Out of Order
OK, so I can’t count!
Here’s one from my composition classroom, suggested to me as a journal exercise by D.A. Bartlett–my long-time mentor.
Write about a process backward. Either start with the end result or write about undoing something. This could be a cake or an action you wish you could take back. Or play time backward. Or, like these poetry challenges, just write things out of order–add randomess.
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Glow and I seem to be on similar wavelengths–missing things. She challenged me to add a poem. I think I was influenced by hers!
My response:
Spring reverses itself.
seeds arrive in the mail,
snow slides from the roof,
a large hill of it
blocks the door. We carve
steps in its slope
to get over it. The dog
can’t stop barking
at the sounds snow
makes. Icicles form,
glisten,
then the sky darkens
earlier than yesterday.
We go sliding
back to winter, snow
sifting all over hoods,
our shoulders, the cleared
driveway.
In the morning you leave
sharp tracks in the snow.
By now, they are gone.
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And Glow’s
Despair was later, now anxiety
spun me through the woods
as I searched for the white cat.
The house was half empty, half full.
My things only, hers gone.
Her new lover’s truck
needing a valve job, I noted,
chugged down the drive
nearly backing into the fence.
The goats bleated watching
the antique bureau nearly dropped.
Just go, I said.
It’s true, she said.
You lied, I said.
She means nothing, she said.
You cheated on me, I said.
A strawberry blotch,
mouth-sized,
spread across her neck.
A blush gone awry.
The white cat lay dead in the moonlight
A copperhead slithered silently
after, and, I assume, before.
Maybe a slight rustle of leaves
a twitch of grass
was all that warned me
and the cat
of disaster.
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From Alaskapsych (not sure which challenge this is for):
Heraclitis et al
I stepped in the same river twice,
and twice again.
Time and tide waited for me,
dreaming,
I was awake
Mattie's Pillow 