Tag: poem

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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…….

Photo by Athena Sandrini on Pexels.com

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

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Open Write June Day 3 with Susan Ahlbrand

Susan Ahlbrand is our host today for the third day of the June Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com, inspiring us to write poems about graduation. You can read her full prompt here. I’ve chosen a nonet, a nine-line syllabic countdown poem.

Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Pexels.com

Graduation Nonet

Teachers all worried about airhorns

beach balls should have been their concern

we learned how to inflate them

under our gowns, then how

to launch them at once

on secret cue

skyward dreams

island

style

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Open Write June Day 2 with Margaret Simon – Duplex Poems

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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

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

revealing shredded lettuce, tomatoes, chicken

all my cheese splatters broken taco art

all my cheese splatters broken taco art

like a Jackson Pollock painting: Convergence

like a Jackson Pollock painting: Convergence

a speckled canvas of confetti’ed food

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!

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Open Write June Day 1 with Sarah Donovan at www.ethicalela.com in the style of June Jordan

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For Day 1 of the June Open Write, Dr. Sarah J. Donovan of Stillwater, Oklahoma invites us to write poetry using the mentor poet June Jordan’s poetry. You can read Sarah’s full prompt here.

Now This

these nights
they are
hormonal hot
flash hell ~
flapping bedbirds
fluffing sheets
sleeplessly
in all the heat
and rumble
of the dark

these nightmares
they rage in ~
nocturnal carnage
at the screaming
speed of melatonin
on the yellow
eyes of a
Great Horned
Owl in a
trembling tree hollow

these scarecrows
they lurk now
in apocalyptic meadows
where as children
we found
peaceful slumber
we called
sweet dreams ~
all those sugarplums
that once danced
in our heads

~ now this

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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

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Night Bloom

two summers ago

I bought a

night-blooming

Cereus for

ten dollars

thinking of

Dennis the Menace

getting in the way

of that plant that

blooms every 100

years and wondering

whether I’d be up

late enough to ever

see it bloom or

whether some

distraction would

forever keep me

from seeing it

but this very week

as a friend lost her

husband, this flower

bloomed in the dead

of night

like a smile from

Heaven

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Crisis in the Manhole

rarely do I ever

get to see true

hold my beer

moments as I

did last week

we’d just finished

dinner when a

dad waiting for

a table took his

baby on a shoulder

ride through the

parking lot,

stopping over the

grate to pretend

to dump the kid

in the hole

he didn’t dump the

kid, he lost his

air pods ~ the case

fell from his pocket,

one pod from his ear

he took the baby back

to the mama and

returned with a buddy

who set down his

beer and went

in the hole for

the retrieval

the old lady in me

was nervous so

I stood in the road

to warn oncoming

cars that there was

a crisis in the manhole

and just like that

the pods were back

in his ears and their

table was ready

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The Edge of Grief

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com

approaching the

edge of grief

alongside a friend

and the blur of the

numbing steals all

sense of time

and place and memory

of sequence of order

of hunger and thirst

of exhaustion in the

energy of fumes

we’d just returned

from lunch Tuesday

when her call came.

I’d missed it, called her

back to learn her

husband had fallen

from his chair at

work and she was

hospital bound.

I let our boss know.

A friend and I

arrived to a

room full of people

we did not know.

And just like that,

a lunch special

slice of pizza and

salad with lemon

water later, the

world is changed

forevermore

just hours

before she

broke down

in the waiting

room with the

declaration

we weren’t finished.

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Horror Farm

out by the tree line

of Loblolly pines

fifty feet from our

front door

where the Great

Horned Owl pair

chats across the

pine branches

at 5 a.m.

Ollie and Fitz

stopped in their tracks

to smell the rotting leaves.

They looked like charcoal,

only fuzzy. More like a

squirrel tail torn to shreds.

Or a rabbit.

I had just told my children

about rabbit, rabbit earlier

on the first day of June.

Was this a harbinger of

death for this poor

creature gone except

for its fur?

This farm holds mysteries

that will never yield answers.

It’s been the Johnson

Funny Farm since 1971

when three farmhands

saw a trio of cross-eyed pigs

but it’s not all funny here.

Sometimes there is

a twinge of horror against

all the laughter and tears.