mapping the nest
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 →
Diner, possibly located in Liminality, IN Today's prompt challenges us to "select a photograph from the perpetually disconcerting @SpaceLiminalBot, and write a poem inspired by one of these odd, in-transition spaces. Will you pick the empty mall food court? The vending machine near the back entrance to the high school gym? The swimming pool at what seems to be... 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 →
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 →
Willow, in perfect harmony with the forest exhumation for Willow, the pointer-setterwho are you digging for sweetheart? what scrap ... Continue Reading →
Photo by George Hiles via Unsplash Thief This morningI steal awaya moment.I hold it tight in my palm,as it stretchesits limbs into my flesh —a sleepy rabbit.I watch itskip across the thresholdinto fresh snow,leave no marks on the page, exceptfor the shadowof a slightlysmallertruth. First published in Moria, Issue 5, Spring 2020
Photo by Autumn Mott Rodeheaver via Unsplash . Today’s prompt challenges us to “write a poem about something that returns. For, just as the swallows come back to Capistrano each year, NaPoWriMo and GloPoWriMo will ride again!” ~ NaPoWriMo, Day 30 Once again, NaPoWriMo has been a wild, exuberant, insanely rewarding experience! I'm beyond grateful to Maureen Thorson for... Continue Reading →
Photo by Christian Søgaard via Unsplash . Today’s prompt challenges us to “write a poem in the form of a review. But not a review of a book or a movie of a restaurant. Instead, I challenge you to write a poetic review of something that isn’t normally reviewed. For example, your mother-in-law, the moon, or the year... Continue Reading →
Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve (1504) . Today’s prompt asks us to “write a poem about a particular letter of the alphabet, or perhaps, the letters that form a short word. Doesn’t “S” look sneaky and snakelike? And “W” clearly doesn’t know where it’s going! Think about the shape of the letter(s), and use that... Continue Reading →
Photo by Xavi Cabrera via Unsplash . Today's prompt asks us to “engage with different languages and cultures through the lens of proverbs and idiomatic phrases. Many different cultures have proverbs or phrases that have largely the same meaning, but are expressed in different ways. For example, in English we say “his bark is worse than his bite,”... 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 →
Today’s prompt challenges us to “write a poem based on a “walking archive.” What’s that? Well, it’s when you go on a walk and gather up interesting thing – a flower, a strange piece of bark, a rock. This then becomes your “walking archive” – the physical instantiation of your walk. If you’re unable to... Continue Reading →
Photo by Carl Newton via Unsplash . “There’s a pithy phrase attributed to T.S. Eliot: “Good poets borrow; great poets steal.” (He actually said something a bit different, and phrased it a bit more pompously – after all, this is T.S. Eliot we’re talking about). Nonetheless, our optional prompt for today (developed by Rachel McKibbens, who is well-known for her imaginative and... 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 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 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 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 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 →
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 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 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 →
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 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.
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 →
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 →
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 →
