On Open Write Sunday, we feature poets we love.
Alora Young
Alora Young is a poet who has traced her life back through generations of Southern women. She is the 2021 Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States. Listen. https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1114490555/1114821128
Inspiration
Alora says that when we explore the history of our family, there is no starting place, and she says that her poems “didn’t start out about me,” and yet they come through her for us, her readers. Find her memoir in verse here.
I have many mothers
They are mostly black
They are mostly broken
They have existed here for centuries
They are dying with the towns that birthed them
Today, I invite you to sit with Alora and write from her verse, “I have many X” and see where it takes you, or try some prose poetry that tells us a little bit about an elder in your family or life and the home that they made for themselves either in a home they made or what I take to mean the life they carved for themselves within frames others may have built to keep them.
Sarah’s Poem
I have many sisters
They share my hips
They share my cowlicks
They send unresolved trauma clicks
They promise we can heal in stages–it’s all in the link.
Your Turn
Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may choose to use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers.
Adventures
I have many rabbit holes
I journey down almost daily.
Something intrigues me
and down I go.
Like Alice, I follow White Rabbit,
growing curiouser and curiouser,
searching and digging and Googling
for more.
Sometimes my locked doors
have keys but often just peepholes
allowing me to see the alluring garden
yet I am denied access.
I cannot resist the Drink Me potion,
knowing I will shrink unto myself at times
and grow to gargantuan proportions
at others.
My Wonderland is sometimes silly
sometimes serious,
often taking on the contour of a past
that I am trying to make sense of.
My escape is often prompted by time
and I am left feeling fuller
and emptier
by the things I unearthed.
~Susan Ahlbrand
20 September 2026
Sarah, Thank you for bringing Alora’s words and prompts into this space. I appreciate how your poem can share so much with limited words.
I have many bodies
They all group as long, yet vary in flexibility
They have stepped through a marathon finish line
They have birthed a few humans
They have collected internal, external scars
They have tightened and limited movement
They have stretched abroad, pivoted across roles
They will continue to embody shifts in my eras
I have many books.
They are mostly inherited.
My parents collected books like shells
from the sea, calling them to sit
with words.
My dad bent over each one
with a pencil in his hand.
I finger his marks, wistfully
want to read with a passion like his.
I have many books.
Hauled from my classroom,
tucked into crowded spaces,
remembering cozy read alouds
and pages turning silently in reading time.
There are not enough hours
to read them with grandchildren.
Is there a road to heaven paved with books?
Margaret, your metaphor around shells is visually powerful. I also love your ending question–thinking this could be a great prompt for others to respond to. Thank you for sharing today.
Margaret—first of all, I believe my heaven will be a library! This part of your poem is magical:
“My parents collected books like shells
from the sea, calling them to sit
with words.
My dad bent over each one
with a pencil in his hand.
I finger his marks, wistfully
want to read with a passion like his.”
those shell-books…
I have many secrets
In forms labeled, SHAME
That I have chosen
Again and again
It has many names
Like each pretty label
Each bottle of pain
I sip my shame
Again and again
“I sip my shame” makes me feel empathy to whatever the cause. The repetition of again is affective.
Pamela, you build upon the original label of shame in a simple and effective way; bottles of pain that are always with us. Thank you for sharing this today and connecting us through this poem.
Oh, gosh, Pamela . . . can I ever relate. Shame is a toxin I sip over and over again.
Sarah, this prompt allows us to go in any direction without making a wrong turn, ideal for both new and long-standing writers. I will be sharing this one with my students. Your poem allows us to see the family connections in a sparseness of words, like a photo gives us a moment’s glimpse.
I have many lives.
They begin with time
and end with eternity.
They breathe and devour
their way into existence.
They consume space
in the way someone slips
into a crowded elevator
one second before the doors close.
They speak simultaneously
like the multitude of tv monitors
competing in a sports bar,
the volume never fully loud enough
to be heard above the din of fans.
They battle for attention
and relevance
in a world where attention-spans
last in three second blips
on a timeline constantly churning out
new material for consumption and
recycling and trash heaps.
The metaphors you use, (the elevator, sports bar) work well to create a feeling the urgency of time. And how our society has changed to have short attention spans.
Wow, Jennifer . . . those metaphors are simply perfect. You weave them in so naturally yet the reader is struck with a “oh, heck yes” in reaction. I love love love
I’m thankful to Alora for sharing this prompt and poem. I can’t wait to learn more about her!
I have many Blue Moon
they sing country song
they tell loose-lip story
they line dance wrong
they don’t drive
Kim, I’m drawn to your singular/plural nouns at the end of each line (blame Scott, who has me thinking like a grammar teacher today), and what they signify for the Blue Moon, non-driving, loose-lipped Kim. What a fun time this would be!
The “line dance wrong” made me laugh because I always sit out a line dance. I don’t like crowd dancing. I prefer to be held by my partner.
I have many teachers:
they range from people,
places, things, and ideas
(nouns all of them, some
proper, some not), verbs,
too, and, quite a few, I’ll
be honest, are adverbs and
adjectives, and lest we
forget, I was raised and
taught by pronouns and
prepositions in conjunction
with conjunctions (who would
coordinate, of course, but also
subordinate and correlate with
each other) and “had we but
world enough and time” (Oh!
let’s take a moment to marvel
at Marvell’s surprise appearance
in this verse) I would be able to
list them all, but I can’t, so I won’t.
______________________________________
Sarah, thank you for sharing Alora Young with us! I agree wholeheartedly with her that arts and poetry can, indeed, “make the world better”! And I love the shifts in your poem from “cowlicks” to “unresolved trauma” to “heal[ing] in stages.” You move from Humorous to Serious to Hopeful…ous, sorry, I couldn’t “stick the landing” with that parallelism. For my offering, I bet you can see the exact moment that I took a left turn at the prompt, lol.
Scott, the English teacher in me absolutely adores what you did here. Your play with language –I just want it to keep going! Alas, there are only so many parts of speech. Perhaps a verb tense sequel can be somewhere down the line?
Scott— this is amazing—I especially liked all the “unctions”! My geekiness is so impressed!
Love it, Scott! You so cleverly tap into the core of our language, leaving us to connect the dots. Skillful!
Thank you for sharing Alora’s voice here.
Kevin
I have many muses
singing along family lines:
my father’s drums –
my mother’s voice –
my brother’s guitar –
my grandmother’s stories –
every song is wrapped up tight
inside the threads of others
Kevin, those last two lines are beautifully written, and your love of music continues to thread your writing, wrapping each piece tightly.
I like the word muses and how deeply the threads go to find the muses that live inside you.