Prompt:
RWP member Angie Werren invites us to write about the choice we didn’t make:
Everyday we make choices. Some are small: English breakfast or Lipton? the highway or back roads? Some are more significant: convertible or mini-van? farmhouse or condo?
Some choices lead us straight into the life we’re living, but for this poem, think about one of the things in your life you didn’t choose.
Be concrete. Pick an object — something tangible* — and write your poem directly to it, as if you were writing it a personal letter. Explain why you didn’t choose it. What could things have been like if you had? Talk about what your life has become without it. See where the “confession” takes you.
*As an alternative, dig a little deeper and write your poem to a person you left behind.
---
Silver
I.
The man on the bench stared at the
toddler screaming with impish glee
chasing pigeons, hands full of bread crumbs
which she threw gracelessly
at the heedless birds
like fairy dust, airy and
delicate like the child’s own fingers
which were really fat and round sausage stumps,
Picasso’s baguette digits posing in a black
and white facsimile of some
thing from the artist’s own oeuvre.
II.
In this city, it’s a bad habit not to be able to sleep
without the windows open. The traffic is a mere hindrance,
more like an urging than a lullaby, the hum of fluorescents
in an office floor packed with cubicles reminding you
of your slow transformation to stone.
III.
Behind her the birds continue to follow
pecking at the bread crumbs she throws
over her shoulder, like trading coins for wishes.
RWP member Angie Werren invites us to write about the choice we didn’t make:
Everyday we make choices. Some are small: English breakfast or Lipton? the highway or back roads? Some are more significant: convertible or mini-van? farmhouse or condo?
Some choices lead us straight into the life we’re living, but for this poem, think about one of the things in your life you didn’t choose.
Be concrete. Pick an object — something tangible* — and write your poem directly to it, as if you were writing it a personal letter. Explain why you didn’t choose it. What could things have been like if you had? Talk about what your life has become without it. See where the “confession” takes you.
*As an alternative, dig a little deeper and write your poem to a person you left behind.
---
Silver
I.
The man on the bench stared at the
toddler screaming with impish glee
chasing pigeons, hands full of bread crumbs
which she threw gracelessly
at the heedless birds
like fairy dust, airy and
delicate like the child’s own fingers
which were really fat and round sausage stumps,
Picasso’s baguette digits posing in a black
and white facsimile of some
thing from the artist’s own oeuvre.
II.
In this city, it’s a bad habit not to be able to sleep
without the windows open. The traffic is a mere hindrance,
more like an urging than a lullaby, the hum of fluorescents
in an office floor packed with cubicles reminding you
of your slow transformation to stone.
III.
Behind her the birds continue to follow
pecking at the bread crumbs she throws
over her shoulder, like trading coins for wishes.
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