Friday the Thirteenth. The perfect day to write about a superstition—real or imagined, yours or someone else’s—and how to ward it off. Here’s your daily (optional) poetry prompt.
Superstition. Here’s another from the archives of the Poets&Writers weekly poetry prompts, this one from October 17, 2017. “Write a poem that begins with the presentation of a mysterious or inexplicable anxiety. Then in the latter half of the poem, present a ritual to reverse the effects … a physical ritual, lucky objects, or incantation.” Shorter may work better here. See what Amy Lowell does in her poem “Superstition.” Or consider making your poem a magic spell or a recitation of ingredients for a potion or concoction (think of the witches in Macbeth tossing ingredients into their cauldron).
Here’s my poem:
“Hi Grandma”
the rag that
twice daily
slips from the
dishwasher handle
has nothing
to do with my
grandmother
who died
in a bed
almost three
hundred miles
from here
but what can it
hurt she’d be
so disappointed
if I didn’t at
least say hello