open write – Page 7 – Common Threads

June 19, 2024June 19, 2024

Open Write June Day 5 with Jessica Wiley/ Day 155 of The Stafford Challenge

Today marks 155 days that those in The Stafford Challenge began a yearlong quest to write one poem each day for a whole year. Last night, we celebrated with poet Jessica Jacobs of North Carolina via Zoom, listening to her share her writing retreat to the desert of Arizona as she wrote about the art of Georgia O’Keefe. When writing group days intersect, it’s always interesting to see how several ideas can combine into one poem and fit in all of the spaces.

Jessica Wiley is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the final day of June’s Open Write for 2024. She inspires us to write poems by taking the spines of books and using them as lines. You can read her full prompt here.

My Reading Life

Life’s Greatest Treasure

Big Magic

Some Much-Loved Poems

Bear in the Back Seat

An Unexpected Guest

Living with Haints

Dead Uncles

June 18, 2024June 18, 2024

Slice of Life and Open Write June Day 4 with Anna Roseboro

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…….

Almost There

glancing backward to focus forward

setting the sails on this boat

checking wind direction

untying the ropes

feeling the breeze

smiling now

almost

there

June 16, 2024June 16, 2024

Open Write June Day 2 with Margaret Simon – Duplex Poems

Margaret Simon of New Iberia, Louisiana is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 2 of the June Open Write. You can read her full prompt here. Margaret inspires us to write Duplex poems in the style of Jericho Brown, using this process:

A duplex poem is 14 lines, 7 couplets, 9-11 syllables per line.

The second line from each stanza repeats as a first line for the next stanza.

The first line is echoed back in the last line.

My poem is inspired by a daughter’s new puppy, a dappled Dachshund named Jackson (after Jackson Pollock, for his spots). I used the Duplex form and thought of one of his famous paintings entitled Convergence and how his abstract art reminds me of things – – like these catastrophic chicken tacos that have no business being served in a shell that is only going to break and create food art under the first bite. Photo of Jackson below.

Catastrophic Chicken Tacos

catastrophic chicken tacos happen

always at lunch on taco Tuesdays

shells break, insides spill onto the plate

shells break, insides spill on to the plate

revealing shredded lettuce, tomatoes, chicken

all my cheese splatters broken taco art

like a Jackson Pollock painting: Convergence

a speckled canvas of confetti’ed food

catastrophic chicken tacos happen

Welcome to the family, dappled Jackson Pollock dachshund! May you paint the world with smiles and laughter and joy and leave your paw prints on every heart you meet!

June 12, 2024June 12, 2024

Mosaic

Ollie is upside-down

in the olive chair

chasing rabbits in

his sleep in the quiet

morning whirr of

the fan, coffee

steam rising from

my cup, Boo Radley

curled around my neck

like a fur-fringed coat

on the back of my chair,

Fitz hiding out under

the bed again

while I consider all

the fine porcelain

plates, these

place settings of past

destined to become

somebody’s mosaic

art piece of the

future

April 25, 2024

Day 25 of #VerseLove with Tammi Belko: Where I’m From Poems

Tammi Belko of Ohio is our host for Day 25 of #VerseLove. You can read her full prompt here. She inspires us today to write Where I’m From poems, based on George Ella Lyon’s “Where I am From” poem. She provides a template to create a “Where I Am From” poem.

Royal Fortress Meadow

I’m from the Royal Fortress Meadow

from Breck shampoo and Johnson’s No More Tears

from wispy locks of amber gold, windblown in the breeze

I’m from chain-woven crowns of wildflowers, dandelions, and daisies

from backlit sunlight exposing the truth: there will never be no more tears

from churning butter and wondering why the pants don’t fit

I’m from ancestors of the lye soap stirred in the backyard tin tub

from the front porch swing and swigging Mason Jars of sweet tea

from wash behind your ears and do a good tick check

from a don’t you slam that screen door one more time! flyswatter granny

who swatted more than flies

I’m from the country church of the cardboard funeral fans

with the off-key piano

I’m from Georgia, Cherokee blood three generation branches up-tree,

still searching for the bloodstained earth of my ancestors

from Silver Queen corn, husks shucked

from shady pecan groves and Vidalia onion fields

from Okefenokee swamplands and railroads

that side that tallied three pees before flushing

from clotheslines of fresh sheets teeming with sweet dreams

from sleeping under a box window fan in sweltering summer heat

from folks doing what they could to survive

April 19, 2024

Day 19 of #VerseLove with Dr. Stefani Boutelier of Michigan

Stefani Boutelier leads us in Irish poetry today. You can read her full prompt, along with the poems and comments of others, here. She writes,”Today I will introduce the Deibide Baise Fri Toin form. It was difficult to find the full history of this form and more impossible to get a clear translation, but I like how it ends with one word to represent the power of single words and syllables. The quatrain form (3/7/7/1) is explained here:

Line 1: 3 syllables, rhyme A with two syllables

Line 2: 7 syllables, rhyme A with two syllables

Line 3: 7 syllables, rhyme B with one syllable

Line 4: 1 syllable, rhyme B

A published example of a Deibide Baise Fri Toin

This link provides a nice templated example at the bottom

Praise!

shake and sing
gospel choir awakening 
hallelujah voices raise ~
praise!

March 20, 2024March 20, 2024

March Open Write Day 5, Stafford Challenge Day 64, Slice of Life Challenge Day 20

Shelley of Oklahoma is our host today for the final day of the March Open Write, encouraging us to write poems to help us relax. You can read her full prompt here. I have one of those conferences today – the kind in a town with a gas station and a stop sign and maybe a hot dog in the gas station and nothing else, and I’m driving in with coworkers from an hour and seven minutes northeast, and I’m not overnighting so I have to leave early and get home late and I know the coffee’s gonna suck because it always does when they have those plastic canisters of powdered creamer and only pink-packet off-brand sweetener.

But I’m trying to relax.

Really.

Frumpy

Relax - no one cares
whether your pants match your shirt
or that they're wrinkled

Relax - no one cares
that the tops of your feet are
white as unbaked bread

Relax - no one sees
you picking at your fingers
of chipped nail polish

Relax - no one knows
your Odor Eaters are now
expired by three months

Relax - just because 
you forgot to tweeze your lip
doesn't mean don't go

After all: you're the 
driver....others are counting
on you to get there

Relax - your oil got
changed, your gas tank's full and your
car is vacuumed out

Relax - your riders 
might find your car is cleaner
than theirs (not driven)

Relax - wait, is that
.....is that a seam coming out?
It's right on the butt

Nope, don't relax.  Go
change pants. Nothing clean? That's what
long sweaters are for.

Heck, grab a blanket
and wrap up like a student
.....relax for a change!

March 19, 2024March 19, 2024

March Open Write Day 4, Slice of Life Challenge Day 19, Stafford Challenge Day 63

Rex Muston of Iowa is our host today for the 4th day of the March Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. He inspires us to use our kitchen junk drawer to inspire poetry. You can read his full prompt here.

A kitchen junk drawer is second only as frightening to me as forgetting a piece of clothing and showing up at work for everyone to see all truth. It’s downright scary except for the drawer I did clean out last weekend. I still have one to go, and it’s the worst one. An invitation to explore those quirky drawer corners is fantastic! I love that even in the oddities, the junk, there are revelations of life and memories.  

Unbanded

One junk drawer
is empty
~the middle one~
but the one
on the edge
is chock-full
of random bits
and pieces

a years’ supply
of 9V batteries
for the
smoke alarms
we change
often
because
Boo Radley shivers
at the smell of
toaster heat and
smoke alarm chirps

plus the goat ball
banding tool
and bright orange
bands
as if the
whole horrid
thing
needed a
screaming
fluorescent
proclamation
across the farm

and a vintage
unfiltered
cigarette-
sized box of
Happy Family
ceramic pigs
from England

a mama
and twin
piglets
but no daddy
there was never
even a space
for his
unbanded
self

now
from the
Funny Farm
kitchen
windowsill
Mama smiles
with a sparkle-eye
bats her eyelashes
and thinks….

freedom!

March 17, 2024March 17, 2024

March Open Write Day 2, Slice of Life Challenge Day 17, The Stafford Challenge Day 61

Special Thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Challenge!

Katrina Morrison of Oklahoma is our host today for the second day of the March Open Write at http://www.ethicalea.com. You can read her full prompt here. She explains that misheard lyrics are called Mondegreen. I’m a fan of Coxy.Official, and when the whole bed is shaking with my laughter at night, my husband knows I’m watching Nathan Cox on Tik Tok. He’s the king of music Mondegreen, and so thanks to Katrina, I now know this misheard lyric genre has a name. Coxy’s short clips are for adults, and it’s not the words as much as his reactions that get my tickle box turned over. Now it makes me want to go find the exact lyrics for all those songs I often mis-sang growing up. I was never sure whether Clapton was saying she don’t ride, she don’t ride, she don’t ride cocaine or she’s alright, she’s alright, she’s alright cocaine, but either way you sing it, it works in the song.

My poem is about a text that became our own new phrase shortly after we married.

Loyding On Purpose Now

notification
his familiar text ding~ I
knew what it would say

same time, each morning
and his words never get old
or lose their meaning

I pulled up his text
unaware it would become
our new word for love

his ear-clogged iPhone
or else his autocorrect
sauced up his message:

I loyd you, he’d sent
over and over I laughed
trying to respond

in all-cap letters
I replied: I LOYD YOU, TOO
we’ve been loyding since

March 16, 2024March 16, 2024

Slice of Life Challenge Day 16, Stafford Challenge Day 60, March Open Write Day 1

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the magic of writing

James Coats is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com, where on this first day of the March Open Write, he asks us to write about the anarchist in us. You can read his full prompt here. When I was reading the prompt, my fingers were already running to the computer before the rest of me had even left the bed. I’m convinced that the most compelling poetry, and all writing really, lives in those shadows, lurks in the pain. My sympathies ahead of time to any PK parents out there and sincere apologies to any well-behaved PKs who turned out good.

When You Want to be Gryffindor But Your Slytherin Roots Say No…….. Slythindor

Okenfenokee swampland mud

plus Southern Baptist preacher’s blood

mix them and you’re bound to find

they breed an offbeat, lawless mind

this reptile in me, like Slytherin magic

broke dad’s sermons something tragic

stealing church chalk so I could play teacher

(kind of what you expect from the kid of a preacher)

I learned to smile, doodle tie in my hair

when I wanted to strike and crawl out of there

but

let me assure you, if you’ve ever wondered

there’s an upside to this P.K, life I’ve encumbered

Parseltongue’s real in this parsonage child

who early in life felt outcast and defiled

born in swampland of snakes

I was raised among serpents

now I speak both the language

of saints and insurgents

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