Tag: The Open Write

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August Open Write Day 2

Today at http://www.ethicalela.com, Linda is our host for The Open Write. She inspires us to write Clunker Exchange Poems, intentionally exchanging a line (I chose into another world to use in my poem and offer all of my lines as clunkers today). You can read her full prompt here.

Sunday Morning Scrambled

all hell breaks loose

here on this peaceful

Sunday morning as I

sip coffee, write

a clunker exchange ~

sudden frantic barking

of my three vicious

Schnoodles bounces

and echoes through

the house as they

slo-mo scramble

from window to window

no-traction toenails

on the rugless wood

floors, looking like

Saturday morning

Flintstone cartoon

pets running for all

they’re worth but

going nowhere fast

when I look out and see

mama D-E-E-R

(no need to spell it

now – besides, our one

speller alerts the

other two anyway)

streaking into the woods

her two spotteds

stumbling along behind

her, pausing at the edge

to look back at this

house of horrors

where hell hath unleashed

its fury on this holy morning

then disappear

into another world

with dangers all its own

far from here (here~

where I want to exchange

all the clunked-up lines

for world peace

on the Funny Farm)

Fitz, the dog who knows D-E-E-R spells deer, leads the charge on scaring the deer away. Even the babies. Especially the babies.

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Day 1 of August Open Write with Wendy Everard

Today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the August Open Write, Wendy Everard of New York is our host for Dadaist poems. You can read her full prompt here. This form is fun – it involves finding an article and cutting out words, then pulling them out in random order to use them to form a new poem.

I took a copy of the July 22, 2024 The New Yorker and wrote down the lines of the cartoons, then cut them up on swatches of a page of a yellow legal pad. Here’s what I dada’ed:

the heat
his ashes
he didn’t want

I’ve enjoyed
smash open the pinata
while you wait

hold on –
as it became clear that
for me to
see you in
the requisite strength

are we sure
same pirate
I don’t love

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Day 5 of July Open Write

Mo Daley of Illinois is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 5 of the July Open Write. She inspires us to write dodoitsu poems. Mo writes, “I was looking for poetic forms that I was unfamiliar with and stumbled upon the dodoitsu. It’s a four-lined Japanese form with no set rhyme scheme. Its syllabic structure is 7-7-7-5. The dodoitsu is usually comical and usually concerns love or work. Include a title if you wish.”

Mo notes that some consider the dodoitsu the Japanese limerick. It reminded me of our schnauzer, Fitz, who has CUPS disease and has had most of his teeth removed and is scheduled for the rest. He may have lost his teeth, but he hasn’t lost his ranking order.

Toothless Alpha

he’s practically toothless

our aging schnauzer alpha

gumming vicious warning snaps

at badass others

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Day 4 of July Open Write

This day of the month is my favorite – the day when all three of my online writing groups converge – The Slice of Life (www.twowritingteachers.org), The Open Write (www.ethicalela.com), and The Stafford Challenge (a group on Facebook, led by Brian Rohr and inspired by William Stafford). I look forward to seeing my fellow writers in person at NCTE in Boston in November and hereby volunteer to work with others to help set up meet and greet points where we can all eat and write together. There is something special about getting to know a person through writing and then meeting them face to face.

Today’s host at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 4 of the July Open Write is Gayle Sands of Maryland. She inspires us to write Important Thing Poems based on the childhood classic Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. You can read Gayle’s full prompt here, and I hope you will write a poem and share it!

I so love this prompt and its reach to everyone, everywhere. This prompt would work to inspire verse in grades Pre-K through 12 and beyond. Classic books have the power to change the world, I am convinced.

Photo by Dhivakaran S on Pexels.com

Sparking Hope

The important thing
about a flame
is that it sparks hope.
You can warm by it,
hold hands by it,
kiss by it, sleep by it.
You can see with it,
you can remember through it,
you can glow in it, pray over it,
refine gold in it,
say goodbye or goodnight with it.
But the important thing
about a flame
is that it sparks hope.

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers at Slice of Life for inspiring teachers to share their writing and giving space to read the work of all and share the love of the writinghood.

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Day 3 of July Open Write with Mo Daley of Illinois

Today’s host at http://www.ethicalela.com for the third day of the July Open Write is Mo Daley of Illinois, who inspires us to write poems using words from articles. We drew an X over the article and used the words touching our X. You can read Mo’s full prompt here.

I chose the article Best Inbreed: The Rise of Canine Clones by Alexandra Horowitz from the July 1, 2024 edition of The New Yorker, the article beginning on page 22 and my X from a section at the bottom of page 26 including these words: you, few, believe, zebra, individual, seminar, opens, question, you, your, her, especially, another, the, cherished, cloned, cognition, question, lost, subject, white, her, she, eyes.

The Open Seminar

few believe

she cloned

her zebra

individual

questions

led me here

to see

the white

of her eyes,

this cherished

subject

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

Photo by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto on Pexels.com

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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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
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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

Photo by Szabu00f3 Viktor on Pexels.com
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Slice of Life, Day 4 of The February Open Write, and Day 35 of The Stafford Challenge – Epistolary Poem/Letter to My Younger Self

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers

Today at http://www.ethicalela.com, Britt Decker of Houston, Texas is our host for this fourth day of the February Open Write. You can read her full prompt and the poems of others here as she challenges us to write letters (epistolary poems) to our younger selves.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

When anyone with human flesh

gives you advice

look them straight in the eyes

and say ~firmly~

I’ll take it into consideration.

Do not take it as gospel.

Guard yourself.

Do your own research.

They aren’t experts.

Live your own life

not the one they choose for you.

Notice more,

especially the

hands

in photos (it’s the unseen key

that will slap you

~hard in the face~

like a wet whaletail

when you finally see).

Don’t believe a single promise.

Above all,

practice your mother’s discernment.

She knew.

She knew.

Photo by Andre Estevez on Pexels.com

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Remembering Miriam on Her Heavenly Birthday – Stafford Challenge Day 34

Today’s host at http://www.ethicalela.com for the third day of February’s Open Write is Dr. Sarah Donovan, who inspires us to write poems that experiment with broken lines. You can read her prompt here, along with the poems of others.

I took the ghazal form today of 5 couplets with AA BA CA DA EA rhyme scheme and measured meter, reframed the whole form, relaxed the rules and broke the lines as I thought of my mother’s 81st birthday and the moments I’m so glad my camera captured before she left us in December 2015 with Parkinson’s disease. Above, she reads to her great grandson from The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. 

Shaping Future Tense

when nothing else
made any sense

when family strangers
made you tense

your lap unfolded
picture books

that tore down 
every guarded fence

great grandson's 
heart and mind you shaped
each page
a moment so immense

your fingers curled
his eyes unfurled
his focus on you
so intense

when nothing else
made any sense
picture books
wrote future tense
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Da Pup Een Da Snow Storm (Day 2 of February’s Open Write, Day 33 of The Stafford Challenge)

Photo by Julius Weidenauer on Pexels.com

Today, our host at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 2 of February’s Open Write is Linda Mitchell of Virginia. She inspires us today to make a mash-up poem. You can read her prompt here, along with the poems of others. Here is the basic process she describes:

Read two works, perhaps poems you have loved for a long time. Find lines that speak to each other. Take a line from one poem and mash it up against one from the other. See how many lines complement each other as a new work. Write these lines, or copy and paste these lines, into a new work.

My all-time favorite poet is Mary Oliver, and my favorite poem is The Storm, from her collection Dog Songs. My father gave me a book of poetry entitled Poetry’s Plea for Animals by Frances E. Clarke, and in it there is a poem by T. A. Daly entitled Da Pup Een Da Snow, which may have actually inspired Mary Oliver’s poem The Storm. Oliver’s lines are in bold, and Daly’s are not.

Here is my Mash-Up:

                                                                          Da Pup Een Da Snow Storm

Eef you jus' coulda seen -

                                running here running there, excited

gona wild weeth delight

                                now through the white orchard my little dog

ees first play een da snow

                               with wild feet

all around' da whole place

                                hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins

an' fall down on hees face

teel hees cover' weeth white

                                until the white show is written upon
                        
                                in large, exuberant letters

w'en he see da flakes sail

how he chasa hees tail

                               the pleasures of the body in this world

deed you evra see joy

gona wild weeth delight
 
                               with wild feet

mak's heem crazy excite'

you would know w'at I mean

Eef you jus' coulda seen -