Hello poets! Today we are going to focus our attention on something that is always with us, the human body. Better yet, a specific body part. Ready to WRITE WORDS NOW?
The Human Body. Write a poem about the human body or some aspect of it. Think about Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hips,” Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric,” or Jane Hirschfield’s “A Hand.” Prompt Source: Poets&Writers prompt from November 2, 2017.
Like Clifton’s poem, you can write about a specific part of your own body. You can say what it is. Or like Hirschfield’s poem, you can speak of a body part more generally. You can say what it isn’t. Or like Whitman, you can celebrate the whole messy miracle of human bodies everywhere.
Here’s what I did with this:
Concerning Chins
No little tilt-knobbed
apricot Mona Lisa.
No Poe-pale Victorian
heart point. Mine’s
halved slightly, like a
peach, warm bread roll,
thumbprint cookie.
Chin up, Buttercup!
Give us a pretense of joy.
Show us your
mandibular apex,
terminous of that
moveable horseshoe
that is the lower jaw.
Raise it above bars
in feats of strength.
Display vulnerability
to prove a point.
Lead with your chin, man!
The world is full
of chinless apes. So
what to make of it,
this souvenir
of sexual selection?
Survival of the
square-jawed man.
Chiseled-granite-
anvil-chinned man.
Picture Don Draper
hunting mastodon
(go ahead, it’s ok.)
Dimple, cleft
Chin pit, chin well.
In Persian literature
they call that a
place to trap a lover.
Ask your Travoltas,
your Kirk Douglas-
Viggo Mortensons
if this isn’t
absolutely so.
But forget all that.
Fit it snug to your
your palm shelf and,
pensivity perfected,
you’re a living Rodin.