M Christine Delea's Blog, page 46

A Horse, Of Course: Poetry Prompt

Good morning!

Although only 14% of Americans live in rural areas, most of us are not far from horses. Horse-drawn carriages, police horses, riding schools, horse racing, state fair rodeos, parades, pony rides, and therapy horses allow people not living near horses that work on farms and ranches to see them regularly.

Besides seeing actual horses, our language is filled with idioms and phrases that involve horses. From the horse power of cars to being so hungry you can eat a horse, from a game...

Love Letter to a Dead Body by Jake Skeets

Love Letter to a Dead Body

by Jake Skeets

published in Boston Review, 2018

we lay each other down in the burr and sage bottles jangle us awake cirrhosis moon for eye

memories cough our young fists up trying to set ourselves on fire dressing ourselves in black smoke

just as our cousins did one by one after the other rising...

Forget-Me-Nots by Megan Merchant

Forget-Me-Nots

by Megan Merchant

published in Breakwater, Issue 23

Today, my mother forgot the word for bathroom

while she was in one. She said dry room, no—wet room, no—

tell me, then what are the others called. I’d like to walk them.

At one point, someone taught me a word I’ve forgotten.

A room I was already inside. A marriage. A country. A war.

A man’s fingers cuffed around my wrist. Someone promised—

it is common, when learning another language, to lose

pieces of your mother ton...

Marry You?!? Poetry Prompt

Check out today's poem from Jellyfish Magazine: "Marry Me" by Lindsey Webb.

Now write a poem in which the speaker tells someone why they cannot possibly accept a marriage proposal.

Your speaker can be addressing the person who proposed or a confidante. Your speaker can be reacting in the present to the question just asked, or can be explaining a past decision.

Either way, be both specific and strange (again, see today's blog poem).

Marry Me by Lindsey Webb

Marry Me by Lindsey Webb; published in Jellyfish Magazine, 2015

I am like a flower that won't stopopening and closing. I scareall the scientists. Our beda soft table. In my dreamyou and I take off our clothes with a potato peeler, becoming fleshone curly strip at a time.In the morning there will be everything left.I admit I have freedmyself from beautiful things. Raspberries, children,the white telephone.The sound of maniaon the horizon, rolling upwards like an eye. I check behindthe...

The Sciences Sing a Lullabye by Albert Goldbarth

The Sciences Sing a Lullabye

by Albert Goldbarth published in his book, The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course

you're tired. Every atom in you

has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes

nonstop from mitosis to now.

Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance

inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch

by inch America is giving itself

to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness

lap at your sides...

California Gestalt by Jessica Yuan

California Gestalt by Jessica Yuan

published in New Delta Review, Issue 11.2

How small the rains that feed that city,

that settle its dust and high flat glare: city leaning

back in its chair against the Coastal Ranges,

city paved smooth and level to the concrete drain,

the channelized river. So little of it and so confined.

I went past every morning and also believed

there was One Way to manage land and water,

to follow its inscriptions, downhill,

Mountains-to-Sea—

...

The Irregulars: Poetry Prompt

Irregular verbs are the ban of foreign language students, no matter what language you are trying to learn. I have had students from all over the globe, many of them extraordinarily proficient at English grammar, completely bewildered by irregular verbs in English, and wanting desperately for me to provide a reason behind and an easy way to remember. As far as I know, there are none. Sorry!

For this week's very simple writing prompt, I want you to create a piece that uses three forms of one irre...

Freeway 280 by Lorna Dee Cervantes

Freeway 280

 

by Lorna Dee Cervantes

 

Las casitas near the gray cannery,

nestled amid wild abrazos of climbing roses

and man-high red geraniums

are gone now.The freeway conceals it

all beneath a raised scar.

 

But under the fake windsounds of the open lanes,

in the abandoned lots below, new grasses sprout,

wild mustard remembers, old gardens

come back stronger than they were,

trees have been left standing in their yards.

Albaricoqueros, cerezos, nogales . . .

Viejitas come here with paper ...

Freeway by Lorna Dee Cervantes

Freeway 280

 

by Lorna Dee Cervantes

 

Las casitas near the gray cannery,

nestled amid wild abrazos of climbing roses

and man-high red geraniums

are gone now.The freeway conceals it

all beneath a raised scar.

 

But under the fake windsounds of the open lanes,

in the abandoned lots below, new grasses sprout,

wild mustard remembers, old gardens

come back stronger than they were,

trees have been left standing in their yards.

Albaricoqueros, cerezos, nogales . . .

Viejitas come here with paper ...