M Christine Delea's Blog, page 47

Passion Play: Poetry Prompt

Dean Young's poem, also posted here on my blog, is an incredible poem about love/sex/romance/desire/yearning . . . in other words, passion. Yet none of these words are in his poem.

Look at the words that are in his poem; sure, a few of them are words you might find in a typical love poem (eyes, song, burning, touch) but most of them are not words we associate with love/love poems.

And that is part of what makes his poem so marvelous. The poem also builds up in both speed and tension as it go...

Delphiniums in a Window Box by Dean Young

Delphiniums in a Window Box by Dean Young (1955-2022)

Every sunrise, sometimes strangers’ eyes.Not necessarily swans, even crows,even the evening fusillade of bats.That place where the creek goes underground,how many weeks before I see you again?Stacks of books, every page, character’srage and poet’s strange contraptionof syntax and song, every songeven when there isn’t one.Every thistle, splinter, butterflyover the drainage ditches. Every stray.Did you see the meteor shower?Every ...

What I Wanted by Margaret Chula

published in Cordella Magazine, Issue 7

What I Wanted

by Margaret Chula

All my life, I wanted to ride bareback on a tiger through

the jungles of Borneo, to race by warthogs gorging on

pineapples, past headhunters with their poisonous darts

sheathed, mouths agape.

I wanted to outstrip Lady Godiva—her everlasting tresses,

her smirk of satisfaction shocking even Adam and Eve

as they cavorted in their own pleasure.

I wanted to be a swan on a lake in Shangri-La, folding

my wings around a lov...

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—

...