Saturday, November 2, 2013

PAD 2

What’s more challenging than taking that first step? Taking a second step. Let’s keep November going.
For today’s prompt, write a “news of the day” poem. The poem should use some sort of recent news event as a springboard. It can be a news story from today (this morning), but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, you could even go “old school” and find news stories from archived sources–like the “news of the day” from 1936 (to pick a random year).
(type in found garage sale poem from very very first set of poems - Oberlin)?
found today.  garage sale day.

cuz this below is booooring.
whatever.  god I hope that dog doesn't bark all night again!!! pleeeze no!!!!


In the news today
The sun didn't come up
because the sun never comes up.
The earth rolled over on its side
and bit by bit opened its trillions of eyes
that found
a new day visible
- bright
and sunny
- new.


Friday, November 1, 2013

Welcome to Day 1 of the 2013 November PAD Chapbook Challenge! Let’s get some poeming done this month!
For today’s prompt, write an appearing poem. This could be a poem about something (or someone) appearing out of nowhere. Or it could be about appearances–appearing one way to some people; appearing another way to others. If you’re new to my prompts, let me share one thing: I’m totally fine with you stretching the prompt in any direction you need to write; in fact, I encourage it. Now get poeming!

Competitor

I know they are there
because the neighbor's dog is barking 
and it is late, late and the leaves are black
and the light on them white
in a small breeze, shifting like many black and white striped faces
little dark, shining eyes staring 
from some nighttime perception
or are those maybe-eyes ink-black berries - October ripe
night-glistened, looking at nothing at all?

But there is just this one
(I think)
who appears directly out from under my deck
like an actor onto a stage

and looks at me - yellow-haired, I am,
pink in my pink nightgown
backlit by my baby blue kitchen light
trembling and as ready for a fight
as I will ever be

I throw things at him
He flinches once
Then ignores me
and the useless things- - socks and circles of rope -  I throw
without meaning
as I don't belong to the night
to the world of black and white
or to nature, really so much at all

I don't have claws or fearsome cries
But the freeway that is mine has criss-crossed his world
split him from the river and the river scent,
from the blackberry brambles and the fat frogs
that surrounded all teeth at once and fed him
fully by the cool water

- his mask reflected
in the slipping, greyscale, moonlit surface.

I find nothing else to throw and see,
for now, he is just cleaning his claws
on my lilies - though he wants my pretty little fish
that flash cadmium orange in the day 
At night they are just arrows of a lightness
diving into and becoming darkness
protected, not by me, but by the deep
and the eventual passage of hours that will bring back
their useless given names and their color
the protection of the sun
the apparent safety of the surface
of their endangered little fabricated world.