Category: Literature

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Open Write Day 2 of 3 October 2025 – Kim Johnson

Magic 8 Ball Poems 

I’m honored to be the host today for the second day of the October Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. You can read my full prompt below, but also please visit the website link above later in the day to see the poems that others have written.

I subscribe to Poetry, the periodical published by The Poetry Foundation that features modern-day poets and their poems.  I enjoy the inspiration that I find here – seed starters of ideas, borrowed lines, concepts, and forms.  Such was the case when I stumbled across Magic 8 Ball by Nicole Gonzalez.  You can read her poem below, noting the questions she asks, with those classic 8-ball answers that pop up in a black-liquid window, sharing all the truths and secrets of universe.  

Magic Eight Ball | The Poetry Foundation

Process

Consider the 12 Magic 8 Ball answers below.  Use the responses to craft a poem with questions followed by these answers.  Your poem can be humorous, serious, or completely random.  You may choose to use all of the responses below, some of them or you own responses, or the same response every time (like a broken Magic 8 Ball to incorporate repetition).   You could even make it a fun game by writing your list of questions on one side, writing the answers on strips of paper, and then pulling the answers from a hat to make the poetry writing experience feel extra-magical today.  Also, there is a Magic 8 Ball online that will generate answers (I learned this from Kevin, the first poet to respond to the prompt this morning).

Concentrate and ask again

Outlook not so good

Very doubtful

Without a doubt

Better not tell you now

My sources say no

It is decidedly so

Ask again later

Yes definitely

My reply is no

Cannot predict now

You may rely on it

Here is my poem, taken from the inspiration of Nicole Gonzalez:

Divine Truths in a Magic 8 Ball 

Is this the real life?  

You may rely on it.

Are we really gonna need a bigger boat?

Cannot predict now. 

Can you milk a cat, Greg?

My sources say no.

Will Birkenstocks ever be sexy?

Outlook not so good.

Do you believe in magic?

Yes definitely.

Is Pig 3 out there if you only see the ones numbered 1, 2, and 4? 

Very doubtful.

If it all fell to pieces tomorrow, would you still be mine?

Ask again later.

Is this love?  

Concentrate and ask again. 

Is she really going out with him?

Without a doubt.

Does the hand that rocks the cradle rule the world?    

It is decidedly so.

Is this the dawning of the Age of Aquarius?

My reply is no. 

Will you still love me tomorrow? 

Better not tell you now. 

I’m passing the pen to you to write your own poem. Please share it on the http://www.ethicalela.com website!

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Fireside Stories 2025

How did we get kids talking?

How do you get a three year old

to share stories?

Campfire Stories Kids’ Deck!

It’s the theme of this trip- fireside stories. We’re sharing memories and telling stories, and even the youngest kids are getting in on the action. One of the best story generators I’ve ever seen for all ages is Campfire Stories Deck for Kids.

We’ve all been playing. Each storyteller takes a character card (a clumsy fox, a talkative bison, a gassy whale) and an action card (finds a treasure in the desert, accidentally pulls the drain at the bottom of the ocean, jumps into a cloud from a mountaintop). One grandchild laughed so hard telling his story we could hardly understand him. We’ve all had the belly giggles from listening and envisioning the scenes.

Each night of the trip has been full of stories, and we can’t wait to tell more!

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October Tricube

I love writing tricubes! In a tricube poem, there are three stanzas. Each stanza has three lines. Each line has three syllables. The rhyme scheme is a,b,c,a,b,c,a,b,c. Try your own today, and feel the fun of writing a poem!

mist veil floats
home fires burn
witches' hats

eerie notes
tree leaves turn
sleek black cats

sweater coats
earthlings learn
vampire bats
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What are you Waiting For?

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt asks the question, “What are you Waiting For?”

Today I offer you a tricube. It’s three stanzas of three lines with 3 syllables.

Let’s Just Be Real

I’m waiting

to retire

next chapters

exciting

relaxing

traveling

reading books

in sweatpants

until noon

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Open Write Day 3 of 3 September 2025

Today’s host for the last day of September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. Barb and I have collaborated on several writing projects together over the past decade, most recently our book entitled Assessing Students with Poetry Writing Across Content Areas: Humanizing Formative Assessment, published Taylor & Francis, a division of Routledge Press, released earlier this month. We write together the first Monday of each month in a small Zoom group and share what is happening in our lives. She’s the friend who shared with me the cards I’ve been using from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. You can read her full prompt here today, as she inspires us to choose any text or piece of art and write about it. She models an extended Fibonacci Sequence poem form using syllable counts 1,1,2,3,5,8 forward and reverse and I’m doing the same today with the same poem I used yesterday to inspire my writing ~ Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro. Hop on over to the prompt link later in the day to read the poems others have written!

What Marsh Nymphs Know

marsh

nymph’s

green glass

beads stolen

right out of the moon

attract the filthiest goblin

with more on his mind than those beads

but marsh nymphs know how

to handle

goblins ~

aim,

kick

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Open Write Day 2 of 3 September 2025

Today’s host at http://www.ethicalela.com’s Day 2 of the September Open Write is Allison Berryhill of Iowa. She teaches high school journalism and is a frequent host of amazing prompts in our writing group. Come read more about Allison and her full prompt here, as she inspires us to write a retelling poem.

I chose to rewrite my favorite childhood poem, Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro, as a Shakespearean Sonnet, a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, where the rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg, with ten syllables per line. Here is the original poem:

Overheard on a Saltmarsh

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?

Give them me.

No.

Give them me. Give them me.

No.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,

Lie in the mud and howl for them.

Goblin, why do you love them so?

They are better than stars or water,

Better than voices of winds that sing,

Better than any man’s fair daughter,

Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads, I want them.

No.

I will howl in the deep lagoon

For your green glass beads, I love them so.

Give them me. Give them.

No.

– Harold Monro (1879 – 1932)

***. ***. ***

Here is my Shakespearean Sonnet:

Nymphs Don’t Play

a goblin glumphed upon a marsh nymph fair

far through the pluff he’d glimpsed a glow of green

such beauty drew him to her, for to stare

pay homage to her globes he hoped to glean

nymph, nymph he glowered, sweetening his gaze

as moonlight cast a truth beam on intent

this young sylph, so accustomed to his ways

was not a stranger to his guileful glint

what are your beads that cast such radiant gleam?

they’re moonbeads, goblin, made of emerald glass

which thereupon his threat suddenly seemed

the type that beckoned kicking goblin ass

and so this marsh nymph, queen of her domain

unleashed unparalleled gonadic pain

-Kim Johnson

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Thinking About Fiction

This month, I’m writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. Today we’re inspired to think of a character and write about him/her/them, telling who they are.

all this fiction

all this drama

these problems

these feelings

these backstabbers

these bullshitters

are bigger in life

than they ever

were between any pages

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July Gift Basket for the Bad Ass Book Club

This month, I’m sharing some of Dad’s conversations in his final days, and in one of them that you can hear at the bottom of this post, he revealed a surprising thought about how we feel about folks from time to time. His revelation reminded me of a poem that I wrote recently for a small group of women in one of my writing circles.

My Stafford Challenge group meets the first Monday of each month by Zoom to chat and write together, and we’re a group of women who enjoy reading as much as writing. I’ve been writing a form each month called Gift Basket writing, where I choose three things I’d give a person in a gift basket for that month. This one is dedicated especially to my Stafford Writing Group sisters – Barb Edler of Iowa, Glenda Funk of Idaho, and Denise Krebs of California. At the time I wrote this, I’d recently stumbled across a book club I’d love to join, even for the name alone, and there is actually a summer camp in Maine for its readers – this is a real thing. My dream summer is going to this book club’s summer camp, and I’ve added it to the bucket list.

Bad Bitch Book Club

if I were giving you

a gift basket

I’d make it a

Bad Bitch gift basket

to welcome the storms

of the world~

you’d receive

a t-shirt that says

BAD BITCH BOOK CLUB

complete with

a membership to

the Bad Bitch Book Club

(yes ~ it’s a real thing

with its own dot com)

and a mirror

so you’ll always

see the

baddest of the kick-ass bad

right in the palm of your hand~

knowing your Bad Bitch sisters

have your back!

It’s okay to have a BB attitude sometimes……even my preacher Dad in his final days confessed that there are times we are all a little bit badass. You can listen here:

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Felix’s Favorite Stories: The Secret to Happiness

Dad told the Secret to Happiness story best and referenced it often in his sermons. In the photo below, the fairy fable from Leo Buscaglia’s Loving Each Other is one he took to heart. He was always meeting the needs of others, always illustrating lessons through stories. This month, I’m sharing some of the audio clips I recorded as my brother and I talked with him in his final days. His words live on.

secrets lie within

the pages of obscure books

read widely: you’ll see

Dad gave me this book for Christmas one year – I always got a box of recommended reading, sometimes with exact references – as Loving Each Other by Leo Buscaglia had in the side note.
Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers at Slice of Life
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July Shadorma

who better

to lead our nation

than the ones

who built it:

caring women and men with

strong humanity?

Today’s Shadorma was inspired by Dad’s views on women in leadership roles. You can listen below to his story he shared about the power of women in ministry, words from the heart spoken by our Southern Baptist father as told to his two Southern Baptist children (one of us is currently married to a member of the Catholic faith, and one of us formerly was) in his final days of life. The thing about Dad was his love for others. ALL others, even those who believed differently from him. His full embrace of humanity far exceeded differences of religion, politics, sexual orientation, and race. He even loved those who didn’t like Georgia Bulldog football or the Atlanta Braves.

It all had something to do with the way his mother demonstrated this first. He learned from her. Take a listen: