Tag: VerseLove2026

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VerseLove Day 23: Lose, Loss, Lost

Our host today for the 23rd day of VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com is Scott McCloskey of Michigan, who inspires us to write poems of loss. You can read his full prompt here.

Enough

here you are, slumped

next to me

in our favorite

chair and a half

your warmth on my hip

resting peacefully

Gabapentin doing its work

for your pain

Thank God your

mouth is on the armrest

with one paw

protecting it

breathing the other way

with breath so bad

it might kill a buzzard

but for your human it’s

the sign of life

of your holding on

and already I know

chances are high that

your teeth and mouth ulcers

and bladder stones

may not be all that is lost

next week

I feel tears welling just

thinking about it

you, our rescue schnauzer

with no known age or past

all things uncertain except

one thing:

we are tenderly and fiercely

bonded, imprinted, paired

as forever buddies

you are here,

you are warm and safe,

and you are loved

in this moment

now

which is

enough

for this hour

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VerseLove Day 23: First Words

Denise Krebs lives in Yucca Valley, California, near Joshua Tree National Park. She is busy learning to write habeas corpus petitions and briefs to help immigrant neighbors, campaigning for a new congress person, and stocking the shelves of the best Friends of the Library bookshop in her area. She blogs at Dare to Care. I am blessed to call Denise a personal friend, with whom I’ve presented at NCTE Conventions, written with for years at ethicalela.com, and write with each month as part of a small group of writers as part of The Stafford Challenge. I’m happy to introduce you to Denise today.

Denise inspires us to write borrowed line poems in a new way. She shares her process: Choose a poem and write the first word of each line in a column down the side of your page. You can use the whole poem or just a stanza. You can use one of Jackson’s or choose another poem or stanza from someone else you are reading. Write a free verse poem letting the other poet’s words carry you. You might find that being held to one simple constraint, like having the first word in each line determined, can release more freedom in your poetry.

I’ve been dabbling in watercolor techniques lately, getting ready to step out into retirement and paint landscapes of the places I visit. I was inspired by Denise’s poem today when I thought of dust settling – – as if it ever really settles – – but my mind went to watercolor and stardust, and I used Lauren Camp’s poem Tonight the Sky Breathes from her collection In Old Sky as my borrowed first words. Lauren was the astronomer poet in residence at The Grand Canyon and is also a former poet laureate of New Mexico. I attended a session where she spoke last month, and I fell in love with her style and her themes of darkness and grief over the loss of her father.

White winged horse flying in a vibrant starry galaxy with moon and constellations

Pegasus Wins the Derby

wet on dry, vivid
Thunder cracks seep in
and settle in bold strokes
like horse hoof dust

Let wet on wet be
what carries racecloud churnings
night a stardust palette
washing teardrop stains into constellations

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VerseLove Day 22: Onomatopoeia Poem

Margaret Simon of New Iberia, Louisiana is our host today for Day 22 of VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com, inspiring us to write Onomatopoeia poems. You can read her full prompt here as she guides us in writing poems with sound effect words.

A bird perched on a tree branch with a speech bubble saying 'CHEESEBURGER PLEASE'
A bird perched on a branch humorously ‘says’ cheeseburger please.

Sunday Surprise

Sunday morning we had more birds

than we’d had since cutting down

all our trees for the pine harvest

last year and they’d all come at once

the usual crowd~ chickadee,

woodpecker, titmouse, bluebird

but one took us by surprise~ a

Baltimore Oriole

right here in little old Pike County, Georgia

a cheeb-a-dub, a cheeb-a-dub, a cheeb-a-dee?

sharing the same tree like we’re the

Hampton Inn of traveling birds

Merlin said so, so we checked and rechecked

and crept out to see

discovering all the birds were

not only in the

same tree but the same branch

a symphony of song

all from the same set of bird lungs

cheeseburger, cheeseburger, please?

A Mockingbird – ugh!

with all his invisible friends

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VerseLove Day 21: Reading Haiku

Hop over to http://www.ethicalela.com and click on VerseLove to read Sharon Roy’s prompt for today! She’s inspiring us to write haiku poetry inspired by our reading lives – and is actually writing War and Peace in haiku. She blogs at Pedaling Poet. I’ve been spinning my wheels since February trying to get through Forth Wing, and I’m glad I did. Other than Harry Potter, fantasy is not my preferred genre, but it did stretch me. I definitely am not a fan of romantasy, especially spicy romantasy. But at least no dragons died. I would have been in the floor for days, crying over their deaths. And I finished in the name of book club because it was only fair that we each picked 2 books for all of us to share in reading together. And we do things in the name of book club that we would not do for anyone else! But now I want a t-shirt with the logo below.

Four dragons standing on a castle tower holding signs that say 'I survived Fourth Wing'
A group of dragons proudly hold signs claiming they survived Fourth Wing on a castle tower.

In the Name of Book Club

Fourth Wing fantasy~
not my genre, but I did
it for my book club!

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VerseLove Day 20: Voice and Perspective

Our host today, Corinne, lives in Detroit, Michigan where she teaches at Sampson Webber Leadership Academy in Detroit Public Schools Community District. She serves as a Transformative Engagement Lead at her site, presenting professional development for the staff. You can read her full prompt here.

Corinne inspires us to write two-voice poems, or poems in two perspectives. I have chosen a tricube for today’s two-voice poem, alternating voices in italics and unitalicized text.

Decisions

I doubt it…

I’m certain.

Let’s rethink.

I say yes.

I say wait.

Wait alone.


Cold feet stay.

Sure feet go.

Wait means no.

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VerseLove Day 18: Golden Hinge

Angie of Mauritius is our host today for the 18th day of VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com. You can read her full prompt here, inspiring us to write Golden Hinge poems, where the first line of the poem also reads vertically as the first words in each line, As a child, I got hooked on poetry in the pages of Childcraft by one poem that did it for me – Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro, and so I took a line from Joy Sullivan’s Remember What It Was Like to Be a Kid? from her book Instructions for Traveling West to pay tribute to Harold Monro today.

Tribute to Harold Monro

have you found the jewel of language

you discovered in childcraft volume 1 when you

found the one with a nymph and a goblin in

the salt marsh mesmerized by an emerald necklace

jewel stolen from the moon

of your dreams, carried in your soul, this captivating

language of poetry still shimmering green?

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VerseLove Day 17: The Queen of Our Kitchens

Our host today for the 17th day of VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com is Kratijah, who lives in Mauritius, where she teaches English Language Acquisition and Language & Literature at Le Bocage International School. She inspires us to write poems about our kitchens in free verse, and you can read her full prompt here.

Hidden Signals

on the wall by the French doors

in my kitchen hangs a

framed notebook paper drawing

of a rolling pin

its heavy wooden body

completely out of orientation

with the writing at one end

as if the artist got bored

or hungry

or murderous

in some seminar long ago

in some other language

but rolling pins and art

and French doors

speak in a

universal female tongue

so I have a hunch

why my mother

gave me this framed

picture in 1985

when I married my

first husband

she never liked him

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VerseLove Day 16: Beginning Again

Stacey Joy of California is our host today for VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com, inspiring us to write poems of starting over or redefining ourselves in some new way. You can read her full prompt here.

Stacey has me thinking about freedom and restraints – and the presence or absence of them in their many complex forms. She’s the second person to recommend The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad since yesterday, explaining that one of the writing exercises in the book prompted her etheree form today – a form with ten lines with that many numbered syllables on each line (1-10). I have the book coming my way on an interlibrary loan and hope to be holding it without a wait very soon. I used her etheree as a pattern today, letting her footsteps guide the way as I thought of retirement as a freedom to travel and see more National Parks from coast to coast. I’m in the process of trading my InTech Aucta Willow Rover for a small Class C Tiffin Wayfarer – not quite like Steinbeck’s “Rocinante” truck camper van of 1960 like I camped in with my grandparents in the early 1970s, but one I can drive without a tow vehicle so I can take to the road even if my husband stays back for work and needs his truck. And I’m getting the twin-to-king conversion bed so I can take my husband (king) or a friend (twin) along for the ride, complete with a dog or three. And sip coffee, read, write…..and learn to breathe.

Rocinante

when
freedom
(retirement)
comes in August
I hope to behold
Steinbeck’s Rocinante
packed and ready to explore
Open Roads of America
enjoying the journey as much as
the destination: learning how to breathe

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VerseLove Day 15: Cascade

Our host today for VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com is Erica Johnson, who offers inspiration here in a new-to-me form of poetry called a cascade. These remind me of Pantoum poems. Erika explains: It’s a form created by Udit Bhatia and asks that the poet take each line from the first stanza of a poem and makes each one the final line in the stanzas that follow. This results in the poem resembling a tumbling waterfall, which was when I knew I needed to go look through my photos of waterfalls for inspiration!

Erika shares the process with us: Read over the cascade form and write out the pattern you wish to follow: tercet or quatrain.  I found that having the structure written as a reminder helped guide my writing.

My mind went straight to Gibbs Gardens, where I’d rather spend the day in flowers than at work. Here, you can check out the bloom report and see where I’d take you if you were spending the day with me. We’d have lunch at The Burger Bus and order daffodils to plant next season.

Let’s Play

I did not want to get up today
I’d like to sip coffee with friends in a cafe
talk books, catch up, paint daffodils, play

I’d drive to Ball Ground
stroll Gibbs Gardens’ spring blooms
I did not want to get up today

the tulips have opened, Monet’s pond awaits
I’d load up the girls for a quick getaway
I’d like to sip coffee with friends in a cafe

we’d laugh and share stories
take off work for the day
get a slow start, talk books, paint daffodils, play

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Verse Love Day 11: The Loves

Our host today is former high school English teacher, Kate Sjostrom , a teacher educator at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Writer in Residence at the Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. 

You can read Kate’s full prompt here as she inspires us to write about emotions in concrete and abstract terms.

Brown and white bird with spotted chest singing on tree branch
A Wood Thrush sings while perched on a branch in a green forest.

Elation Over the Song of the Wood Thrush

it’s 6:38 a.m. when I hear it

we’ve just taken the boys out

to do their morning business

when a familiar note plays

from the branch-pew of a tree

on Pine Mountain

like a retro diner Jukebox favorite

a song to stir the heart

not call-like,

not chatty or operatic

definitely not theatric

(like that one lady in church,

thinks she can sing)

still, this voice offers hymn

praise to its maker and in

that way they are alike

this voice isn’t

wearing colorful Gucci garments –

picture instead

a simple watercolor painting of

dark, milk, and white chocolates

splotched with dots

and caramel feathers

the star voice of the woods

and doesn’t even know it

doesn’t show off or sing louder

like I would do with a voice

like that ~ why would I

ever say anything?

I’d sing it all, asking where the

tomatoes are in the grocery store

and what is my balance

at the bank and I’d be the

talk of the town for all the

wrong reasons ~ folks

would say I’ve gone off

the deep end

……but if I were a bird

I’d hope to be a Wood Thrush

the best voice in the choir

so humble

so unassuming

so musical

turning heads

with elation just to listen

and even sour Simon

Cowell would look up

and smile, knowing

there’s the talent

and press the Golden Buzzer

but with my Wood Thrush ways

I’d shun the competition

not needing his endorsement

I’d crap on his head

my own golden buzzer

on my way to another branch

still singing