d. ellis phelps's Blog, page 5

from the horse’s mouth: writer’s idea box prompt

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New: Writer’s Idea Box

Photo by Thom Milkovic on UnsplashWriting Prompts & Publication

Here fws paid subscribers will find a year’s worth of writing prompts to be posted monthly or more often. These are prompts I have used to facilitate writing workshops with adults for the past decade. I’m calling these prompts, but they are more than that, as each includes a writing warm-up, writing samples that help you understand more about how you might approach each prompt, and at least one writing exercise.

Choose a prompt from the list below. When you open the page and if you have not already done so, you will be prompted to become a paid subscriber. This is an annual $10 fee that gives you access to all paid subscriber content for an entire year. Think of it like buying the digital version of my book: The Writer’s Idea Box. Think of it like being in one of my workshops only on demand at your leisure! That’s less than a dollar a workshop. That’s just a bit more than a fancy coffee.

Read more and subscribe… I promise. You will love it!

Namaste,

d. ellis phelps

Stranger than Fiction: writer’s idea box prompt

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gentle touch, d. ellis phelps

gentle touch

~inaugural poem, January 20, 2025

~in honor of Martin Luther King

i want to be this pink begonia
blooming on the coldest day of winter
blooming in the window sill
in spite of the looming cold

i want to be the fossil i hold:
enduring
reminding
this too shall pass

i want to be this silly finch
enraptured by a cold bath
i want to be amazed and amazed
by the simplest of things

i want to be the sounding gong
waking
—a warm hand
—a gentle touch

~

i want to remember what matters:

my mother who lived through the depression
who says they almost starved—
sometimes not even a chicken on sunday

my father who told of the holes
between the slats of his cabin
the cold wind whistling through
only the wallpaper to warm him

~

i want to live to see the day
when all of god’s children
will be able to sing
to sing & sing

when every well every belly is full
when every head rests in a soft warm bed
when we lead each other to the promised land
when we take each other hand in hand

& walk the good red road

Lesser Goldfinch bathing in freezing water!

Thanks to Rosemary Wahtola Trommer for the prompt to write poems for the 2025 inauguration since there will be no poem read at the ceremony. Her challenge: flood the airwaves with poems today!

boy stuff, d. ellis phelps

Photo by Krzysztof Kowalik on Unsplashboy stuff~for Gene

please god
send me a baby

--a brother or sister
i prayed

i prayed this way nightly
until i was no longer a child

until our mother —finally with child
told me

~

we stood by the back door in the den
the spotted dog looking in

linoleum dark green on the floor
my father and i had laid tile by tile

the pungent smell of adhesive
the black stickiness on my fingers

this den we slept in all together
when the heat was too much

we drug the comforter in
unfolded the gold sofa-bed

and slept under the ac wall unit
blowing its merciful cool

down upon us like a blessing

this den where i now stood
stunned knowing

my prayer: finally answered

~

i stepped out onto the two-step porch
to join the dog and contemplate the sky

where i assumed then god must live
thirteen years i had waited and prayed

for you

~

we cleaned out the guest room
—painted the walls jubilant yellow

repurposed some shelves from my room
refinished a chest of drawers that had belonged

to me and many cousins before
bought a crib

~

because we didn’t know your gender
no sonogram no blood test would tell us

we simply had to take our chances
so me and mom marked up and dog-eared

the sears and roebuck catalogue:
some stuff for a girl/some stuff for a boy

~

after i came home from school
found mom ironing everything

after dad and me had supper
eating from the tv trays in the den

in front of the black and white
mom said: we have to go now

so we went and fast because
mom kept hollering dad’s name

telling him to hurrrrreeeeee!

~

less than an hour later
the nurse brought you to us

dad and me kissed your soft head
it’s a boy she said

i’ve never seen a bigger smile on his face
i felt my heart warm and warm

when we got home it was my job to call up
sears and roebuck and order the boy stuff

~

you’ll turn sixty this year
& when i think of you

my heart warms and warms
the taste of you newborn

on my lips

(c) d. ellis phelps

read more poems by d. ellis phelps

new work: Our Loveliest Bruises, Okaji

this from his publisher 3: A Taos Press

By way of his unmatched precision, and reverence, Okaji navigates the darkness of loss to discover living within the vessel of himself—a reliquary to bear our loveliest bruises that attest to our most human griefs and joys—the light that is tantamount to being alive.

3: A Taos Press

A regular contributor to fws, Robert Okaji’s work is enigmatic, butter in the mouth, moth wings.

His debut collection promises himself embodied. Find it here.

call for submissions: solace

Please consider submitting work that uplifts, comforts, and consoles for the current issue of fws: solace.

We are interested in reading your fun, funny work, your words of revelry in nature or joy in the present moment. We are not looking for directive or prescriptive writing, but writing that brings the reader into an immediate sense of the sublime, be it through beautiful imagery, humor, or engaging narrative.

Work is being published on fws as it is accepted, so do not wait, but submit at your earliest convenience. Also, please share this call for submissions with your list of writers or on you blog.

Please read the work that is already published in the issue to get a feel for the tone of the work we seek, and share if you like what you read. Here is that link.

The deadline for submissions is March 1, 2025. Read the guides and submit below:

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New poem up on Texas Poetry Assignment today

Photo by Yuliia Huzenko on Unsplash

Every summer we have a family reunion. We eat hubby’s famous “King Daddy Grill Brisket” and have a romping good time with all of our kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, and great-nephews.

Laurence Musgrove, Editor of Texas Poetry Assignment, has chosen my poem about all of that, “family reunion,” to represent the current edition of TPA: Texas Eats. I’m real happy about that. Thanks Laurence!

Laurence also hosts a mostly-monthly online reading by TPA contributors as a fundraiser for Feeding Texas. The reading is free to attend. Your voluntary donation to Feeding Texas in honor of the reading is appreciated and much needed. One of those readings is tonight, July 28, 2024 at 7PM CST. Join us!

Or, you can read my poem here.

And here’s a link to archived editions of TPA and to submit.

I hope you’ll do a little writing and do a little good, too! I’ll see you at the reading!

Namaste,

d

The Body as Religion by Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson

image: (c) d. ellis phelps

Sankofa is an African word from the Akan tribe in Ghana. The literal translation of the word and the symbol is “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.”

~Berea College

The Body as Religion

Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson

We grieve the absence of youth savoring sacraments of nostalgic seconds. We spend the best parts of our life seeking Sankofa and reclaiming for the fragmented parts of our nature. We desire the nurture of our heart and soul to let our body language fluidly speak with zeal. Revealing a motif of movement suited to our sacred, yes our sacred.
That we may testify of it, a space, whether it: sanctuary, synagogue, shrine or mosque, your flesh is simply a temple carved out of spirit and bones. A place enthroned with awe inspiring wonders from sharpened shoulder blades to thighs that thunder. We should humbly exalt the vessel we've been given.
We are no longer compelled and driven by outside force or coerced into relishing the resplendence of our form. We willingly perform the ceremony of self love daily. Holding space for the beauty bestowed in our bosoms. With rituals of rites day and night we fight to preserve, or let go of the things that no longer serve our inner majesty.
This is the physical place where the peace and pieces of God rest upon our skin, from the scalp of our crowning glory to the pedestal of our twinkling toes. For the freckles, birthmarks, and moles, for the wrinkles, scars of demarcation, and crows that flock in the folds of our face. Cherish the intricate altars built-up, burnt down, and replaced by the residual and individual seconds spreading across our skin.
We need to see the gathered moments of our timeline as a blessing, not vexed.
Dripping with oil.
We face the turmoil of aging.
We will reap the spoils for it is our keepsake at the highest stakes to divinely delight in at our discretion, the body as religion.
~

Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson hails from San Antonio, TX. where she is the 5th Poet Laureate Emeritus 2020-2023. She has collaborated with artists from around the globe and her work is a fusion of poetry, hip-hop, and rhythm and blues vocalization. She is a teaching artist who facilitates workshops and features throughout the U.S. from Michigan State University, to DePauw University, to the University of Pennsylvania, to Rice University, and many others. Her debut collection of poems, She Lives in Music (FlowerSong Press, 2020), is said to be a temple of rhythm- Charles “Easy Lee” Peters. Andrea is an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and was voted Best Local Poet 2023 and 2021 by The SA Current. Sanderson has had the distinct honor of opening up for Dr. Cornel West, Phylicia Rashad, and Nikki Giovanni. Her writings and teachings have been highlighted by The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, television stations PBS and KLRN, in documentaries, and at festivals worldwide. For more information visit her website: www.andreavocabsanderson.com

Texas Poetry Assignment + Hunger Relief

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

This is a reaaaalllly good idea!

Laurence Musgrove, Editor of the Texas Poetry Assignment, offers frequent prompts with publication upon acceptance (so really fast turnaround!) and a monthly or bi-monthly zoom reading platform for contributors.

He does all of this as a fund-raiser toward Texas Hunger Relief.

You can see all of the “assignments” otherwise known as prompts here. Submission instructions are there, too. Recent prompts, all themed to Texas, include Mothers, Fathers, Windmills, Cars, Weather, Boots, and more.

Read my Texas Mothers poem here.

Read my Texas Fathers poem here.

Of course, you can always simply make a donation to help with hunger relief and please do so here if you are so inclined, but why not join us in the poetry fun too?

I hope to see you at the next reading!

Namaste,

d