July - 2022

Blog Post Archive

Jul 31, 2022
2 min

The Weirdest Vegetable: Poetry Prompt

I recently heard someone in a hair salon say, "Asparagus? Now, I feel that is the weirdest vegetable." I had been getting my hair washed, so I missed whatever conversation had come before, and I am not sure that context matters. The idea of a weirdest vegetable is perfect inspiration for a poem. This week, you have 2 choices for your prompt. First, you can write about what you consider the weirdest vegetable. Its weirdness does not have to be part of your piece, although it c

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In Praise of Okra by January Gill O'Neil

marychristinedelea

Jul 31, 2022
1 min

In Praise of Okra by January Gill O'Neil

In Praise of Okra by January Gill O'Neil published in her 2009 book, Underlife (CavanKerry Press) No one believes in you like I do. I sit you down on the table & they overlook you for fried chicken & grits, crab cakes & hush puppies, black-eyed peas & succotash & sweet potatoes & watermelon. Your stringy, slippery texture reminds them of the creature from the movie Aliens. But I tell my friends if they don’t like you they are cheating themselves; you were brought from Afr

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Lower East Side Brucha by Rachel Trousdale

marychristinedelea

Jul 27, 2022
1 min

Lower East Side Brucha by Rachel Trousdale

Lower East Side Brucha by Rachel Trousdale published in you are here, 2013 Blessed art thou, Lord our God, king of the universe, who maketh Yiddish-English newspapers. Blessed art thou who redeemeth the stained brown curtains in billows out the window. Blessed art thou, for thou makest the Chinese to run a bus from New York to Toledo, Ohio, and across the street from the bus stop thou placest the Jerusalem Yeshiva. Blessed art thou, o God, for thou hast set dim sum restaurant

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The Reemergence Of The Noose by Patricia Smith

marychristinedelea

Jul 24, 2022
1 min

The Reemergence Of The Noose by Patricia Smith

The Reemergence Of The Noose by Patricia Smith published in Asheville Poetry Review, Volume 15, Issue 1 Some lamp sputters its dusty light across a desk. Some hand, in a fever, works the fraying brown hemp, twisting and knifing, weaving, tugging tight this bellowing circle. Randy Travis sings, moans, radio’s steamy twangs and hiccups, blue notes backing the ritual of drooping loop. Sweat drips in an awkward hallelujah. God glares down, but the artist doesn’t waver— wrists cli

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marychristinedelea

Jul 24, 2022
1 min

On the Other Hand: Poetry Prompt

Patricia Smith mentions Randy Travis in her poem, The Reemergence of the Noose, so we will keep it going this week. Your writing challenge this week is to include a lyric from a Randy Travis song in your piece. I put some below, but there are more lyrics listed online. Remember to cite the song facts! (If none of his lyrics appeal to you, try choice #2: refer to a singer in passing, as Smith does in her poem with Travis) "I'm dialin' 'cross the radio for a song that I can sin

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marychristinedelea

Jul 20, 2022
2 min

Deathly by Rodney Jones

Deathly by Rodney Jones published in his book, Imaginary Logic (2011, Houghton Miffllin) I am alone, driving through St. Louis, listening to a ballad by Aimee Mann. There is a fine romance to listening to loud rock 'n' roll as you drive a late-model car through a big city late at night: the ordinary nostalgia, with its useless longing, and then the clearer nostalgia for what never happened: Februaries in Rio, blind tropical sweethearts, the last few treaties of the Gore admi

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marychristinedelea

Jul 17, 2022
1 min

Pain and Place: Poetry Prompt

In her poem, posted on this very blog, Kari Gunter-Seymour describes her Appalachia, both past and present. Along with physical descriptions (white oaks, rye grass, moonlight, feathers, etc.), there are personal details--a confession of sorts--and even angel bones. The mix of these details creates the poem's feeling of out-of-reach yearning. See if you can manage that combination in a poem you write this week. No matter where you grew up, you know things about that place that

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I Come From A Place So Deep Inside America It Can't Be Seen by Kari Gunter-Seymour

marychristinedelea

Jul 17, 2022
1 min

I Come From A Place So Deep Inside America It Can't Be Seen by Kari Gunter-Seymour

I Come From A Place So Deep Inside America It Can't Be Seen by Kari Gunter-Seymour published in her 2020 book, A Place So Deep Inside America It Can't Be Seen, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions White oaks thrash, moonlight drifts the ceiling, as if I'm under water. Propane coils, warms my bones. Gone are the magics and songs, all the things our grandmothers buried— piles of feathers and angel bones, inscribed by all who came before. When I was twelve, my cousins called me ugly, enough t

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marychristinedelea

Jul 13, 2022
1 min

Iron Woman by Diane Glancy

Iron Woman by Diane Glancy published in her 1990 book by the same name I knew I came from a different place, a story cut apart with scissors. I would find a piece of rust in the morning or a shape in the field through a fog. I would hear a broken language as if spoken by a woman with a bird’s nest on her head, long pieces of iron welded for her buckskin. She wears a mosquito mask, a crooked twig for a nose. Her teeth sewn together with close white threads. I hear her small vo

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Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell

marychristinedelea

Jul 10, 2022
1 min

Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell

Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing; as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and to

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marychristinedelea

Jul 10, 2022
1 min

What Plants Can Do: Poetry Prompt

A commercial for The Green Planet on PBS, besides being visually stunning, also prompted this week's prompt. While showing video of gorgeous plants in action, these three words pop up on the scene: Seduce, Conspire, Destroy--not words one normally associates with plants! This led me to find some other verbs that plants do, and that is part of this week's prompts. Write a poem and try to use all of the words below in your poem. Your poem would not be about plants, but you shou

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marychristinedelea

Jul 6, 2022
2 min

Text by Andrea Hollander

Text for D.H. by Andrea Hollander published in Kosmos Journal, Autumn 2021 My friend tells me in a text that his cat has stopped eating. She’s in her last week, he writes, and while I am reading this, another text chirps in: Or last days, it says. I consider calling him. I’ve been where he is—on the precipice of such grief, the kind that people who don’t have pets dismiss. Shouldn’t we find a better word? Pets, as if all they’re for is us to stroke their warm bodie

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marychristinedelea

Jul 3, 2022
2 min

Imagine That!: Poetry Prompt

Read the poem posted today on this very same blog (and many of the others) to see how wonderful poems that are pure imagination can be. Honestly, I had never stopped to think what Mrs. Buddha and Mrs. God would do in any circumstance until reading Patricia McMillen's poem. Now? My head cannot stop picturing new espresso machines and red eggs! This week's writing prompt takes today's poem as inspiration. Imagine two people who do not exist in this realm or any other meeting up

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Mrs. Buddha Calls on Mrs. God by Patricia McMillen

marychristinedelea

Jul 3, 2022
1 min

Mrs. Buddha Calls on Mrs. God by Patricia McMillen

Mrs. Buddha Calls on Mrs. God by Patricia McMillen published in New Ohio Review, 2000 Tea or coffee? asks Mrs. God, hopeful for an excuse to fire up her brand-new espresso machine, a gift from Mr. God last Christmas (he said it was from Santa, their little joke). Mrs. Buddha can’t decide. So many ways to burn water! she marvels, wondering if it’s polite to marvel, here in Heaven. Certainly it would be bad form back in Nirvana but everything’s so different here—why, outside th

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