My writing groups converge today – Slice of Life Challenge writers and Open Write writers take joy on days when we get to see all of our fellow writers on the same day when the stars align. I’m so grateful for these groups of writers who are positive people, inspiring others to write. I also joined The Stafford Challenge in January, and we are around Day 160 of writing a poem every day for one entire year – so we’re close to the middle mark. Where would I be without my writing family? I don’t want to know.
Anna Roseboro of Michigan is our host for Day 4 of the June Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. She inspires us today to write reflection/projection poems, using synonyms for those words by looking forward and looking back. You can read her full prompt here. Today I have a working retreat before going off contract for three weeks over the summer, so I’ll be doing a lot of this today. I wrote a nonet, a nine-line poem with line-numbered syllables on each line in descending order.
Slice of Life writers are bloggers who share our posts and something about the moments of our lives. We write every day during March and all through the year on Tuesdays. You can find the home page at www.twowritingteachers.org to learn more. Today’s Slicing prompt is thinking about what inspires us to write on the early days of summer. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m almost there…….
Today is Global Big Day, and I’ve already been out birdwatching for over an hour. Come join me! No matter where I go birding, my heart feels happy. Normally, I’m home on the farm, but today I’m camping in one of Georgia’s amazing state parks. The sounds of morning birds on a campsite near a lake are second to none in the great choir of feathered friends. Join me in a bird count today!
Today we wrap up #VerseLove 2024 at http://www.ethicalela.com with a prompt from Dr. Sarah Donovan, inviting us to choose a favorite prompt from the month and write another poem on that same prompt. I chose Stacey Joy’s In Our Mama’s Kitchens and Fran Haley’s The First Time. A very special thanks to Sarah Donovan and to Two Writing Teachers for giving us a space to write and grow and encourage each other. I look back as a preacher’s kid growing up in a household where one truly never knew which way the ball was coming, and today’s poem takes me back to the first time I knew I needed to hold on tight.
Pastorium Perils
late summer 1971 in rural Reynolds, Georgia the land of peach trees in their time of ripeness
Mama was pregnant with my baby brother and we were in the den Mama Daddy and me when
~~whoosh~~
in through the kitchen door a naked girl with long wet hair streaked through our house holding a towel screaming all the way down the hall to my parents’ bedroom
locking the door on her heels her stepdad pounding and screaming threatening her life I recognized them from church
I was five the girl was a teenager (with flapping boobs ……and hair….down there?) her stepdad was drunk
my mother clutched me carried me like a football into my room locked the door
then ran through the connecting bathroom
I followed, fearful to stay alone crawled under their bed
Mama found the girl huddled in the bottom of their closet shaking crying uncontrollably wailing for help Mama comforted her clothed her sat on the bed holding her
called the cops
we listened in fear for Dad as we waited
those slurred screams of fury are seared into my memory forever
she comes with me or I’ll go get my ruiner and ruin you
then more voices, the crash of a lamp furniture slamming
handcuffs, arrest, police report one prominent family in ruins
exposed
it was the first time I knew growing up a preacher’s kid would bring a whole cast of characters always calling mostly clothed
it was the first time I saw a naked teenager running for her life
Common Threads 