Challenge from Stacey Joy: craft a Call of Words poem
By reading a favorite poem or passage and selecting key words to use to construct new ideas and arrangements.
My inspiration poem:
Southern Gothic by Natasha Trethewey
I have lain down into 1970, into the bed
my parents will share for only a few more years.
Early evening, they have not yet turned from each other
In sleep, their bodies covered – parentheses
framing the separate lives they’ll wake to. Dreaming
I am again the child with too many questions –
the endless why and why and why
my mother cannot answer, her mouth closed, a gesture
toward her future: cold lips stitched shut.
The lines in my father’s face deepen
Toward an expression of grief. I have come home
From the schoolyard with the words that shadow us
In this small Southern town – peckerwood and nigger
lover, half-breed and zebra – words that take shape
outside us. We’re huddled on the tiny island of bed, quiet
in the language of blood: the house, unsteady
on its cinderblock haunches, sinking deeper
into the muck of ancestry. Oil lamps flicker
around us – our shadows, dark glyphs on the wall,
bigger and stranger than we are.
My Call of Words poem:
Endless Grief By Kim Johnson
From the shadows of the cruel flickers of awareness
of the disease that closed the door to a golden sunset future,
my mother wasn’t asking for answers
to the endless questions.
She became the island she lived on, her
intermittent unsteady steps
sinking into the muck
of Lewy Body Dementia,
a deepening cold toward the strangers she’d always loved,
dreaming of years long ago as today.
Four years later, why won’t my father face his grief?
He lives on in their house,
sleeping in their bed,
dreaming of catching glimpses of Miriam
In the expressions of another who cannot
see that she will never separate
his heart from Miriam – his high school sweetheart, the Love of his Life.
Common Threads 
Dear Moleskine Journal,
You’re a legend –
my favorite affordable luxury (don’t tell the Pilot).
You’re in MY hands, holding MY thoughts and ideas –
But before mine –
You held the depression of Hemingway- Ernest,
The renderings of VanGogh – Vincent,
And the adventures of Chatwin – Bruce –
Who first called you a Moleskine,
Packing you into his pockets for every journey.
If you can handle the depression and adventure of those explorers,
Surely you can handle my little old rural farm life and times.
Dear Pilot Varsity Fountain Pen,
You’re a classic –
My favorite affordable luxury (don’t tell the Mole).
You pick MY brain and share MY secrets –
But before mine –
You shared the side-splitting tales of Twain – Mark,
With his Conklin Self-Filling,
And the mysteries of Doyle – Conan,
With his Parker Duofold,
And the horror of Lovecraft – Howard (H.P),
With his Waterman.
Even Hemingway himself – Ernest,
Has Montegrappas designed for all the phases of his life –
The Soldier, The Traveller, The Fisherman, and The Writer.
If you can stretch into those deep-thinking wells,
Surely you can dip into my little old shallow basin.
Each of you has my heart –
And while I don’t play favorites
Or do love triangles,
I can’t choose between the two of you.
So we shall live our days as a braided trio –
My Pilot, My Moleskine, and little old me!