Hi over there. This is me waving with some new words. This is a quiet morning, or more like a thick blanket of quiet spread across fat noise, clanging cymbals (I wanted to write symbols, which, also, yes), the marching band of the soul. That’s how it feels this morning.
I have a poem as a prompt or just a reading-to-be-with this morning. I spent last night with a book of poems I’ve loved for many years, and it felt good to go back into those words, into all that they’ve held for me over the last decade plus. This is one of the books that I wrote about for my MA thesis, so I got to push really deep into these lines, wrangling with metaphor and possible meaning, stretching out onto my own pages the emotion and resonance that they brought up for me about desire, about claiming one’s own passion even though… (whatever your even though is: someone else doesn’t like it, your dad tells you to get a real job, your friends make more money than you, your lover wants to know when you’re coming to bed, etc.)
So, this is one of the poems from Alison Luterman’s The Largest Possible Life. Use it as a prompt, if you like. Notice what lines or images stay with you, grab them out, drop them on your page, and go. Write for 10 minutes — follow your writing wherever it seems to want you to go. Continue reading