Patchwork Prose and Verse
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
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
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
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
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
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:
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
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:
My friend Margaret Simon of Louisiana is always inspiring me to try new forms. We write with several overlapping writing groups. Margaret hosts Poetry Friday and This Photo Wants to Be a Poem, organizes Spiritual Thursdays, blogs with Slice of Life, hosts and writes for EthicalELA during #VerseLove and the monthly Open Writes, and is a member of the Stafford Challenge. She has also published several books, and we presented a poetry writing workshop together in April at the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. She recently posted that the Poetry Sisters had written Raccontino poems, which are couplets of any number where the even-numbered lines end on the same rhyme and the title is expressed in the last words of the odd-numbered lines. I raise a glass to my writing friend Margaret today. You can follow her on her blog Reflections on the Teche.
Family Vacations
packing suitcases ~ memories to make
experiencing life before we leave
there is no better way to spend our time
than taking a trip ~ a welcome reprieve
from routine demands, a fortress built for
placing importance in what we believe
things we can only learn as we travel
(like setting aside our personal peeves)
savoring now, embracing family
holding presence as belonging we weave
interlocking fingers: togetherness
fastening futures ~ no regrets to grieve
If I were giving
you a gift basket
I’d go green!
you’d receive
an herb garden
to season your skillet
a canister of Poet’s green tea
to strengthen your stylus
and a sliver of
Sterling Moss soap from Green Willow of Georgia
to scent your shower
a basket sure
to sweeten your spirit!
Common Threads 