NaPoWriMo Day 30: Three Haiku

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "I’d like you to try your hand at a minimalist poem. What’s that? Well, a poem that is quite short, and that doesn’t really try to tell a story, but to quickly and simply capture an image or emotion. Haiku are probably the most familiar and traditional form of minimalist poetry, but there are plenty of very short poems out there that do not use the haiku form."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt: "It’s time for our fifth (and final) Two for Tuesday prompt of the month! Pick one prompt or use both…your choice! [A] Write a stop poem. [B] Write a don’t stop poem."

Well, ending on a minimalist note feels like going out with a whimper rather than a bang, but I'm still swamped today so I'm kind of grateful. But I did write three haiku (in my head first, in the pre-dawn hours) that encompass not-stopping and stopping. Two of these are drawn from memories of my teen years -- I'm not sure if memory-based haiku are considered legit or not but, for now, whatever.


Three Haiku

Dirt-blackened stop sign
Shadowed by an overpass:
“A” student fails test.

(Yes, this was what happened on my first driving test, in lower Manhattan -- I didn’t see the sign and got an automatic failure for not stopping. Such intense teenage shame; I cried and cried to have failed something for the first time. I wish I could figure out how to get that shame into the poem more directly.)


Quiet empty streets;
Red jewel glows in your headlights:
Pause, bow to the night.


And one more, another very specific memory from my teen years about a different kind of not stopping; I’ve cheated and added a title because the specific, disgusting kind of soda is part of the image for me:

Mello Yello

Throat clogged with horse-dust,
Cold can of scraping bubbles--
Gulping to the end.

--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy, cite, or quote without permission.