Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Poetry Challenge - 20

For today's prompt, write a message in a bottle poem. Imagine that your poem is being rolled up and put in a bottle for someone to read. Or if you want to come at it in a different way, think of it as a poem left in a time capsule or hidden away in your sock drawer.


Message in a Bottle

What's rolled up and put in a bottle?
The last bottle bobbing towards us.
Finally - after all these years.
What does the final note say?
In whose soft narrator voice is it read to us?

I'm not a bad person, it says,
in her voice, then his, then hers,
over and over again.
I'm notta badpers on
I'm not taba dperson.
I'mnottab adper son.
I'm just sick.

A waste of a note.

That went without saying
without curling
and keeping it
in the empty, echoing negative space
of the over-tipped bottle.

Why say that
when I need a message
so badly?

I need a message.

I need one.

Tell me what I don't understand.
Why were you sick?
And why are you still talking to me through a bottle?

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