mapping the nest
Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash Another poem from my forthcoming collection a woman made entirely of air (Dancing Girl Press, 2023). This is a NaPoWriMo effort! I wrote the first draft on April 13, 2020. It was first published, along with Cargo, in Tinderbox Poetry Journal in the fall of the same year. Forgive Me:... Continue Reading →
Photo by Johannes Plenio via Unsplash Coming out of hibernation with more good news! My chapbook a woman made entirely of air will be coming out by the end of this year with the delightful Dancing Girl Press, "an imprint devoted to publishing innovative writing by women authors in delectable handmade editions"! I'm so happy... Continue Reading →
Photo by Stormseeker via Unsplash Things to Do with Silence The mouth of a well brims with silence.Quench your thirst, carry it forthwherever you go. The pathwill lead back to itsome distant tomorrow.Break your bread in silence.Words scatter like wind.Learn from the tree, its rootsgathering darkness, its branches—a harbor for birdsong and rain.Is silence a... Continue Reading →
Photo by Nikolay Loubet via Unsplash The first draft of this poem owes its existence to false alarm. What I initially believed to be a heart attack was soon diagnosed as magnesium deficiency and corrected. What could not be corrected was my mother's absence, whom I had lost the previous year. I was in deep... Continue Reading →
Photo by Cherry Laithang via Unsplash I wrote the first draft of this poem many years ago, when I was a new mother with a full-time teaching job who struggled to find time to write. At the time, my self-respect seemed to be directly correlated with my ability to produce perfectly finished poems, which rarely... Continue Reading →
Photo by Ahmed Zayan via Unsplash Today's prompt challenges us "to write a cento. This is a poem that is made up of lines taken from other poems. If you’d like to dig into an in-depth example, here’s John Ashbery’s cento “The Dong with the Luminous Nose,” and here it is again, fully annotated to show... Continue Reading →
Photo by Engin Akyurt via Unsplash Today's prompt challenges us "to write a poem in which you muse on the gifts you received at birth — whether they are actual presents, like a teddy bear, or talents – like a good singing voice – or circumstances – like a kind older brother, as well as... Continue Reading →
Mass graves near Mariupol, April 2022Photograph: Maxar Technologies/AFP/Getty Images Today's prompt challenges us "to write a “duplex.” A “duplex” is a variation on the sonnet, developed by the poet Jericho Brown. Here’s one of his first “Duplex” poems, and here is a duplex written by the poet I.S. Jones. Like a typical sonnet, a duplex has... Continue Reading →
Photo by Enrico Mantegazza via Unsplash Today's prompt challenges us "to channel your inner gumshoe, and write a poem in which you describe something with a hard-boiled simile. Feel free to use just one, or try to go for broke and stuff your poem with similes till it’s . . . as dense as bread... Continue Reading →
Old wall in Malá Strana, Prague,April 22, 2022 Today's prompt challenges us "to write a poem that uses repetition. You can repeat a sound, a word, a phrase, or an image, or any combination of things." (Full NaPoWriMo post available here.) I'm combining two prompts into one, since I was traveling last week and missed... Continue Reading →
Penelope Unraveling Her Web (1783-84) by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797) Today's prompt asks us "to write a poem in which you first recall someone you used to know closely but are no longer in touch with, then a job you used to have but no longer do, and then a piece of art that... Continue Reading →
Photo by Duncan Kidd via Unsplash Today's prompt challenges us "to write a poem that anthropomorphizes a kind of food. It could be a favorite food of yours, or maybe one you feel conflicted about. I feel conflicted about Black Forest Cake, for example. It always looks so pretty in a bakery window, and I want... Continue Reading →
Photo by Vincent van Zalinge via Unsplash Today's prompt challenges us "to write a poem that starts with a command. It could be as uncomplicated as “Look,” as plaintive as “Come back,” or as silly as “Don’t you even think about putting that hot sauce in your hair.” Whatever command you choose, I hope you... Continue Reading →
Photo by Moritz Knöringer via Unsplash Today's prompt is "based on Faisal Mohyuddin’s poem “Five Answers to the Same Question.” Today, I’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that provides five answers to the same question – without ever specifically identifying the question that is." (Full NaPoWriMo post available here.) Here's my... Continue Reading →
Photo by Alvan Nee via Unsplash Today's prompt was "developed by the comic artist Lynda Barry, and it asks you to think about dogs you have known, seen, or heard about, and then use them as a springboard into wherever they take you." (Full NaPoWriMo post available here.) I've been on the road for the past... Continue Reading →
Photo by Sisyphus Sosorakis via Unsplash Today's "challenge is a fun one: write a poem that takes the form of the opening scene of the movie of your life. Does it open with a car chase? A musical number? A long scene panning across a verdant plain? You’re the director (and also the producer, the actors,... Continue Reading →
Original Winnie-the-Pooh drawing by E. H. Shepard I'm thrilled to be one of the featured NaPoWriMo participants today, along with the inimitable Arti Jain of My Ordinary Moments!🎉💜🥳 It was NaPoWriMo 2017 that brought me back to poetry after a long hiatus and to be recognized like this means the world to me. Many thanks... Continue Reading →
Homage to Apollinaire by Mark Chagall (1911-1912) Today's prompt "is pretty simple – a love poem! If you’re having trouble getting into the right mood for a love poem, maybe you’ll find inspiration in one of my favorites, June Jordan’s “Poem for Haruko.”' (Full NaPoWriMo post available here.) I have two responses to this prompt,... Continue Reading →
Photo by Adrián Valverde via Unsplash Today's prompt "comes to us from this list of “all-time favorite writing prompts.” It asks you to name your alter-ego, and then describe him/her in detail. Then write in your alter-ego’s voice. Maybe your alter-ego is a streetwise detective, or a superhero, or a very small goldfinch. Whoever or whatever your... Continue Reading →
Photo by Joshua Hoehne via Unsplash Today's prompt challenges us "to write a poem that argues against, or somehow questions, a proverb or saying. They say that “all cats are black at midnight,” but really? Surely some of them remain striped. And maybe there is an ill wind that blows some good. Perhaps that wind just has... Continue Reading →
Photo by Joanne Francis via Unsplash Passage First published in The Hunger, Issue 8, Spring 2020
Photo by Lora Ninova via Unsplash The first draft of this poem was written in the spring of 2018, during NaPoWriMo. Grateful to Maureen Thorson for her Day 18 prompt (and all the other prompts). Nothing Left to Do You must forget what came before,how really there was no cloudof mosquitos that night, only a... Continue Reading →
April Snow Today's prompt challenges us to write a shadorma or a Fib. (Full prompt available here.) I woke up to a snowy landscape, which struck me as deeply unfair, given how good we've all been at praising spring. I couldn't think about much else all day, so here's a triple shadorma (with a tail) that... Continue Reading →
Photo by Remi Moebs via Unsplash Today's prompt challenges us to "find a poem, and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original, and in which every line starts with the first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem. If I used Roethke’s poem as my model, for example,... Continue Reading →
Photo by Kitera Dent via Unsplash I woke up to the wonderful news that my Day 2 poem is featured on NaPoWriMo today!🎉🎈😍 I had a little internal celebration, then went shopping for food, because reality in the shape of my husband knocked on the door to tell me it's Easter tomorrow and we don't... Continue Reading →
Photo by Terry Richmond via Unsplash Today's prompt offers as a resource Robert Frost’s famous poem “The Road Not Taken” and challenges us "to write a poem about your own road not taken – about a choice of yours that has “made all the difference,” and what might have happened had you made a different choice."... Continue Reading →
Sun Ra Arkestra - Seductive Fantasy (A Chad Van Gaalen animation) Today's prompt advises that "Sometimes, writing poetry is a matter of getting outside of your own head, and learning to see the world in a new way. To an extent, you have to “derange” yourself – make the world strange, and see it as... Continue Reading →
Ladle, circa 1850, Chinook, Native American, on view at the Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 746 And just like that, spring came back when winter was getting a tad too long in the tooth and she brought NaPoWriMo along with her. Many thanks to Maureen Thorson for gathering us together once more. I'm keeping my fingers... Continue Reading →
Photo by Fallon Michael via Unsplash This poem was written when my children were very young and my fear of losing them, all-consuming. Over the years, this fear has morphed into something I can live with. Sometimes it's a mere worry, a claw of unease scratching between my shoulder blades. Other times, it becomes deep... Continue Reading →
Photo by Kalle Kortelainen via Unsplash The Shape of Her Body in the Snow Do I exist if I doubt? How do my newly-shaped limbs come into being? I must be here, anchoredin the movement . of falling snow. Doubts float over my liquid . ... Continue Reading →
Photo by Sergey Norkov via Unsplash Conjugal Potage, Serves Two A dash of wisdom folded into temporary bliss, to keep itfrom curdling. Undiluted,it tends to stick in your throat.Throw in the bonesof yesterday’s rage to give it texture. Nothing is lessappetizing than mush.Do not puree each day to bits,lest you spend your eveningsmostly solo. If... Continue Reading →
Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash . Birth . For my grandmother She walked to the door: small, viscous steps. The apron tightened over her swollen belly. She called the virgin’s tender name and it came... Continue Reading →
Photo courtesy of stejarmasiv.ro . Today’s prompt is “brought to us by the Emily Dickinson Museum. First, read this brief reminiscence of Emily Dickinson, written by her niece. And now, here is the prompt that the museum suggests: Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s description of her aunt’s cozy room, scented with hyacinths and a crackling stove, warmly recalls the... Continue Reading →
Photo by Wendy Scofield via Unsplash . Our daily prompt asks us to “make use of today’s resource. Find a poem in a language that you don’t know, and perform a “homophonic translation” on it. What does that mean? Well, it means to try to translate the poem simply based on how it sounds. You may not wind... Continue Reading →
Photo by Max Kukurudziak via Unsplash . Today’s prompt challenges us to “write a “concrete” poem – a poem in which the lines and words are organized to take a shape that reflects in some way the theme of the poem. This might seem like a very modernist idea, but poets have been writing concrete poems since the... Continue Reading →
Willow, the Wonderdog, aka the Wrath of Lizards . Today is a dash-about day, so here's something quick before I dash to the woods with my patient, long-suffering dog. Yes, Willow, I love you more than poetry. You know why? Because despite what they say about dogs and prose, you ARE poetry. Today's prompt challenges... Continue Reading →
Loss, a sculpture by Jane Mortimer Photo by K. Mitch Hodge via Unsplash . Five Stages 1. Denial It has no room in this house, she said. Leave it at the door. Tie it to the fence. Let it whimper and slobber away from my table. I cannot feed one more hunger. When night... Continue Reading →
Photo by Juan Davila via Unsplash : Silence at Dawn : The lake wasn’t deep. We pushed the boat out and watched it take on water. You drank and drank and drank. The taste, you said, an afterthought, a bruise. I wish you had let me drink, too. Later, the upended flask. The snake... Continue Reading →
Photo by Julian Lozano via Unsplash : On the Bus : I wait to get home. The bus keeps on its route. Shadow buildings bow in the rain. The driver recites in staccato names of streets, names of people, years of passengers’ births and deaths. Each street grows its people. They ripen and wait to... Continue Reading →
Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash : Midnight Jasmine : I blame myself. The years that keep going by, the countries between us, the many hands that have touched you since, the many lips. You, who were so new. They say you love what you’ve lost. My loss is a desert of books, furniture, people.... Continue Reading →
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash: Aftermath : . The storm hit the house—a car at 70 miles per hour. . I saw the tree in front rush toward the window . ... Continue Reading →
Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi via Unsplash : Genesis : I walk slowly with my father. . We match our steps . to the tick of the clock. I walk slowly with my daddy. . ... Continue Reading →
Photo by Erik Mclean via Unsplash : Finger-wagging : Do it in pairs. If there’s no one left in the world, wag at yourself. The rules are simple: find something to wag about. Reading too much. Cheating. Bad eating habits. Lack of exercise. Exorcisms. Out of body experiences. Politics, money, religion. Seriousness or frivolity. Sleeping.... Continue Reading →
Photo by Cathaleen Curtiss : Spring : The water ran black in the mornings. . The soil had plenty to say . after being silent for so long. . It wasn’t even... Continue Reading →
Photo by Federico Bottos via Unsplash : The Photograph : It doesn’t matter what we should have argued about. Talking was something we couldn’t or wouldn’t do. We walked through a meadow instead, you slightly ahead and I taking pictures of things I wanted to remember, including that bloody sunset. The flowers parted before... Continue Reading →
Photo by Denys Argyriou via Unsplash : This bruised shadow of a promise : This bruised shadow . of a promise. I made it. It was meant . ... Continue Reading →
Photo by Tertia van Rensburg via Unsplash : The Snare : A mind like a ring Sliding shut on some quick thing. ~ Sylvia Plath, “The Rabbit-Catcher” Had it been you, all along. Had it been you. Or my fear of telling the truth. Of telling the fear. How do I know. ... Continue Reading →
Leonora Carrington Self-Portrait: The Inn of the Dawn Horse : Family Lore : 1. Wrath During lightning storms, my father rows out to sea. The villagers hide behind closed shutters, while the man they once hated lures the thunderclouds away from the shore. From the hill tower, my siblings and I watch the fireworks:... Continue Reading →
Photo by Dominik VO via Unsplash : A Poet Is : 1. An eel, open-mouthed at the mouth of its burrow, borrowing time until the right prey comes along. Fish glide by with their frivolous tails of who kissed whom in the seaweed and who got in trouble with the shark. 2. An owl, morose... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of Alien Covenant : Fine, Then : No one wants to touch the skin of this poem, its unhatched enigma. The words sit in rows like alien pods, oozing deceit. Truth is rarely the destination to begin with, but it helps to know where you’re going. Or so I’ve been told. Perhaps there’s... Continue Reading →
Photo by Anton Scherbakov via Unsplash : : Spring Inspection : She lies on the couch, legs crossed, eyes staring into the ceiling. A day comes when she’ll have to do something: go out and shuffle through the snow, fall on the ground, stand up and run, smell the bushes for a sign of spring or dog... Continue Reading →
Photo by Neslihan Gunaydin via Unsplash : The Rose : This hand that holds the trowel, a rubber glove to hide thick-knuckled, restless fingers— you know it’s yours. Yours, also, the knobby knees, the narrow feet in muddy crocs, the loosened skin holding it all together—who knows however long? You are a waterfall of flesh and... Continue Reading →
Photo by Christin Hume via Unsplash : Salt Marsh : Someday she will start writing, leaving her fear behind— a coat on the doorstep. Words, rusty in their hinges, will blow against the old barn, will whistle in the thin rain. She’ll hear a door close with a bang, a dog howl at... Continue Reading →
Photo by Hilthart Pedersen via Unsplash : Compromise : A flask empty of wine on the table. The table wanting for food in a house missing its people. Things are meant to be filled with other things. The sky, empty of birds, has clouds, at least. They carry no rain. Far below, the earth... Continue Reading →
Photo by Gaelle Marcel via Unsplash :: Amnesia : 1. We’re alone on the brink of this tabletop. . We rub air between our palms, sweat . between our bellies. . Our voices drop like ripe fruit.... Continue Reading →
Photo by Fabrizio Conti via Unsplash Rites of Passage : I The rock was thrown as a joke, a sleight of hand. Then, the bursting eye, the entrails- like stuff pouring out. I knew it was an eye, but it looked like an unhatched egg, the embryo throbbing with its own hunger for life. It... Continue Reading →
Photo by Martino Pietropoli via Unsplash : The Guest : My house grows small waiting for her to leave. Today I opened the door to the cellar and it wasn’t there. I climbed the staircase to the attic— it ended in a dead wall. The bathroom I’ve been so proud of shrank to the size... Continue Reading →
Photo by Janco Ferlich via Unsplash : Body Not Hers : For my children, when they grow up 1. The darkness within me, it’s all- engulfing, viscous, and real, the mystery of its black rose still blooming. Dark objects fall in and out like planets. Mars glides by glowing red, a fascinating eye into hell.... Continue Reading →
Photo by Linus Nylund on Unsplash : Happy to see my March post Dreaming in Swiss appear on the Ruminate Blog today! "For people feeling overwhelmed by life's frantic pace," says the Ruminate website, "a contemplative and imaginative space changes everything. Join our community, and let's practice staying awake together." Check them out. You won't regret it.
Photo by Steinar Engeland via Unsplash : Out of the Labyrinth : In the morning the girl sits by the window, pulling dried husks of flies off the spider web. The brown spider drops from its corner on a glistening, tremulous thread, hauls itself up to inspect the damage, hairpin legs climbing the air on invisible... Continue Reading →
Edvard Munch The Scream : Fear : It never goes away, it only diminishes, thins out like a bookmark you forget in one of the books you now rarely read. Then you find it while dusting one day. It springs out voluptuous, huge—this bosomy aunt who always arrives out of nowhere to stay, suitcases and... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of The Orchid Column : Orchids : My nights are now full of dark coats buttoned up on emptiness. Black shoes carrying nothing walk out the door each morning. I wake up to layers of bricks around my body, each day one more layer, the cat already howling on top of my head—... Continue Reading →
Photo courtesy of Flickr : Talcfundi : Talcfundi likes to close windows. When it rains outside he shuts them tight. He keeps the sun in a bottle under his bed. This is the time he pulls out the cork. He lets his prisoner slam its body on wooden shutters. When it snows, Talcfundi shuts the... Continue Reading →
Photograph by Jason Edwards / National Geographic : This Is Not a Poem: Confession : I am afraid. Of this page I keep staring at. Of these words crawling onto the page like a colony of ants. I’m afraid of their power to save me or sink me. I’m afraid of giving them that power,... Continue Reading →
Arturo Asensio "Decorating Altamira Cave" : In Illo Tempore / In Those Days : The splintering happened slowly, one figment of soul at a time. When nothing was left, she took to drinking. It wasn’t all nectar and ambrosia. She enjoyed pain, blood, tears. Fear lay thick upon a world of her making. The creatures... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of http://www.napowrimo.net/ : The Date (Notes to Self) : Calm, cool, and collected, Poetry knocks at your door. I know you want to let him in. You should--no argument from me. But firstly, there are some things you might want to consider before cracking the door open and gazing into those dreamy eyes. That... Continue Reading →
Nancy Poucher Out of the Fog : I Translation it is that openeth the window to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel. ~ Preface to the King James Bible How does one spin gold into gold? Light into light? How does one avoid fracturing the wings of... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org : “Beauty like that is strength. […] One could turn the world upside down with beauty like that.” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky “The Idiot” This page is dedicated to the work of human spirit: the things that feed our soul, keep us warm, make us grow. A brooding bird will often pluck its... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of www.stevegettle.com : A good part of my childhood was spent in my grandmother’s village, where I grew up believing that the mud nests the swallows built under our eaves brought us good luck. More swallow nests meant better luck. I remember the joy when yet another swallow family would choose to raise its young... Continue Reading →
: If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. ~ William Blake My neighbors are temporarily storing a barn door in the hallway of our apartment building. It’s intricately carved, iron-studded, worn by wind, rain, the hands of several generations of farmers. I dare not ask why... Continue Reading →
Photo by Tim Laman : Speaking for the Trees : This page is an homage to things in nature that nourish a poet’s imagination: the roots and moss of poetry that contemplates, accepts, and embraces. So where does one start mapping this nest? Where does the glossary of tangible symbols that permeate a poet’s work... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of www.littleterns.org : Poets throughout history have turned to animal and mineral being to express their own because from that storehouse a larger vocabulary of being, particularity, and wisdom can emerge. ~ Jane Hirshfield “Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry” Some poems are pebbles and some are sand. This sounds like the beginning... Continue Reading →
Photo source: Nividia Cave : I've always wondered what brings a work of art into being. The creative process is a mysterious one and I approach it with trepidation. There have been times when it seized me and tossed me around like a giant wave—and I've come to define those instances as moments of true inspiration.... Continue Reading →
Pablo Picasso The Dream : To paraphrase the problem of the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu, I may be a woman who has dreamed herself a skunk, or a skunk still dreaming she is a woman. ~ Louise Erdrich “The Blue Jay’s Dance” They say you know you've made it in a different language when you start dreaming... Continue Reading →
clayandbranches 