Category: Wax Poetic

Inspired by this Native Vermont image discovered while poking about on Pinterest, take inspiration from a food chain. Take inspiration from the “>”mathematical sign, from the chain of dominance in games such as rock-paper-scissors. Now, write a poem!

 

Example:

 

Rock Paper Scissors

 

Rock is greater than scissors,

Crushing is greater than slicing,

Stoic stone crumbles the sharp

Metal beaks of plastic cranes

 

Scissors are greater than paper,

Slicing is greater than folding,

Sharp metal beaks chew through

The crumpled skin of a dry lotus

 

Paper is greater than rock,

Folding is greater than crushing,

Long petals stretch their crumpled

Flesh over the face of stoic stone

 

-Constance 

Are you following our Write it…! board on Pinterest? This images is all inspiration and puddles, perfect for February poetry.

Take a rainy day walk (imagine weather if climate does not permit) around your neck of the woods. Go people watching like this artist did. Write about a particular person or group you come across. What do you think that person’s backstory might be? Who are his/her friends? Where is he/she going? What does he/she hope for? What is he/she afraid of? Does that person call to mind certain memories, either childhood memories or recent experiences? Weave those memories into your narrative!

 

Example:

 

Bagpipes and Pajamas

Perhaps my craziest memory

is that of the man who sat in the quad

sometimes, playing bagpipes in his pajamas.

I don’t remember why he would do that—

perhaps I never knew. Perhaps

he was a transfer from Scotland,

and missed home while walking in the tangle

of graffitied metal of downtown warehouses.

Perhaps he always wanted to travel abroad,

and spent his nights drinking in the sound

of shafts of sunlight breaking through grey clouds

onto green hills: all I can recollect is his music

wafting around town at midnight some nights,

hearing those sweetly broken bagpipe

notes float out into the night,

starless with impenetrable smog.

 

-Constance

Write a small story that describes the parts of an object or characteristics and memories of a person, in order to tell a story or reach a conclusion about a certain character, just as the fading parts of this rose imply a history of aging and weather without words—by showing, not telling. The House on Mango Street, Esperanza vicariously describes her family by describing her house.

Example:

 

Red Tennis Shoes

 

Every month, my mother tells me to throw out my red tennis shoes. 

They’re about two sizes too small (left over from tenth grade, because tenth grade was the best year, this liminal space where you weren’t the school baby and you didn’t have to worry about WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS because God knows that’s too much responsibility, and all you need to worry about is whether you’ll get an A or a B, or whether you look better with a red or pink lip.)

One shoe’s lacings have been torn into frayed ribbons (because of my brother’s dog who mistook my shoes for his red ball, and I would say that it was stupid except for the fact that he often couldn’t recognize one thing from another, like my handwriting from my mom’s or fun from fulfilling, and yet you know she still loved both of them for their eyes)

They’re still covered in dirt stains (from the time we went camping in the Appalachians and I saw trees burst into photosynthetic flame for the first time, and the image of a ring of massive trees blossoming into red around a stagnant lake is still so sharp)

Every night I go to the trash to throw them out, I turning back to the house in the distance with its laughing yellow light, dangling their relieved weight from my hands.

 

-Constance

 

Or an ordinary gardener

and her dog named Theo?

My dog is clever.

Not only does he enjoy

poking his nose in the warm

soil as I was plant seedlings,

he is also quite resourceful..

 

Write a poem inspired by your pet. Begin with one singularly detailed sentence. Break your sentence into lines to create a single stanza poem.

/ People who say that fish have no personalities / have never held a fish in their hands / while changing the fishtank water, / feeling the small body flail in such choked / desperation that you suddenly understand / what it means to touch a scream. /

 

Example:

My Fish

People who say that fish have no personalities

have never held a fish in their hands

while changing the fishtank water,

feeling the small body flail in such choked

desperation that you suddenly understand

what it means to touch a scream.

 

Now, write another. Pets make great fodder for writing. Consider writing a poem after . 

-Kim & Constance