Written for dVerse Quadrille #30, hosted by Mish (mishunderstood), where the safe word prompt word is drizzle. Drizzle made me think of candy for some reason… that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Don’t forget to visit other poets’ take on this prompt.
Written for imaginary garden with real toads Twitter Me a Gothic Poem, imagined By Magaly Guerrero. We were challenged to write a poem with three stanzas, each stanza not to exceed 140 characters (a basic tweet, if you will). The first two stanzas, or “tweets” would be in the voice of one of the thirteen selected gothic writers, as if they’re having a twitter conversation. The third stanza was to be my reply or commentary to thr first two. The catch is that the whole thing is supposed to read as one piece.
I chose Edgar Allen Poe (1st stanza) because his work influences me quite a bit, and I chose Sylvia Plath (2nd stanza) because I identify with how she described her lifelong battle with depression.
I gotta say, this was one heck of a prompt! It was more challenging than I anticipated, but I greatly enjoyed this one. Real Toads is quietly becoming the front page of my window to the internet. Thanks for all the wonderful prompts, and keep em coming!
When I closed my eyes to speak to my younger self, I was instantly transported back to the 70’s. True story! I was about four, or as I liked to call it, “Four-and-a-half”. Mom was teaching me to read, and I took to it like a duck to water. This is where my nerdery began.
I was nowhere near emotionally developed enough to deal with a cliffhanger, and Mom was too tired to let me read the first book to her so I could get to the second one. I took matters into my own hands, and Dad ratted me out real sneaky like and laughed in my face after I got in trouble with Mom. I swear, if I had been big enough to kick an ass, his ass would’ve been the first one I kicked that night. It’s like dude never heard the old “Snitches get Stitches” nursery rhyme, Knaamean?
So yeah, I wanted to kick my dad’s ass that night. Dirty snitch! May his soul rest in peace.
Posted to imaginary garden with real toads for Physics with Björn: Space time and the special theory of relativity. Björn has us writing poems about space time! I know! So dope, right? I like to think that I would’ve made a pretty rad astrophysisit if I hadn’t wasted all those formative years hating myself and whatnot. Ah well.
(I left astrophysicist intentionally misspelled just so that everyone could have a clear idea of how far away I am from becoming an astrophysicist.)
Anyway, head on over and check out all the wonderful poetry about space time.
The officer smirked, trying not to laugh. After admonishing dad for speeding, he walked back to his vehicle with a funny story for his coworkers; a tale of my dad slyly lying about the urgency of momma’s baby, due to deliver my brother two months from now, and of momma over-selling the shit out of her non-labor, as I, a terrified six-year-old, observed in saucer-eyed, horrified silence.
We must’ve been quite the sight; dad explaining his urgency to the cop with a softness that matched the long shadows just after the sun dipped below the spring-sprinkled horizon; momma – unprompted, on-cue, and with a scenery-chewing overacting exhibition to make Shatner wince – unsuccessfully selling the urgency dad had just lied about with the authenticity of a wildlife film narrator; me in the back seat, wide-eyed and instinctively quiet, taking it all in; the patrolman’s flashlight, an impromptu stage spotlight for our three-person routine (four if you’re counting my brother, but the cop didn’t buy it, so let’s just go with the trio.)
After a beat of silence, our eyes finally adjusted from the shock of the cop’s harsh halogen giving way to soft shades of amber, dad shook his head, a grin growing on his darkened face. He looked back at me. “You cool, B.J.?”
I nodded, and squeaked out a, “Yeah.”
“Yeaaaaah?” he repeated, mimicking me.
“I mean… yes,” I corrected myself with a smile, relieved that dad sounded like dad again.
We didn’t have a term for code-switching back then. It just felt like Dad was bilingual and was training me to be too. I knew that whenever he broke out the Wildlife Film Narrator voice that shit just got real. He always used it when white people were involved, and always when those white people were in positions of authority.
I instinctively knew to get my shit together whenever he used it.
If anyone heard his everyday-people vernacular, they’d have a hard time reconciling the fact that both voices were his. When dad was being dad, he always reminded me of Shaft-meets-Sho’nuff-the-Shogun-of-Harlem; brassy, cocky, and cool-as-hell. I admired both voices, knowing that Sho’nuff was dad’s native tongue. Both were authentic in a way; Sho’nuff was my dad, the Film Narrator was the long shadow cast by dad.
Momma code-switched too, but it never sounded as jarring as when dad did it. Mom’s tone was always a hairsbreadth lower than frantic; it was like she was barely holding things together in her head. But momma always sounded like momma, even when she was performing. Her professional voice reminded me of how folks talked on Dynasty before someone dipped in diamonds got their face slapped; unnecessarily British and whatnot.
Dad shot an incredulous glare at momma. “Really, Terri?” he crooned sarcastically, firmly back in Shogun form. “Nooo, officerrr… I’m not in dayyyneger of laaabor, but it HUUUUUURRRTS!” Dad mimicked momma’s impromptu histrionics perfectly.
“Oh hush, Barry! I was just tryin’ to help,” mom shot back between giggles. “You didn’t get the ticket, did you?”
Together, their gallows-laughter was the greatest musical duet I’ve ever heard. My parents loved comedy. Our bad days were terrible, but our good days could wring sunshine from a rainy evening dusk just like it did that spring evening. Dad’s laugh sounded like a chorus of good-humored seagulls. Mom’s laugh was carbonated; starting low, and then bubbling higher, eventually meeting dad’s seagulls high in the atmosphere. Though I’ll never hear either of their laughs again, it just occurred to me that they are always with me. Whenever I’m trying to make people laugh, all I’m really doing is trying to recapture this moment, if only for a moment.
sunset ignites clouds
terrain perfumed by rainclouds
inhale deep, smiling
All four of us! (Mom is pregnant with my younger brother in this photo.)
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Written for NaPoWriMo’s day 3 prompt, an elegy. I was also inspired by dVerse’s Haibun Monday: The Shadow Knows, hosted by Hayesspencer. I didn’t share it on dVerse though, as this isn’t a traditional Japanese Haibun. I did enjoy writing it though. There were some laughs and tears during the writing process.
Want to see how traditional Haibun are supposed to be crafted? Go here.
I followed imaginary garden with real toads’Flash 55 PLUS! Prompt, complete with optional “Worlds Apart” vs “Extremely Close” themed challenge. This was a fun one. I feel like it’s been too long since I hopped on the lily pads and played a bit.
Go here to read other contributions to this prompt.
And we’re off! NaPoWriMo has officially started. I was going to do some type of theme, but I changed my mind and decided to keep it breezy and use whatever prompt I found interesting. Today I used NaPoWriMo.net’s (optional) daily prompt and tried my hand at a “Kay-Ryan-esque poem: short, tight lines, rhymes interwoven throughout, etc…” I didn’t follow the prompt completely, but I’m pretty chill with the result.
Hephaestus’ Waste & Cosmic Rubble 