Since Nine O’Clock by Constantine P. Cavafy Half past twelve. Time has gone by quickly since nine o'clock when I lit the lamp and sat down here. I've been sitting without reading, without speaking. Completely alone in the house, whom could I talk to? Since nine o'clock when I lit the lamp the shade of my young body has come to haunt me, to remind me of shut scented rooms, of past sensual pleasure; what daring pleasure. And it's also brought back to me streets now unrecognizab

Read Catherine Klatzker's award-winning poem in today's other blog post. Then, write a poem in second person. Although you should write about something from your own life (we will get to that in a second), use the second person perspective. Many writers find it easier to write about difficult experiences by using "you" instead of "I," and the use of "you" pulls the reader in by making her/him/they a more active participant. It does not work with every piece of writing, but wh

What It Was Like by Catherine Klatzker published in Split This Rock 2016, 2nd Prize in their Abortion Rights Poetry Contest The world was always a place of silence, of congenital shame—even before those days in 1967, four years before you met your love. Your strength grew belatedly, fertilized as it was in the knowledge that you were nothing. Your life did not matter to anyone, except to hurt you. ~ Every time you awake in your hospital bed men in white say, What did you do?

The Tool Shed by Kasey Jueds published in Superstition Review How can I explain the way I kept coming back—to that box of trapped shadows with its concrete floor, its constant chill even on the most blazing August days. To the stacked cans of paint with their stuck-shut lids like the eyes of animals burrowed in the farthest reach of forest. To the locked-in air trembling, dense with the chemicals that fumed from ancient bottles of pesticides & herbicides lining the cinderbloc

With climate change making our weather less hospitable and a heat wave roasting much of the planet, heat is on my mind. And it is the focus of this week's writing prompt. Write about heat in any of its forms/meanings; below are some suggestions to get you started. heat, as in passion Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago by Eric Klinenberg heat and some of its slant and near rhymes: heart, hear, hare, head, heaven, heavy, heal, heap, heath, heave, health, hearse

Four Definitions For the Use of Time by Carolyn Moore published in Cider Press Review 1 Your book club neighbor chats across the fence of marginalia you’d feel rude to halt. You’re late for the doctor’s bad news redefining late as good. (Here, time as minutes saved before the clock’s face and hands tic with fear.) 2 Our dead forget all of their favorite colors but not how we felt when our red wine stained their table’s open grain. (Time as rebuke, selective as trout hungry fo

Moths & Origami Children by Ojo Taiye published in Whale Road Review, Winter 2018 i taste my mother’s sickness in my mouth & analyze the spittle: (grief lies folded in a woman’s hand) what we’ve left behind can be disturbing can i touch your throat? a pile of daylight composed of many meanings names emerge from the centre of each thing love. butterfly fields of daisies. mother blood. moths are burning mid-fl

Disasters happen daily, but unless they are especially horrific, international, or deadly, we might not hear about them. In our online world, we can certainly find out about disasters that happen on "smaller scales" elsewhere in the world, or past disasters that may be largely forgotten these days. Choose a disaster from the list below (or use as inspiration one you know about) and write a poem about it. There are many choices as far as perspective--someone who survived but w

The Man Moth by Elizabeth Bishop published in The Complete Poems, 1926-1979 Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.” Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon. He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties, feeling the queer light on his hands, neither war

The Empty Pool by Sue Ellen Thompson published in The Summerset Review, Spring 2010 This is the place where my sisters and I lay all afternoon on plastic rafts, too listless to shift our weight or direct our idle drifting. At the click of the gate, we'd lift our heads as if from our sickbeds, and there our mother would be: white shorts, white shirt, hair fading to gray, with a tray of cold drinks and sandwiches. This is the place where, on a hot June day five summers ago, I p

Today's poem on my blog is called "Love Poem," but it is not a Hallmark card sentiment. No cliche images of hearts, no angsty desires with sighs, no moon-June-tune. Rather, there are surprising words and images, all in ten lines. A love poem with words like contract, tiller, pairing, ochre, clamor, ice-dark, drift, exchange--lots of hard sounds, and nothing typical or expected. But the feeling is there. For this week's prompt, write a ten line poem (or a ten sentence micro st

Love Powm by Margot Wizansky published in Poetry East, 2004 All winter you contract-- one tiller, one boat, one bay, one light that shows no nuance. You need this paring down. In these small hills gone ochre, think of me. Hold a deep regard for yourself; resist the ice-dark clamor of your soul. Drift can take you. Love is a fair exchange.

Good Fences Wolf Conservation Center, NY by Dana Sonnenschein published in Kosmos Journal Something there is that doesn’t love a wall— I’ve seen the wolves here leap and climb chain-link and claw dirt down to buried steel and stone. But in this artificial wilderness with acres for each pack and roadkill deer shared out, no one fights for new turf or old. So those who might have died by bite and slash live long enough to watch neighbors raise pups beneath New England