about sagging/-my purse sagging off my shoulder, my sagging skin and boobs, but I’m not letting my mood sag or my resolve, or my sashaying hips. I’m walking into old age hiding as much sag as I can!
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Sounds like O’Donnell’s book is the perfect retirement gift for a teacher. Perhaps “sagging” is a stage of life?
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