My favorite line from yesterday’s poem:
like fireflies, radiation stars
I went with the prompt to write an ekphrastic poem. I’m going to wait on the cento-style poem–maybe until the end of the month or longer, to see whether different lines resonate more with me, to see what’s changed.
30 first lines and one last
In other years, I’ve listed titles–but because we were working with sequences, I have only six (and my favorite one’s going to have to change–darn.)
So this year, I’ll post the first lines, and the last line of the month.
The cloud as news drifts invisible
The dread cloud floating across the earth
Half your life going on, and how does it sound,
The front door says my name
Body hostage to such subatomic mysteries
Like balloons, light and ready to pop, your fears
The earth like a bear turning in her sleep holds her elements close,
After the fire’s out at the core and hope for return extinguished–
Power down, and water fills in. Call it solid,
The sea shoulders in, cuts off the pumps, the cooling water.
If weeds can burst and flourish here
On a peopled street, the world in petal light
That sky came from somewhere you knew,
One robin chiding from the pine
Find at home this shadow–familiar,
Enough to trust my voice,
Hands build a new nest, their backs marked
The shape of a cup or a tower–her eyes fly away
that frantic afternoon, the minutes in their own mysteries,
Look in one gone window to see
I pictured one tumbler by the sink, rinsed
For now the windows hold
You follow like a fish the strong pull home,
Follow the headlines to Mesopotamia,
Soot shapes chasing you till morning–
It doesn’t really matter that she cries
Tell us what they mean
Next to emptiness, that hollow waits for a god,
Nine hundred kinds of sadness
Clouds roil in like storm surf
Night seeps up from the depths.
The writing events
What did you choose to write about?
For my first event, I wrote about Chernobyl. For the second event, I wrote about Fukushima. In the third, I tried to connect them.
What I wasn’t able to fit in (yet): Stalker, Godzilla.
What’s next
First, I need to set these aside for at least a month or two–give them time to percolate and give myself a chance to catch up on laundry and housecleaning and family time.
Then, I want to dive much more deeply into research. For me, writing about an event turned out to be a lot more like investigative journalism–of which I have no experience. I need to learn a lot more about Ukrainian (and Soviet) and Japanese culture. And then there are all the facts, which are either slim or slippery or both–especially on the Internet. I also think that–even after all this–I haven’t connected with the real reason this has haunted me. I can tell you about it, but I don’t think I found the right experience in my own past. So that will be some personal research.
And, writing out these first lines–alone, without context–I can see that I really want to tense some of them up. (I really wanted to use “tension” as a verb there.)
How about you? What did you learn in NaPoWriMo this year?
What are your plans for May?
