M Christine Delea's Blog, page 50

Four Definitions: Poetry Prompt

To follow this writing prompt in the strictest sense, define four in 4 different ways. If you would like more inspiration, Google Four Definitions and be amazed at the fascinating things that will come up, even on the first page.

To use the prompt as a base in which to do your own thing, write a poem that defines something in four different ways. I suggest doing the same thing as with "four"--Google

skunk or tea kettle or isthmus or whatever you will define in four ways as a means to jumpstart ...

Seventeen Funerals by Richard Blanco

Seventeen Funerals

by Richard Blanco

Poetry Foundation

Seventeen suns rising in seventeen bedroom windows. Thirty-four eyes blooming open with the light of one more morning. Seventeen reflections in the bathroom mirror. Seventeen backpacks or briefcases stuffed with textbooks or lesson plans. Seventeen good mornings at kitchen breakfasts and seventeen goodbyes at front doors. Seventeen drives through palm-lined streets and miles of crammed highways to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at ...

Nostalgia for a House in Turda, Romania by Gabriela Suarez

Nostalgia for a House in Turda, Romania

by Gabriela Suarez

published in Sliver of Stone, Issue 1, 2010

I rest my cheek on the peeling wall and my hands on the curtains my grandmother embroidered. This is where I spent my first eleven summers and left pieces of me scattered: ten black markings on the wall where I grew, crayon marks on furniture, tricycle scratches in the wood floor. I am part of the house my grandfather built. I smell her sarmale, his wine fermenting in barrels in the...

Small Town News: Poetry Prompt

Please read today's posted poem, Séance, before trying this prompt or reading on.

{little dance while I wait for you to read Séance}

Okay. Let's get to the prompt.

I have no idea if Brennan Bestwick's marvelous poem is based on an actual story, although it reads as if it was. I love how he takes a tragedy from the past, imbues it with birds resurrecting the drowned boys, and also brings in "those of us who have never died" who find safety in the woods. The mixture of "reality" (whether or not...

Séance by Brennan Bestwick

Séance

by Brennan Bestwick

published in Thrush, September 2016

A round of robins carries the drowned boys

up into the cedars. They drape their arms

over the branches and await morning.

At dawn, the birds open the boys’ swollen

jaws. They lift their wet tongues and clean

bootlaces and silt from the boys’ mouths.

Fledglings squeeze down their throats

and descend into the ballooned lungs.

They reappear with knots of fishing line

and bottle caps pinched in their small beaks.

Single file, t...

Work by Robert King

Work

by Robert King

published in Rattle, Summer 2008

The workmen over and above the fence

fit bricks, lift mortar, slap it accurately

in place. Guilty by sitting idle, I

imagine they envy my luxury

of doing nothing until I remember

the days I had my hands full of shovel,

the dragline plowing the ditch of a sewer

through a future subdivision and how

I pitied those who walked by our work

with no apparent occupation,

denied the pleasure of making something,

piece by piece—even if it would soon...

The Dying of the Light: Poetry Prompt

I love art, but I am no art historian, critic, curator, or expert. I learn new things about art all the time, and it pleases me no end. (Click here for a link to Daily Art Magazine, which is wonderful. The woman who created it also has an app. You will learn so much from the app and the web site, and find joy every day with both.)

Today I learned--from a different source--that Caravaggio's painting Basket of Fruit, a famous Still Life painting by a famous artist is about mortality. Kevin West w...

What Is Love If Not Rot? by Jane Wong

What Is Love If Not Rot?

by Jane Wong

online at the Seattle Public Library Seattle Writes web site

I’ve been watching videos of rotting oranges on time-lapse again – it’s barely noticeable at first – the pores begin to grow, craters of no importance – after 14 days, the skin thins out, rice paper thin, wind thin, loneliness thin – at 15 days, spots bloom like a newborn galaxy or a bald buzzard – circling, a shadow returning winter’s wail – the skin puckers in on itself, all chimney ash, al...

The saint takes the monster to church & the monster catches a cold by Mary Ann Clark

The saint takes the monster to church & the monster catches a cold

by Mary Ann Clark

published in The Scores

Here is a body.

There are muscles for cruelty, muscles for kindness;

there is poison and there are sweet shrill enzymes;

there is love and dirt. We are going inside.

The saint doesn’t know much about bodies, how they inscribe their excrescences on the

earth.

This is just a room with living things in it.

There is the flank by flank of us, the stink of us,

the zoo-ness, the how-do-y...

When's Your Birthday?: Poetry Prompt

For this week's prompt, you are getting your poem's first line.

I am using a calendar I have for this one. Look for your birthday month; the "line" after that is inspired by the picture that is on my calendar for this month.

(Full disclosure: this prompt comes from my sarcastic sense of humor. When I flipped the page to May last week and saw the photo, I immediately thought, "Oh, yeah. When it comes to May, I think of koalas.")

This is, by the way, The Nature Conservancy's beautiful 2022 cal...