mapping the nest
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 →
Photo by Giuseppe Martini via Unsplash . Today’s prompt asks us to peruse the work of several twitter bots (Sylvia Plath Bot, @PercyBotShelley, @ruefle_exe, @carsonbot, @sikenpoems, and @VogonB), and “use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem. Need an example? Well, there’s actually quite... Continue Reading →
Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch . Today's prompt challenges us to “write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Bosch’s famous (and famously bizarre) triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights. Whether you take the position of a twelve-legged clam, a narwhal with a cocktail olive... Continue Reading →
Photo courtesy of cbsafari.com . Today's prompt "takes its cue from our gently odd resources, and asks you to write a poem based on an image from a dream. We don’t always remember our dreams, but images or ideas from them often stick with us for a very long time. I definitely have some nightmares... 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 Hannah Tims via Unsplash : morning : fitful sleep and the echo . of footfall down the hall the scarf of a dream lingers . in the room wafts off as the eyes open to see what happened behind closed . ... Continue Reading →
Photo by Christopher via Unsplash : Rain in March : 1. It’s always the same every year: rescue teams fight the current, pick up the oddballs who wished for excitement and got plenty. Those who thrash about in the shallows, certain they’ll make the headlines, are left to their own devices. Why do I wish... 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 Jeremy Bishop via Unsplash : The Fig Tree : We walk down the path with our children. Dust rises behind us like smoke. The ground is littered with figs: small purple bodies burst open to show their red seeds. Foreignness blooms quietly inside their wounds. All these years I wished to be whole,... 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 Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash : Piano Lesson : You never learned to play the piano. Had you done it, there would be something to write about in a poem, all those endless lessons having converged into one—the very first. How you sat down on the bench, the sun glinting through the shades, turning... Continue Reading →
Photo by Alexander Sinn via Unsplash : Portrait with Crows : This evening turned the day’s blaze into rain. Crows beside the window, harsh caws carving a space in my stomach. The bright spot of orange hue in front of me stays. My daughter’s painting, untouched yet by artifice, nor willed into shape. So abstract... Continue Reading →
Photo by Stanislava Stanchy via Unsplash : Out of Eden : Eve What is the meaning . of this love . loaded with words? Doesn’t he know . ... 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 David Cohen via Unsplash : Minotaur : Somewhere on the outskirts of the body the gulls are trying their wings . on gusts of wind. Somewhere... 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 Laurence Demaison : That Poem You Wrote : : is only half of something unsaid hold it next to the mirror : so that it looks whole do you... 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 →
Photo by v2osk via Unsplash : Falling Asleep with Carpenter Bees : The walls are thin, transparent. Angels stand at right angles. I close my eyes to see the bees breaking and entering. Honeycomb dipped in sorrow. Eyeballs rolling like grapes on my palm. I see a handful of pennies fallen through the grate. Shallow... 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 →
Vincent Van Gogh Enclosed Field in the Rain : Conversation : It’s frivolous, this rain, with its . unreasonable claims . on our silence. You stalk the hallway, I crush . tears in my fist.... Continue Reading →
Photo by Tersius van Rhyn via Unsplash : : Four Nightmares : It choked her path in the first one, tall as a wall, wide as the sea at night. It spewed darkness, waves of it clogging the shore of her sleep. She was somewhere near it, but couldn’t see herself. Beyond, was the world... 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 →
Félix Vallotton La Valse : Death As a New Language : You learn to speak it sooner or later. Sooner or later you succumb to its charm, ready to waltz as it leads you across dimly lit floors. Slender flutes of champagne flash their similes from darkened mirrors. People are gathered by the walls,... 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 Taylor Ann Wright via Unsplash : Count Your Blessings : Sneer, counting the moments touched by joy, the ones currently marching like mad across your front lawn. You clearly see them for what they are—frauds, counterfeit, foolish impostors, because, let’s be real, no way in hell do you deserve what brushed by with... 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 →
St. John the Theologian : : The Icon : We crouched in the dirt behind the empty church and watered dry lumpy clods with our piss. We laughed at the yellow jets running between our feet, twin rivulets rushing to meet and flood a colony of ants. Disaster, perhaps, on a miniature scale, but not... Continue Reading →
Photo by Bruno Nascimento via Unsplash : Time Capsule We dug a hole at the back of grandma’s garden, where we had laid bodies to rest in matchstick boxes, each grave with its makeshift cross of twigs and brambles, as if beetles, too, had a god, or a church, or a soul. It was the pull of... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of the historical archive AGERPRESS : Bread : My father stands with his back to the wall, clutching his fists. The boys are tall. They lower their shaved heads. Show us your hands, they say. If you're not hiding anything. My father knows he'll cry soon. He calls grandma, but she can't hear... 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 Tom Barett via Unsplash : Room with a View : All I can see out the window is your absence trimming the landscape. : First published in One Sentence Poems, September 2018
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 Fabrice Villard via Unsplash : Winter : A woman writes a line in the snow and leaves. Nothing else is new in that quiet field. Large snowflakes seal in her words, an envelope, closing. Next summer, she won't remember what she has written, or why. In the wake of retreating steps, silence keeps the... Continue Reading →
Photo by Dan Rowden via Unsplash : Small Truths, You Said : We never have enough of them. Open your palm, hold this one. See how fragile it is? Even your breath could kill it. Don't breathe. The light on the water drew back, the tide came in. Your voice was a litany of shadows.... Continue Reading →
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 →
Greg Spalenka Divinus : Tentative Futures : You try to forgive words their push and pull. In the garden, the cherry tree has sprouted buds, each one enveloping a heartbeat. You lean against the trunk, listening to the hum under its bark, remembering what it was like to carry that same echo deep in the... Continue Reading →
Rene Magritte Explanation : Poem for a Green Bottle and a Candle Held Together with Tape : Who has ever seen darkness glowing from inside? Glass giving in to flame? Who has ever seen my reflection in the green waves? Wax drips on cold, sinuous curves. This is not one of Magritte’s bottles, lined up for execution.... 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 →
Leonard Myburgh Airbrushed Lion Courtesy of lonehillart.com : The Lion : Every angel is terrifying. ~ Rilke He comes in the dark, breaks doors, muscles his way through windows. His wings wrap around my heart like sin. His words run through my blood... Continue Reading →
N. C. Wyeth Rip Van Winkle : Rip Van Winkle : In the evening she sits on the couch. The sunset starts a fire around her head, like a halo. She reads and her hair streams down in black coils past her waist, past her knees. It hesitates when it reaches the floor, but then... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of Alan Harris via hiveminer.com : Murder in the Orchard : Nobody wants to handle the dead bird, its beak cracked as an omen. We read a tear, or is it only the implacable glass of the eye, watching? None of us comes even near the limp body in the dirt. We circle... Continue Reading →
Migrating Snow Geese in Pennsylvania Photo courtesy of WabbyTwaxx via Birdshare : Migration : When the season ends, we flock South to the house of unfinished poems. Tired birds, we crowd in its rooms. Though close enough, our wings barely touch. They sweep the dust off the floor, the cobwebs off the ceiling. We have never tasted... 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 →
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 →
