Friday, September 18, 2009

Poetry Stretch Results - Prefix Poems

The challenge this week was to use a prefix to form a series of words and then write a poem around them. Here are the rather spectacular results.
Julie Larios of The Drift Record shares a poem entitled Pre of the Fixed.

Jane Yolen left this poem in the comments.
    OVER

    --lay

    When my beloved husband died,
    And after I cried
    For a thousand days,
    Making myself unhappier
    In a thousand ways
    I realized that the problem
    Was neither warmth nor sex,
    But that like that turtle
    “Twixt plated decks,”
    I have no one to lie over
    Or under me.
    That fact alone
    Practically sundered me.

    --mantle

    Looking into the mirror
    A year after his death,
    I saw an old woman
    with eyes like shallows:
    cold, inhospitable,
    covered with rime.
    I shall get to know her
    In time.

    --come

    We shall,
    I shall,
    Make a life,
    Not a better,
    Not a wife,
    But a new
    And fierce
    Alone.
    What was two
    Is now
    Quite
    One.

    © 2009 Jane Yolen, all rights reserved
Laura Purdie Salas left this poem in the comments.
    circum-

    be
    circum-
    spect
    don’t dive in
    to that hole.
    is there a bottom?

    circum-
    navigate
    instead.
    black.
    endless.
    peer in,
    gasping.
    scrabble back from the edge.

    circum-
    locution
    may be the only
    way around the
    unanswerable
    question.
    drown it in words
    larger than the hole
    itself obliterating
    its unknowableness.

    study the
    circum-
    ference
    of the
    question.
    is it
    pi times
    the d(ying)
    all around you.
    the dying that
    you fear?

    circum-
    scribe
    your thoughts,
    defined
    within
    walls of words,
    borders of phrases,
    continents of
    poems.

    --Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved
Susan Taylor Brown of Susan Writes finally joined us for a stretch! Hurray! (and Welcome!) Her poem is entitled SEMI.

Kate Coombs of Book Aunt left this poem in the comments.
    The Sorcerer Chants

    Tera
    It twists like fire
    in my mouth: sands pour
    into glass and mass,
    demanding the spell-shape.

    Peta
    I aim the word
    like an arrow with eyes
    and magic hisses
    the name of every star.

    Exa
    Thought trembles down
    the bones of mountains.
    My incantation
    rises like a golem.

    Zetta
    I leave behind silences,
    as if I were dragging
    a thin, jagged tail
    through the dust.

    Yotta
    It isn't enough to tell
    the size of the darkness
    I have bloomed
    into being like a new flower.

    —Kate Coombs
Linda of Write Time shares a poem entitled UN.
Here is one of the poems I wrote for this stretch.
Sub

-divide
Cleave attention
halve time
part ways
our days are
split and split and split

-atomic
It’s really all about
the little things
the tiny
bits and pieces of
our lives

-ordinate
I am
so small
so insignificant
so meaningless
in the grand scheme
of things

-sist
still …
I
am
here
It's not too late if you still want to play. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll add it to the list.

1 comment:

  1. Some of the best poems yet on a stretch, I think.

    Jane

    ReplyDelete