a descent into poetry insanity |
I never look for storms from the north. Here, storms push in from the southwest, driving the wind before them, building up lightning, spiraling to uncanny power and leaving devastation behind. Once, the air darkened and roared jet-plane loud as I dressed. The sirens didn't even have time to sound before it was gone again, taking our power with it and closing everything behind it. I've heard the sirens sound huddled in the center of the house surrounded by cushions and important things with the television broadcasting the weatherman telling my neighborhood—my street—that it was here, and the wind drowns him out before the power fails and we hold hands and breathe together. Once, in the winter, when nothing stood between us and the north pole but blizzards, a storm rolled in from the north. And I shivered at the wrongness of it. April 7—“Play the opposites”—a theatre term I sometimes don’t like! But here I mean: do something unexpected in your poem, once or more than once. Any time you spot a cliché of feeling or of words, try its opposite, and somehow make it work! This kind of went in a different place from where I thought it would and what the prompt was calling for. But this poem is what happened, today. |