NaPoWriMo Day 17: "The Fire's Sermon"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "Today, I’d like you to challenge you to write a poem that similarly presents a scene from an unusual point of view. Perhaps you could write a poem that presents Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery from the perspective of the apple. Or the shootout at the OK Corral from the viewpoint of a passing vulture. Or maybe it could be something as everyday as a rainstorm, as experienced by a raindrop."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt: "For today’s prompt, write a reason poem. If this prompt seems unreasonable, just remember all the reasons you write poetry or enjoy cooking, dancing, singing, etc. Or provide a reasoned argument for your lack of reason. Only you know your reasons."

I added another poem to the heap I've already seen appearing at The New Verse News and elsewhere this week inspired by the Notre Dame fire -- though I ended up thinking along more Buddhist lines about it. Oops, I realize I forgot the part about presenting a scene -- although of course we all have the same scene in mind this week without my saying anything.

The Fire's Sermon

You love me if cold.

If hungry. If seeking to erase

what you no longer need.

You hate me if burning.

If scarred. If ravaged

by letting go.

You make me a symbol:

For you I am love. I am anger.

I am war. I am justice

that wipes the world clean,

I purify what you call a soul.

I am in all your gods.

For myself, I know no meaning.

I am combustion,

atoms rearranging themselves.

I am pyrolysis.

If a spark strikes, no more reason then

than why you breathe

then breathe again.

I exist, I cease.

Something is different after.

You look for reasons;

you mourn for change.

There are three things I know:

on this earth, I am impermanent.

I breathe the same air you do.

And nothing that you love

cannot be fuel.

             

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  Please do not cite, copy, or quote without permission.

NaPoWriMo Day 16: "Ten Things to Do While Fishing with Your Parents as a Child"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt:  "Today’s prompt takes its inspirations from Christopher Smart’s “Jubilate Agno.” Fundamentally, this is a poem about a cat. It’s also a structurally very straightforward poem – every line begins the same way, and is about some aspect of the cat at issue. But from these seemingly simple ingredients, Smart constructs a poem that is luminously, joyously weird. . . . Today, I challenge you to write a poem that uses the form of a list to defamiliarize the mundane."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt:  "Time for our third Two for Tuesday of the month! Pick one prompt or use both…your choice! [1] Write a catch poem. Catch a cold, a ball, a fish, or someone’s eye. [2] Write a release poem. Release your anger, a ball, a fish, or someone’s head (from a head lock while wrestling, of course)."

I feel like this combo could generate a ton of good ideas, but the second prompt immediately reminded me of the phrase "catch and release," which made me think about the many hours I spent in a fishing boat with my parents, occupying myself in various exquisite states of boredom. But so resonant now, as I imminently face selling our house on a lake where many of these memories take place. As the memories came back to me, I was sharply aware I was experiencing my own catch and release process too. I decided it would be ten things at the outset, to serve as a formal container.

  Ten Things to Do While Fishing with Your Parents as a Child

1. Cast the shore with them for a while. The crisp snap of rod and line, the thrill of the lure hitting the spot you aimed for.

2. Say “hey!” when one of their errant lines sprays you with wet. Duck to avoid the hook-prickled rapala.

3. Watch the edge of the woods for mysterious animals that might or might not appear. Watch the sky in the evening, wondering if those are birds or bats.

4. Trail your hand in the water as the electric motor ferries you slowly to the next spot.

5. Trail a homemade, blocky wooden toy boat on a string in the small wake, and ask your mother to make up a new Willy the Whaler story.

6. Create grotesque “salads” for display with weeds, dead minnow bits, and anything else you can find.

7. Lie across the uncomfortable middle seat, head propped on a flotation cushion, and read thick classic novels that are probably too old for you.

8. Sit up for the excitement when one of your parents catches something and reels it in. Feel sorry for the fish. Feel proud that they practice catch-and-release. Still feel sorry for the fish.

9. Try not to worry that whichever parent has caught fewer fish that day feels sad. Parental sadness is unspeakable, a scarcely perceptible mist over the water.

10. Smell that smell on your life preserver, the cushions, your father's jacket and everything -- fishiness, dried weed and algae, a trace of oil, sweat, the clear and bitter lake. Years later it will come back to you, to breathe it and let it go.

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

NaPoWriMo Day 15: "Sarah Good"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt:  "Our prompt for today (optional, as always), takes its inspiration from the idea of a poem as a sort of tiny play, which can be performed dramatically. In the 1800s, there was quite a fad for monologue-style poems that lend themselves extremely well to dramatic interpretations (this kind of work was basically Robert Browning’s jam). And Shakespeare’s plays are chock-a-block with them. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write your own dramatic monologue. It doesn’t have to be quite as serious as Browning or Shakespeare, of course, but try to create a sort of specific voice or character that can act as the “speaker” of your poem, and that could be acted by someone reciting the poem."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt: For today’s prompt, write a prediction poem. Make a prediction. Write about another person’s correct or incorrect prediction. Or, you know, be unpredictable.

Of course when I read the prompt for a persona poem, I immediately thought I'd write as Mary Dyer. But, though she issued prophetic warnings to Massachusetts, the idea of prediction made me think of convicted Salem "witch" Sarah Good's famous prophecy to the Rev. Nicholas Noyes -- a prediction which was in fact fulfilled years later when he died in 1718 of a brain hemorrhage which led to him choking on his own blood. I had also been thinking recently about a strand of anger that is in me and flares up under provocation, so I gave it to Sarah. In a rather Spoon River Anthology manner, she speaks here from beyond the grave.

I derived tremendous pleasure from creating the voice of this pissed-off Puritan woman -- still bad-ass but less noble than Mary Dyer. I guess that I would choose an early American subject for a dramatic monologue is pretty predictable of me. I need to keep working on this poem, with a bit more time to fully assemble her biography. I also didn't get her small daughter Dorcas into the poem, who was imprisoned for witchcraft along with her.

Sarah Good

Hanged July 29, 1692, Salem

The Lord knows I was not a witch!

Had I been one, they’d have seen it long since

for certain, those liar-addled fools.

For who’d consent to live so long as I did

with the Devil himself helping her,

could she have made all to her wish?

To go ragged so, belabored, without beauty?

All saw me a hag, older than two-score,

yet I died not even that. Each year is two

in poverty, is what I used to crack

to anyone who’d listen, looking to women

who’d grimace to me nodding, shrug.

Sisters we could be then, at least in passing.

There was little enough of that, these many years.

They started to step back from me early

as if they feared my Daniel’s endless debt

would catch their skirts and be dragged home

to poison their own husbands.

Our fortunes pined; cheerful still, he ever thought

the next harvest, next trade would save us.

Hopeless I knew it was, yet what could I say?

I thought it sin then, to crush man’s hope.

But my anger at his weakness licked at me

like a small, growing fire crackling in my chest.

The fever caught him; he died in innocence.

Then I wed William, poor still of course,
but strong, red-faced, jaw like a mule.

I watched his hard hand grasp the mug-handle.

Together we could do something, I thought,

but all it proved was starve and fight and beg.

I told him all that I knew plain now, no girl,

knowing my own good sense. I may have raised

my own fist a time or two, I confess it.

He never listened. The old anger flared,

grew, mounted towards my throat,

like something hot, wet, with a taste of iron.

Oh, I admit I might have made my mark

in the book of any fine devil who saw

my woman's worth, and let me have my will.

I know too well none ever came to me.

And last, the pack of them, the misters, and most

Reverend Nicholas Noyes, in his clean coat and breeches:

soft hands and battering words, confess, confess.

Another man I’d never get to listen

as I swung the blade of good hard sense.

The starting babe kicked inside my womb,

the old rage flared, now almost choking me;

it flew from my mouth and spoke itself,

I, Sarah Good, preacher and prophet at the last:

I’m no more a witch than you are a wizard

and if you take away my life

then God will give you blood to drink!

I saw them hurriedly scribe it down.

Back to prison then, to my travail, the babe’s death,

and then the crowd and tree and noose. Alas!

But for that one moment I could almost think,

for this it has all been worth it; that the world

should remember me, Sarah Solart Poole Good,

lowly, beggar, never heard, bad goodwife

who declared her innocence withal,

a woman without fear, the chosen one possessed

by God’s own power in the curse of man.

                

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

NaPoWriMo Day 14: "New York, New York"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "English has lots of words that look like other words. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates homophones, homographs, and homonyms, or otherwise makes productive use of English’s ridiculously complex spelling rules and opportunities for mis-hearings and mis-readings."

Today's PAD prompt: "For today’s prompt, pick a state (or province, territory, etc.), make it the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. A few possibilities include New York, California, Ontario, Bavaria, and Champagne. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Feel free to bend this in any direction you wish."

So. I can't say the prompts inspired me to anything deep today (I've already written serious poems about Manhattan and Ajijic this month, so another serious place-based poem didn't call to me right at this moment). But, amazingly, I managed to pull off a triolet full of homophones and even a homonym title (which of course is what gave me the idea). And, I guess, it does represent for a state I love that deserves more respect.

New York, New York

New York, New York -- it’s two.

Consider all it is, that makes it great.

You understand if that’s the place you grew,

New York. New York: it’s too

easy to forget about the not-so-few

out in all that landscape -- an entire state.

New York / New York. It’s to

consider all it is that makes it great.

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

NaPoWriMo Day 13: "Phosphenes"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt:  "Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about something mysterious and spooky! Your poem could be about something that is mysterious and spooky in a bad way (like a witch), or mysterious and spooky in a good way (possibly also like a witch? It depends on the witch, I guess!) Or just the everyday, mysterious, spooky quality of being alive."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt: "For today’s prompt, write a view poem. Wherever you’re at, you have a view: maybe of a river or sunset. Maybe of a cubicle or a copy machine. Even the blind have a view of darkness, nothingness, or some other -ness. And that’s just being literal, because everyone has views on sports, politics, poetry, etc."

I mixed the prompts into an interior scene that always (although in real life not so forebodingly as here) freaked me out a little. (I already did a witch poem on Day 10!)  I only learned the proper name for it, phosphenes, by Googling in order to title the poem. The weirdest thing was to see artistic representations of the phenomenon.

Phosphenes

Back when the days were infinite

I’d spend long minutes pressing on my eyes,

fingers feeling the odd wrinkled lids,

eyeballs round and slippery beneath.

If you can gaze at nothing, I would gaze

at the scene that moved before me

against its black velvet dropcloth:

whirling checkers, sparkles, pulsing rings

of faintly colored light, black holes,

how one by one they rose, pulsed, burst.

I thought if only I watched closely

I could see what they really were.

How mysterious and insistent it was,

the nearness and infinity of the view!

Was it only I who saw this, else why

did no one ever speak of it?

Was I watching my own blood, I wondered,

my cells, my neurons fire? Was it a discharge

of all I’d ever seen, now wiping clear?

Was it a miniature universe deep inside--

the way trees grow down into your lungs--

its first formation, its constellations,

its joyous fireworks, an omen of its fearsome

final dissolution in a rain of fire?

             

              

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

NaPoWriMo Day 11: "To Manhattan"

Not my favorite effort, but it's a mashup.

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt:  "We’d like to challenge you to write a poem of origin. Where are you from? Not just geographically, but emotionally, physically, spiritually? Maybe you are from Vikings and the sea and diet coke and angry gulls in parking lots. Maybe you are from gentle hills and angry mothers and dust disappearing down an unpaved road. And having come from there, where are you now?"

Today's PAD Challenge prompt:  "For today’s prompt, write a dedication poem. This is a poem dedicated to a person, an animal, or an organization. Or hey, objects work too–like a poem to a rock or paper bag. Put the dedication in the title or in a line under the title."

So, a poem about coming from New York and being in Iowa. I guess that's mostly geographic origins, but I've written and will write a lot about my family and emotional past, and when I read the prompt it felt like New York was what I had to take on.

To Manhattan

After these twenty years here, I still explain

I live in Iowa, but I’m from New York.

whatever the midwest is, I’m something else

that’s clearly you: fast walking, cutting through a crowd,

nervous and opinionated, gesturing when I talk,

with that awkward aw vowel pushing off my palate.

I remember sidewalks, peeling plane trees, the glow

of neon on wet streets, M15 bus sighing to a stop,

the smell of that dim immigrant candy shop.

It’s all your past now too, a set of vintage images.

They write how you were rough, hard, dangerous;

so odd to think that now. Strange too how hard it is

to think of you at all, how you persist in me

as crowds of corn-stalks shoulder through the fields

and windowless silos thrust against the clouds.

It’s strange how, trying to remember what I loved,

I think of gazing from the window in my school

that overlooked the river, letting myself dissolve

into its rising, falling emptiness and tidal smell,

in winter wide and white, a flowing field of ice.

In the final part I was trying to get at imagery that put New York in Iowa, and Iowa in New York. For the record, I went to the United Nations International School, which is located on a pier in the East River and lined with full-wall windows. Here below is the river as a field of ice.

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

NaPoWriMo Day 10: "As Cold as a Witch's Tit"

A mashup today, though one of the prompts just slips in at the very end.

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that starts from a regional phrase, particularly one to describe a weather phenomenon." Only one phrase came immediately to mind that I knew I wanted to write about, "cold as a witch's tit," although research reveals it is not in fact regional or old, though it sounds like it. Oh well. The sample poem, Natalie Shapero's "Sunshower,"  about the phrase "the devil is beating his wife," blew me away and in a lot of ways my poem is an imitation of hers with its feminist themes.

Today's PAD Challenge prompt:  "For today’s prompt, write a lone poem. Perhaps the poem is about a solitary wanderer or person who just prefers to go it alone. Or a lone winner, lone wolf, or some other solo individual. Or alternatively, I’ll accept poems that are about loans or that are about being alone."

The image of a solitary woman looking at the moon has carried over from the poem I wrote yesterday -- it has stayed with me. The prose poem form is partly influenced by the Shapero poem, but more by the prose poems that comprise VCFA faculty member Mark Cox's Readiness, which I was reading with admiration before bed last night.

As Cold as a Witch’s Tit

Perhaps the tits were cold, those minutes upon the gallows, a hard wind out of the east slicing easily through prison-ragged clothes. Perhaps their bodies stiffened with cold as much as rigor, hanging. In New England witches were hanged only, you know. Could they have been cold in Europe, before the bonfires were lit, their nipples starting up in terror of the flames? Oh wait, they weren’t actually witches after all; we understand that now, I think, most of us. Except the ones who don’t, who still feel the devil’s breath prickling the back of their neck everywhere they go. Except the ones who understand but don’t realize they still hate women and the wrong sort of men that much, hate forms of power they can't grasp. Except for all of us who still secretly want there to have been witches, some dark and fantastic capacity active in the world, who can’t get enough of Salem, who want the cold hanged women to have been true witches and innocent too. Anyway. Back to the witches and their tits, their teats, or tetts as it is spelled sometimes in the old texts. Their wrinkled, hanging dugs after so many children. Their barely-rising breasts, if they were very young. Their strangely lovely, luminescent globes, though they were heading into middle age and how could they still be beautiful. Something unnatural in that, to look so fresh, preserved in themselves. Chilling. Of course I’ve put this all backwards, unable not to think about actual breasts. The tits are not the sufferers but the agents of the cold. Cold to your lips, to your touch, to your heart, oh evil mother. Oh woman, how dare you not be warmth only, fount of mercy never ceasing, twin roes for every spiritual or carnal hunger. Oh man, oh women who loyally stand by the men. Oh children that we are, all of us saying it, it, it me. I’m sorry your mother didn’t love you the way you needed. I’m sorry your child died. I’m sorry your cow and your pig pined. I’m sorry your member failed to rise. I’m sorry it rose when you had the bad thought. I’m sorry not sorry the woman turned from your touch once and again to lie back to you facing the window, solitary, the cool strange light of the moon falling upon her, the points of its crescent rising deep inside her chest.

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