Tag: poem

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November Open Write – Day 3

Fran Haley of North Carolina and I are hosting this week’s writing prompts at http://www.ethicalela.com for the November Open Write. You can read today’s prompt below or here on the website. We’d love to have you join us as we write and share!

Give Me This – an Ada Limon-inspired Poem

Our Host

Kim Johnson, Ed.D., lives on a farm in Williamson, Georgia, where she serves as District Literacy Specialist for Pike County Schools. She enjoys writing, reading, traveling, camping, sipping coffee from souvenir mugs, and spending time with her husband and three rescue schnoodles with literary names – Boo Radley (TKAM), Fitz (F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Ollie (Mary Oliver).  You can follow her blog, Common Threads: Patchwork Prose and Verse, at www.kimhaynesjohnson.com. 

Inspiration 

As part of Sarah Donovan’s Healing Kind book club, Fran Haley and I will be facilitating a discussion of The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon in April to celebrate National Poetry Month.  Preparing for these conversations led us to choose several of Limon’s poems this week as inspirations for topic, form, or title.  In Give Me This, Limon watches a groundhog steal her tomatoes and envies the freedom of this creature in the delights of rebellion.  

Process

Use Limon’s poem as a theme or topic, form, or title (or combination of these) to inspire your own Give Me This poem.  

Kim’s Poem

I’m using a moment I would love to re-live, a moment I did not want to pull away from, as my inspiration for today’s poem, and I’m choosing the Nonet form, in which each numbered line from 1-9, or from 9-1 has that many syllables on each.  I’m writing a nonet and a reverse nonet to form a concrete (shape) poem resembling a prairie dog’s hideout.  

Give Me Prairie Dogs

I didn’t want to leave our hotel~

prairie dogs were entertaining

me to no end, their antics

suspicious, unaware

of my watching them

skittering…. then

standing still….

seeking

ground

How 

could a

famous row

of graffiti’ed

buried Cadillacs

come close to competing

with Amarillo sunrise

prairie dogs in sheer merriment

of their Tru Hotel fenced-in playground?

Your turn.

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Taking a Boon Canine for a Walk

Today’s host for our final day of the October Open Write is Anna Roseboro of Michigan, who inspires us to write Take a Word for a Walk poems. You can read her full prompt here, along with the poems of others and the responses to writers.

Anna writes: Take a word for a walk.  Students might choose a word from the class generated vocabulary list or from a list of concepts or abstract terms. Move this word through the poem so that it appears in each “X” position.  There can be six words in each line.  Use color, abstraction, or other poetic devices in your poem. Use this formation:

X – – – – –

– X- – – –

– -X- – –

– – – X – –

– – – – X –

– – – – – X

Master of the House, Doling Out the Charm, Ready with a Handshake and an Open Paw

Boon – blessing, benefit, favorable, friendly, chipper

Everybody’s boon companion – one convivial mister

Les Miserables boon lyrics loop de-loo

We have a boon canine: Boo,

who sleeps under the boon moon

awakening soon, our Boo boy boon

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Zeno inspired by Margaret Simon

My friend Margaret Simon from Louisiana challenged her writing friends to write Zeno poems this week. It’s a 10-line poem with the following syllable count: 8,4,2,1,4,2,1,4,2,1 where the single-syllable lines rhyme. I’d held a family engagement session this week at a local church’s preschool center, and as I was leaving, I heard the unmistakable caw of a fish crow directly overhead. I snapped a photo, not realizing at the time that it would become my zine photo for a poem! Thanks to Margaret Simon for a fresh, new poetic form. I feel a lot of zenos coming on!


Fish Crow In the Know

high overhead, perching on a 

church steeple, caws

a fish

crow

giving off strained

vibes of

Poe

raven-like eyes

in the

know

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#VerseLove April 22 – with Emily

Emily is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 22 of #VerseLove.

Today is Earth Day, and Emily encourages us to write about an island of our choice. I grew up on two islands – one in Georgia, one in South Carolina. I love today’s topic, because I’m back on St. Simons today spiffing up our rental unit here, remembering my youth softball league playing in the ballpark across the street, walking the village where I crabbed on the pier with my mother. It’s a perfect day to enjoy the island vibe with three out of control schnoodles who can’t get enough of all the salty sea smells.

St. Simons Island, Georgia

Childhood
Memories splash
Time-faded photographs
Redigitized to present-day
Beach walks

sea smells
salty schnoodles
savoring Saturday
still snoozing, sunrise sand dune soon
spoiled sons
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#VerseLove April 21 – with Darius Phelps

Darius Phelps of New York is our host today for Day 21 of #VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com, inspiring us to write poems of grief or disillusionment. You can read more about Darius and read his full prompt here. He mentions that the ancient Chinese believed that by burning the house down when relatives died, it would send the house to the place where they were so they could have their homes beyond this life. I reflected for a while on that idea this morning, even chuckling about the Calgon laundry whitener that I remember commercials for as a child – – an Asian actor would come into the frame holding a box, saying, “Ancient Chinese Secret” when someone wondered about how the clothes got so clean. I think the ancient Chinese had a lot of things right. Come join us and read today’s poems. 

Up in Flames ^ Choose One: House or Legacy? ^


those ancient Chinese

had it right: burn the house down!

strike up the torch flame!



better the house go 

up in smoke than the siblings

killing each other



who gets the dwelling?

who gets the crystal timepiece?

who "gets" anything?



executor’s call:

who gets to make decisions?

who denies morphine?



which one plans all meals?

oh, but NO SUGAR, stage 4

cancer patient fat?!?



what is this fresh hell??

give Mom a damn M&M!

stop controlling LIFE!



inheritance sucks

some get fortunes, some get F(ORK$#)

who "gets" anything??!



those ancient Chinese

had it right: strike the match and

walk in peace from fire
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#VerseLove April 10 – Whimsical Science with Brittany Saulnier

Today’s host for Day 10 of #VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com is Brittany Saulnier, who inspires us to write whimsical science poems. I chose to focus on outdoor science – nature and all its discovery and wonder about the world! I have just gotten my flower presses out of the old barn over the weekend and can’t wait to gather flowers and greenery to press on a long walk one afternoon this week. So much of science is soothing, just pure medicine for the soul. Brittany’s gift of a prompt that invites peace is particularly appreciated on this Monday back to work after spring break. Today, my poem is a first-word-Golden Shovel Tanka (5-7-5-7-7) string. I took my striking line as a quote from a birding journal by Vanessa Sorensen: “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bloom!

adopt a mindset~
the practice of noticing
pace your amazement

of observing more fully
nature: less is so much more

her covert moments
secret discoveries ~ what
is our big hurry?

its blessings beckoning us
patience blooms on every stem