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 →
NaPoWriMo Day 28, 2022
Photo by Nathan Dumlao via Unsplash Today's prompt asks us "to write a concrete poem. Like acrostic poems, concrete poems are a favorite for grade-school writing assignments, so this may not be your first time at the concrete-poem rodeo. In brief, a concrete poem is one in which the lines are shaped in a way... Continue Reading →
Nothing Left to Do
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 →
Déjà vu
Nikolai Ge, What Is Truth. Christ and Pilate Déjà vu “No matter what comes into the house, a letter, today’s paper, you are convinced you have already seen it.” ~ Rosmarie Waldrop, “The Almost Audible Passing of Time” Nouns drop from their perches,seeking a lesshate-driven sentence,aiming for purpose or purchaseor mere acceptance.Freedom gives way to cages.Fewer... Continue Reading →
Birth
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 →
NaPoWriMo 2020: Poetry from the trenches, Day 25
Photo by Eric Muhr via Unsplash . Today’s prompt, “which you can find in its entirety here, was developed by the poet and teacher Hoa Nguyen, asks you to use a long poem by James Schuyler as a guidepost for your poem. (You may remember James Schuyler from our poetry resource for Day 2.) This is a prompt that allows you... Continue Reading →