For 2006 Spring Slam, Prelim 1 prompt |
(In 1860, a plot to assassinate Lincoln on his way to his inauguration failed, because the president sneaked into Washington disguised as a frail woman.) Despite spirals of time, you make me grin and want to dance, because you spun out of yourself, clever, upright, a lank, crystalline stalk, to weave freedom from a paradox with the splendor of a gladiolus. During your glorious flight, you dared to be a woman with a vision supreme; cuddling your yarn and literacy, you straightened your skirt and caused my defiant muse to salute your propriety and smirk at my past--at a rebel's initiative of disguise-- when I sneaked out to a teen-age party dressed as my cousin Sam. I find similarities between us: a voracious producer staging a new attitude as if a boy or a frail woman, her hair in a bun, fingering her shawl. Your daring daintiness in a starched gown reaches to comfort me, still today, and I know, in your manly arm lies my womanhood. ======================================== Prompt: Select a historic event as the starting point for a poem. Do not write about the event. Instead focus on a person, perhaps yourself, who reacts to the event. Perhaps there is an event that triggers a personal history because of when it occurred. The history lesson here is personal. |