Ok poets, by now you should have a lot of random musings, jottings, barely legible notes, etc. that did not make it into your other poems. Toss them in the garbage? No way! We recycle here. Here’s your (optional) daily poetry prompt.
Poetry jambalaya. Go through your pile of broken poems, saved lines, favorite unused images. Start a new poem using them this way – begin each sentence with “And then…” Try for at least 14 lines (a good poem length). Thank you to Brendan Constantine, who provided this prompt in 2016 at the Poetry Super Highway.
You may find that the juxtaposition of these random images and thoughts is beautiful on its own, like a little catalog of your musings. Or you may find two or three of them that are stealing the show and want to omit the rest to explore a connection they might share. I decided to introduce my fragments as exactly what they are: things I hope to write (more) about someday. I wound up omitting the “and then” ‘s.
Things I Should Try Harder to Write About
the incantatory power of lipstick tube labels
ants nibbling peony buds
Stephen Hawking’s single cheek muscle
the shoulder seasons
sparrows in a forsythia bush
apotropaic markings hidden in walls
the inevitability of a first malformed pancake
back-of-the-drawer spices
candlepower converted to lumens
the scolding of squirrels
a real Icelander named Saemunder Thorvaldsson
clouds like a family of pigs with their legs in the air
ghosts that have haunted my linens
the slender bodies of tulips
how correlation is not causation but it is something