mapping the nest
Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash Another poem from my forthcoming collection a woman made entirely of air (Dancing Girl Press, 2024). 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 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 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 →
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 Saud Edum via Unsplash . Today’s prompt asks us to “fill out, in five minutes or less, the following “Almanac Questionnaire.” Then, use your responses as to basis for a poem. Happy writing! Almanac Questionnaire Weather? Flora? Architecture? Customs? Mammals/reptiles/fish? Childhood dream? Found on the Street? Export? Graffiti? Lover? Conspiracy? Dress? Hometown memory? Notable person? Outside... 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 →
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 →
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 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 Laurence Demaison : A Woman Made Entirely of Air : these days I worry about percentages : who knows how much fear is enough to inflict irreversible : damage who knows if merely by passing through someone’s life : ... 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 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 →
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 →
Gian Lorenzo Bernini The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, detail :: Why I Like Hot Showers : Forgive me, for I have sinned. It’s been more than a day since my last confession. I am engulfed and ablaze, arms outstretched to embrace this liquid fire, my face thrown upward in rapture, serene as St.... 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 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 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 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 →
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 →
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 →
clayandbranches 