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 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 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 NASA via Unsplash astronomy 101 the stars are frequently out of syncwith the course of your life. tiredperhaps of kissing ass. of being toldwhat do. how to scythe a paththrough the sky. how to blink blinkgo dark. if you were a staryou’d resent it too. that brightexistence at a distance from loss.so much... Continue Reading →
Photo by Jakob Owens via Unsplash Today's prompt asks us to "write a poem in the form of a “to-do list.” The fun of this prompt is to make it the “to-do list” of an unusual person or character. For example, what’s on the Tooth Fairy’s to-do list? Or on the to-do list of Genghis... Continue Reading →
Photo by Kirstin Drew via Unsplash Today' prompt, "which comes from Holly Lyn Walrath, is pretty simple. As she explains it here: "Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you. Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line. Then, after you’ve finished, change the title... Continue Reading →
Photo by Frances Gunn via Unsplash Mandala I am glued to the interior of my thoughts. A shredded ballerina figurine dipped in gold. Trees, water, sky. Autumn. Spring. Autumn. ... Continue Reading →
Photo by Romana Iorga some things to watch out for in a poem something big something small something with wings something hungry or sated something that doesn’t know what it wants to die to... Continue Reading →
Image from Lars von Trier's film Breaking the Waves (1996) . Today’s prompt challenges us to “write a triolet. These eight-line poems involve repeating lines and a tight rhyme scheme. The repetitions and rhymes can lend themselves to humorous poems, as well as to poems expressing dramatic or sorrowful moods. And sometimes the repetitions can be used... Continue Reading →
Photo by Kym MacKinnon via Unsplash . Today’s prompt “ was first suggested to us by long-time Na/GloPoWriMo participant Vince Gotera. It’s the hay(na)ku). Created by the poet Eileen Tabios and named by Vince, the hay(na)ku is a variant on the haiku. A hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two... Continue Reading →
Gas giant WASP 76b . Today's prompt encourages us to write a poem based on a news article. I chose one of the suggested articles: “Researchers Discover Faraway Planet Where the Rain is Made of Iron.” Despite the stark beauty of gas giant WASP 76b and its fascinating molten-iron rain, the resulting poem is a... Continue Reading →
Photo by Matt Hoffman via Unsplash . Today’s prompt asks us "to make use of our resource for the day. First, make a list of ten words. You can generate this list however you’d like – pull a book off the shelf and find ten words you like, name ten things you can see from where you’re sitting,... Continue Reading →
Photo by Walter Sturn via Unsplash . Today’s prompt asks us to "write a poem about a specific place—a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details, like street names, distances (“three and a half blocks from the post office”), the types of trees or flowers, the color of the... 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 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 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 Harry Quan via Unsplash : Alter Ego : I didn’t know what she was: that brittle, reed-like, human-like riddle. A paper whisper. A burn. She made an ark for a language the color of loneliness. Words rushed to her. So did the clouds. It was hard to watch her drown in... 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 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 →
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 →
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 →
Image courtesy of incandescenttarrot.com : The Fool : The fool pauses on the precipice of a word. He surveys the great blue. It’s cloudy today. Perhaps tomorrow he’ll write a poem about flying. Today must be rooted in dirt. Step after step after step, the fool descends. It’s been eons since he left the summit.... 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 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 →
Keith Haring's wolves : The Wolves and the Crucifix : Based on Keith Haring’s “Suite of Five Prints,”—(“Two Animal Images Falling/Jumping”; “Two Figures with Crucifix”), screenprint on paper, 1982. : The wolves keep coming to my door, they keep coming. Today they hold a cross like a trophy. Ink drips from their paws onto the... 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 →
In honor of last night's blood moon... Image courtesy of swissinfo.ch : Halloweening : I open my window for the skeleton of the night. The darkness breathes. It is dense like oil. From afar you call me again, waiting to see how soon, how close I will come, how unbearably sweet my mouth will bite... 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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
NaPoWriMo, the National Poetry Writing Month, begins in three days. Nothing like a deadline to light a fire under the caboose. Thirty poems in thirty days is no joke, but someone's gotta do it. This clayandbranches site has been a mere shadow of a thought for over a year. I may yet reach the conclusion that turning it into... Continue Reading →
clayandbranches 