This is the Open Write, a place for educators to nurture their writing lives and to advocate for writing poetry in community. We gather every month, today through Monday, we’ll be here. The next Open Write will be August 15-17, 2026. Let’s write together.
Our Host
Nothing new to see here. i.e. you’ve seen it all before. 😉
Glenda blogs at Swirl & Swing: www.glendafunk.wordpress.com
Inspiration
The June 26, 2025 poetry prompt from 10 Poetry Notebooks featured one of Terrance Hayes’s poems from the collection American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin. The speaker writes
I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison,
Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.
The poem reminds me of W. E. B. Du Bois’s ideas about Double Consciousness, the idea that black people are both individual and a cogroup member and that these two “consciousnesses” often create tension one with the other, a source of “inward twoness.”
As I write this prompt, I find myself thinking about something Hayes says about his American Sonnets: “All the poems ask the question: What is an American Sonnet, and who is the assassin?” Hayes wrote the poems after DJT’s election in 2016 and says, “I think this dude is trying to kill me, and can I still love him? Can I write a sonnet for my assassin? That’s really what drives all of them.”
Process
Today I invite you to write your own double consciousness American Sonnet or duplex, a form of contemporary sonnet. Most of us live in a country in which the system is doing things we’ve denied it’s capable of doing, things that are the antithesis of our American ideals and mythologies. I’m asking the question: Can I still love this country, and can I write a sonnet for it?
As you write, consider what tone best fits your poem. Work to achieve your desired tone by your use of diction, figurative language, and/or form. Perhaps your poem will embody an accusatory? Tender? Boastful? Envious? Surreal? Tone.
Or choose a different topic and form today.
Glenda’s Poem
a woman’s sonnet for the country i occupy but no longer recognize
i digested your shining city on a hill mythology
while ingesting your duplicitous history
i swallowed your tired & huddled masses story and
regurgitated its weary be a yankee dream
i awoke shackled to pen & paper platitudes and poems
duped into believing time gifts progress
i tie you to a chair in my nightmares &
resurrect myself as your Abu Ghraib torturer
i waterboard you in a Niagara deluge &
push the barrel into the churning river that
carries you to a watery hell where you
slobber your final confession & beg for mercy
your i believe in freedom gun-idol worship mocks my faith so
i dangle you over a fiery pit like Jonathan Edwards’ worm (June 25, 2025)
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.
Dear Poets,
Thank you for your poem gifts today and for encouraging and supporting this community. I’ll check back in the morning for late arrivals. I’m not an early riser and am on MST, so please be patient with me. See you tomorrow.
Glenda,
Thanks for this serious prompt. I need more time for a soul searching sonnet, so turning in a tricube for now.
I like the surprise and power of your last line:
“i dangle you over a fiery pit like Jonathan Edwards’ worm”
—————————————————————————————————
Crescent
I stare at
moon’s sliver
late at night
not knowing
how to write
a poem of
my country’s
doubleness
lies and truth
Sharon,
I love the concise language and truths here. I have been thinking about you and wondering about your War and Peace project and how it’s going. I’ve been behind on my reading but am caught up now. I’ve noticed how relevant the novel is to what we see in our military,
Thanks, Glenda, for thinking of me and asking. I’m loving the rhythm of a reading chapter a day and rewriting as haiku. I’m posting them in Simon’s substack chat and also on my blog, Pedaling Poet, on days when I don’t write other poetry. Yes, the relevancy is astonishing. Today’s chapter about the divide between the nobles and the serfs, unable to understand or trust one another, parallels the political divides in our country.
Sharon, your words captured my thoughts as clearly as that sliver of shining moon.
Sharon, this is an important lesson in discernment as a response. The doubleness/lies and truth. Oh, so much within the spaces between words.
Sharon, I felt the same way — kind of paralyzed by the enormity of it all. I love your eloquent response to that feeling.
Yes, Sharon, you and all the rest of us are unsure because nothing is right anymore. You capture so much in 9 lines…calm of night and the darkness of our world today.
Glenda,
Your words are so powerful. I’m humbled by the strength and passion of your poetry. I’ve been on the road traveling all day, which gave me plenty of time to think about the prompt. My mind kept returning to my two grandfathers. They differed politically, but they really respected one another. Fortunately, for me, they both were great men who really deserved respect. I think they would be disappointed if they had lived to see today’s political climate and al the insanity surrounding it. Thank you for hosting us this weekend!
Family Politics
My grandfathers lived on the opposite sides of our hometown:
one by the river, one on a curving hill.
Politically, they lived further still.
On Saturday mornings, I scrambled eggs with one.
On Sunday afternoons, I listened to Big Bands with the other.
One completed crossword puzzles with a blue pen.
The other read the paper from cover to cover.
One woke us on Christmas mornings at 5:00 AM.
The other requested our Christmas wish lists be given to him.
Both praised my report cards, showed up for all my birthdays,
dressed up for my high school graduation and posed for photos after;
and when my younger grandfather died first, my older grandfather cried.
Somehow they bridged a great divide.
Lori,
Thank you for sharing this beautiful poem. I like how you establish both common ground and differences.The end is so moving, capturing the respect and love between your two grandfathers.
May they be a model our country returns to.
Lori,
Your note and poem remind me of the civil conversation my family had a family reunions. We could agree to disagree and still respect one another. I like how you compare and contrast and then unite these two important men with rhyme. That is very cool,
Lori,
Thank you for this compare and contrast poem that really blends through you who carried their views and love to and from, maybe this is, for me, about who we can be a chord to connect others (rather than strangle them-sorry for that turn) who might learn to love one another, too.
Lori, what a lovely poem. I was carried through it effortlessly as you toggled between your two grandpas. A moving tribute.
Lori,
Your poem prompted me to write a Wordspinner, a form invented by the brilliant Irene Latham.
Bridge
a crossing-bring-us-together word
difference-connecting conduit
a movement-making high road
Thanks, Glenda, for giving us the opportunity to express what many of us have observed and experienced. My poem today,
Who Woulda Thought?
Living in the USA
Gives me freedom here to say
“Freedom here is lots of bunk!”
Who in the world would have thunk?
Being born in the USA
Would be a place to work and play
Getting an education to learn
Equal pay we all would earn
Educated in the USA
One would think that they
Who graduated with high marks
Wouldn’t be food for the sharks
But alas, this would so often be true
Without educators like you and you and you!
Anna, I absolutely agree with you. When we talk about the flaws and problems of this country, I, too, remind my students that the the beauty of this country is that we have freedom to say what we want. I like how you turn your poem toward educators and their crucial role at the end of the poem.
Anna,
You’re bringing some truth w/ “Freedom here is lots of bunk!” And you better be careful w/ that equal pay talk or they’ll accuse you of being a communist and throw you into the shark tank w/ Kevin O’Leary, a man who literally has rabies (in the minds of most Utahans).
Mic drop!!
Well done, Anna. I love the use of “bunk” because we said it all the time as kids and I have missed that word.
Food for the sharks resonated with me, Anna. I’m sad that so many people feel that way right now. I never could have imagined this is where we’d be right now.
Thank you, Anna, for your poetry that shows with such clarity the sense of bunk we all know and feel alongside the call or reminder that educators and education can be a path forward, but it does have to be a particular kind, doesn’t it. The bunk is coming from those educated in the USA.
Anna, loved the ironies present in your poem. Sad, but true. It made me think of my daughter, who is finishing her masters in Library Media Studies and finding that moving away to take an entry level job and obtaining a first apartment in this economic climate will see her living at the poverty level. 🤨
Glenda, what a prompt! I read it early in the morning, but then got to work on my fall Linguistics course letting the thoughts simmer in my head. From the first line with the “shining city on a hill mythology,” I knew you were going to expose this country’s “duplicitous history.” Bravo!
American Sonnet for the Country That Mispronounced Me
I came believing freedom knew my name.
At the first counter, freedom corrected me.
Half of this belongs here, the man explained,
and half belongs there. You do not understand.
I said, I know my name. It belongs to me.
Years later, another bureaucrat judged my voice:
We like you, but the children may laugh at your accent.
Again, America knew me better than I did.
Now freedom lives behind its red-and-blue guarded fences,
hires immigrant hands to polish the mythology of care,
writes laws broad enough to shelter its power
and narrow enough to leave the powerless outside.
I do not know what country waits beyond us.
Still, I place my stubborn bet on kindness.
Leilya, we must have be writing at the same time with the same ideas scrolling through our fingers. I’d just hit, “Post Comment” and up came “my poem” under your name. But, aren’t you glad we have the “freedom” to say this in this group!
I, too, have been targeted because of my name and accent! Your poem is telling the “truth” for so many! Thanks,,, I guess.
Leilya,
As you know, I’m guilty of mispronouncing your name, and I’m still so sorry for that. I just gave a former student who will be teaching in Utah The Name Jar and suggested he use it at the beginning of the year. Your accent is perfect. Don’t ever try to get rid of it. I wish I had not tried to excise mine. And like you, O don’t know what awaits us, but I refuse to lose hope. I’m grateful to all standing in hope and resistance w/ me,
Thank you, Glenda! I didn’t mean the literal mispronunciation of my name; our articulation apparatus may not be able to exactly vocalize certain sounds , and that is why we have accents, when we move to another country or learn another language.
My first experience/encounter with a government official occurred within the first couple of weeks when I went to DMV to obtain the state ID. The person at the counter tried to explain me that my last name, which was hyphenated at that time (Emiraliyeva-Pitre) is incorrect—half of it should be my middle name and the rest my last name. I said to him: “I know my last name because it is mine.” He kept insisting that I didn’t understand that in this country people have the middle names. I do have a middle name, but it is patronymic, which I didn’t include in the legal name when getting the state ID. It took me and my husband to talk to this person’s supervisor and call the immigration services to prove I know my last name.
Leilya, your poem and this example are so perfect for what you’ve experienced. I’m so glad you are writing poetry about your homeland and immigration. It is profound and important artistic work in these days when, like you I have stubborn hope that we will come out more kind. Thank you, thank you.
Those last two stanzas are on fire! “Now freedom lives behind its red-and-blue guarded fences…”
Ohhh, what a powerful title and opening!
Grateful for you and that this sick country didn’t destroy the beauty inside you. The ending is the raw truth. We can remain stubborn and hope that kindness wins.
🌺
Oh, that stubborn bet, Leilya. Perfect closing toward hope and a choice we do have, maybe our only balm. I am grateful for your kindness.
Leilya, I hope I can harness your optimism so that I, too, can “place my stubborn bet on kindness.” Thank you.
Leilya,
Thank you for sharing your story.
So many powerful lines:
So much hope in your last line. Thank you!
Leilya,
You and your poetry continue to educate you and deepen my empathy. Such power in your testimony and your heart!
Leilya, the fact that someone said children might laugh at your accent makes me pause. Your accent is beautiful just as your poem shows the beauty of your spirit and the ugly truths we unfortunately encounter too often.
Glenda, thank you for hosting this month. I always appreciate you challenging us with your form, resources, and content! Here is what I pulled together today.
Can we just call this a soundtrack sonnet sparked by Hayes>Funk>Donovan>Acuff?
i want to loop a soundtrack of humanity
in my head though, sometimes self-rage-bait leads
to insanity, an echo chamber of clich-hey! nar-
cissis-ity…novel ideas, playing but redu[m]dancy
american drama-mine, white savior cocktails
negativity begs polarity for intent or impact
replaying, rewind, only to press forward >
cassette tape of dis-entagled-freedoms
sticks and stones…words will never hurt me
numbing to action, but utility is the only…
yet poetry to mold, motivate, carve the marble
or ste[a]l of our next great hero…who, why, what
is humanity or originality or sensibility helping one
more line to fill…
Hi, Stefani! What a coincidence to post the poem right after you 🙂
Yes, the ‘soundtrack sonnet” it is! I love your play with words here–such a clever use. I especially like “redu[m]dancy.” Your enjambment works so well carrying the emotional weight, as in “negativity begs polarity for intent or impact / replaying, rewind, only to press forward >” For me, too, the question of humanity remains the most crucial one. Thank you!
Stefani,
I love the idea of a soundtrack sonnet, especially w/ all the clipped phrases and playful word divisions and symbols. I literally read this w/ the sound of rewinding cassettes. Very clever. I need to know where you come up w/ these super unique structures. Who and what are your muses? I hope Sarah sees this. I will say this: My poetry is a container for my anger. I’m a genuinely happy and joyful person, even though that’s not always evident in my poems. The exception is the hormonal whiplash after my hysterectomy a couple months ago.
Stef, hi my friend!
First, what a brilliant choice to use “soundtrack sonnet” for this poem. I hear this piece at a spoken word event and the audience vibes with you!
You nailed it on so many levels. The musicality, the word-play, while also delivering exhaustion in this insane place where we live.
I think you need to put this to music. 🎵
Stefani, wow, those coined words are amazing! “clich-hey!”, “narcissis-ity” “redu(m)dancy” and more. Clever and honest and a powerful commentary on humanity now.
Stefani, I am really feeling this and feeling your poetry. It is really so distinct in the syntax and signs with the carats/carrots, which is it, and the ellipses and brackets. You show the movements and intrusions of thought and language so craftfully. I am just loving this. But broader, zooming out, I see the restlessness and irritation of that loop of ideas that need some disruption, a pause.
Contemplation
Can I still love my country while loathing its leadership?
How can I admire and respect the military and peace officers
when they often kill, hurt, and detain innocent defenseless citizens?
Its challenging for millions of us and we want a return to
calm peaceful existences that are focused on community, work,
assisting others, enjoying ourselves, and loving one another.
Our spirits ache for friendship, love, and harmony while also
supporting ourselves and families too. The dreams we were raised
believing in, seem to have sailed away with decency, love, and
community.
I know many of us feel “some type of way” about our land right now.
Let’s just hope we can prevail, that decency, truth, and honor will return
and that faith and love will resurrect our hearts and remind us
of who we are and what our purpose on Earth is.
Seana Hurd Wright
Seana, I am sitting particularly with your words: contemplation, spirits ache, and purpose that are spread through your poem today. They are making feel extra in a “type of way.” Thank you for sharing your words and getting us to think further.
Seana, your first question is the one I keep asking myself. Your final lines are somewhat similar to my own thoughts:
“Let’s just hope we can prevail, that decency, truth, and honor will return
and that faith and love will resurrect our hearts”
Thank you for sharing and holding onto hope.
Seana,
taking your words as a call to action, Hope is our weapon against the evil trying to conquer us. Like you, I struggle w/ respecting the military, despite two sons who served and a long line of family members who served going back at least to the Civil War, especially after that Blue Angeld stunt this week,
Your last stanza really speaks to me, Seana. All I can think about is how we can move forward and recover.
Seana, yes, yes, indeed! “Let’s just hope we can prevail, that decency, truth, and honor will return / and that faith and love will resurrect our hearts and remind us / of who we are and what our purpose on Earth is.” Wow, what a dream and hope for the future. Let’s keep hoping. Thank you for those powerful questions that begin your poem, and the life-giving answers at the end. Double consciousness, for sure!
Seana,
Thank you for these hopes and truths:
Today’s mood:
“Slow down” feels like a
death sentence, but affords a
chance to contemplate
Mo, can ever ever fully contemplate without slowing down? Your haiku brings this out for me today. Thank you for sharing.
Mo, I wish we knew on our own (without being pressed) to slow down. Hope you feel better soon.
Mo,
I totally get this sentiment. I’m afraid that if I slow down all my bodily functions will hear “stop” and cease working.
Mo,
Slow down is exactly what my life has been since school closed. I’m really embracing this snail’s pace life right now. How’s your leg? I hope you are on the mend.
💙
Mo, thanks for sharing your mood today. Take care, friend!
Mo,
I am always grateful for the breath your haiku draw from me. I exhaled after contemplate and am carrying that death sentence phrase. Sometimes even that feels inviting to me when I slow down and look around on all the wrong places. And how is your foot? Healing, I hope.
Sarah
Hi, Glenda! I loved the power, passion , and anger behind your poem.
I felt too upbeat today to writer about how I feel about the state of the country. (My daughter and I did “Puppy Yoga” this morning! Highly recommend for grounding!)
Instead, I wrote about how I feel, sometimes, as a formerly wild Gen X mom of an uber-sage and safe Gen Z daughter. Which, I suppose, based on convos with other moms, seems to be a pretty common American sentiment nowadays. 🙂
My little bird protected in her nest
My heart! it yearns to keep her safe and sound.
But braver voice in mind goes round and round
And yearns to see her live her life with zest.
When I was young, I lived a dangerous life
Took chances and thought never twice but once
For safety, too, I cared not but an ounce
Resulting in unnecessary strife.
I fear the risks my daughter doesn’t take
Just as I fear the ones I took when young
Bemoaning, first, a lack of crazy fun
Relieved she has more sense, then, for her sake.
The scales set together, side-by-side
That tension, sentiment I must abide.
Wendy, I connect with your poem as a mom–two teens who often choose not to “attend” social high school events, knowing it might show up on their digital record. Even if they make responsible choices, there is this new layer of being caught by the world. I often wonder how they will learn to say no, understand choices, etc. if this is what drives their choices. Yet, I am also glad they are aware and create relationships with others who understand this (for now). Anyhow, I ramble now and thank you for sharing today.
Relatable! ❤️ ❤️ My daughters also didn’t attend them, and I found the social media reason that you shared so interesting. It reminded me of a tee I saw someone wearing recently that said, “Gen X: Lots of Memories, No Evidence.” LOL. We never had to worry about our missteps being splashed all over the internet.
Wendy, I can relate to your poem as a mom of two daughters. When they were younger, I worried all the time, and then at some point, I realized they were going to live their lives the way they want regardless of how much I worried or wanted them to do or not to do certain things. You’ve mastered the sonnet’s structure and rhyme scheme here. Thank you!
Wendy,
Ive observed and read about how risk-averse gen Z are. It makes parenting easier, but there’s a flip side I worry about: Will these kids have the necessary tools to fight life’s battles? Puppy yoga does sound fun. I’ve found calmness and peace in watercolor painting toddy. It’s a new hobby I started in May and enjoy very much.
Glenda, that sounds lovely!
Wendy, I learned something from your poem today. Wow. I didn’t really realize, but you have spelled it out so well the challenges of raising your “little bird” in these times. And puppy yoga sounds amazing!
I love this reflection about you and your daughter, Wendy. The balance image is wonderful.
Oh, Wendy. I also so grateful for the contemplation Glenda’s prompt has invited from us. Your poem is such an important perspective, from a mother imagining what it’s pulled in both directions to risk or risk not. Which serves who we can become?
I first knew you as our hero, saving
us from captivity. We all wanted
the Land of the Free. Dreaming of leaving.
When I came teachers on strike. Father said,
for better wages. Where are the golden
roads? Watergate. Resignation. Unheard
of! Fifty years forward: crossword with pen,
my own house, acrobatics spoken word.
Opportunities have been mine, but my
Students seem to have less. Brown and black like
Me. Working harder they too will fly high
Confident. This is the right place and time.
Believing, blessings and goodness prevail
Cause “We hunger and thirst for righteousness”.
Cayetana, I love the strength and power and assurance of your last lines: “This is the right place and time. / Believing, blessings and goodness prevail / Cause ‘We hunger and thirst for righteousness’.” Thank you for crafting and sharing this!
Cayetana, similar to you, I first knew this country as a “hero” and as “the Land of the Free.” With years, I am disillusioned, but I still love this country and have hope, and that is why I am attracted to your final lines:
“Believing, blessings and goodness prevail
Cause “We hunger and thirst for righteousness”.”
Thank you for sharing.
Cayetana,
We as a country have lost our way, as your poem makes clear in its opening lines. I’m old enough to remember Watergate and how mortified we were w/ the corruption. It seems do quaint now. I do admire your ability to end on a hopeful note and hope those last lines are true for your students.
Cayetana, you are a master of the American sonnet. You rock the form, my friend! A wonderful message and the question works to really provoke the thought in the second stanza. Your Volta in line 9 shows the shift, and it works magically here.
Cayetana, I loved reading your perspective here. I’m so sorry that your students have less opportunities than you did. Yes, I too hope they will be able to “fly high / Confident” and this chapter will end in greater hope and goodness for all. “We hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Yes!
Glenda, your prompt today is provocative and generated a lot of anguish and frustration I have been experiencing watching our country spin out of control. I have been saddened and anguished by the harm inflicted, impossible to ignore. Your poem is exquisite in its sheer horror. I love the allusion at the end, the narrator’s strident voice, and the visceral images that will continue to haunt me. Thank you for your outstanding poetry and consistent encouragement to make words a powerful tool to share our thoughts, experiences and emotions. I’m not too skilled with sonnets, but I tried to follow a duplex-type form.
Wildfires
July is heated, I gasp for breath,
watching reels spin showing ICE deaths
ICE deaths spin, watch its venom spread
wonder if the hate will ever end
Their weapons maim, will their hate ever end
knowing corruption and greed’s grisly den
Greed and corruption, openly uttered
across our dying land we scream, shudder
We scream, horrified by abuse and suffer
no one escapes unscathed, yet we protest
We protest, watching ugly bombs kill with zest
innocent lives abandoned on the hillside
On the red hillside, innocent lives died
July is heated, I gasp for breath.
By Barb Edler
18 July 2026
The world and this poem spiral down. “I gasp for breath”
Barb, with your first line’s “I gasp for breath,” I sense a foreshadowing–it’s not just about July’s heat. ICE, hate, corruption, weapons, greed, abuse–you expose the violent nature of today’s society, and each line reads like a gut punch. The repetition of the first line as a final add emotional weight to the poem. Thank you for such a well-crafted duplex!
Barb, your words capture the “news” this summer so succinctly, as poets are asked to do. I just wish they were not true!
We protest, watching ugly bombs kill with zest
innocent lives abandoned on the hillside
On the red hillside, innocent lives died
July is heated, I gasp for breath.
Barb,
Ypi, my friend, are a master wordsmith. Your poem hits all the marks in its righteous indignation about ICE, and the heat from wildfires juxtaposed with ICE killings creates a visceral image of both moral and physical choking, This poem is so good. I can’t help but think about the images of smoke in Canada as metaphor for what IVE is doing. Fantastic poem,
Barb, the carnage of innocent lives abandoned on the hillside is an image that is powerful – – the sacrificial lambs add so much to the feeling of injustice that happens every single day in this world, in this country, in this land we call home. It happens in our back yards. I, too, gasp for breath.
Barb, what a powerful image–the heat and smoke and watching ICE do their hatred. And then it goes on to all the corruption and war and, yes, “I gasp for breath” reading your poem. This: “On the red hillside” is stunning.
Barb, I feel the suffocation in your poem. Both a yearning to suffocate the harm and a yearning to scream and in those breaths some version of US that is even a few degrees better. Thank you.
I take a ride to the bucolic suburban countryside.
An oxymoron to be sure.
An oxymoron to be sure, but everyone believes it.
An exurb of luxury homes nestled in acreage.
The proverbial escape from city hustle and bustle.
Truly an escape from anything, anyone other –
Other than massive American trucks — that cost quite a buck.
Sure, they can go off-road, these hulking, gas-guzzling trucks, but do they?
Do they?
Hardly, they idle unblemished –no mud caked tire treads, no pulling or hauling,
just the footprint of a tiny home.
On highways they fly, seemingly flipping everyone off as they pass by.
Pass on the left, pass on the right, sometimes even on the berm!
What the?
Drive a little farther — where the corn stalks wave
Pickup trucks are just pick up trucks — mud-caked tires, rusty tailgates.
The no frills, unpretentious utility truck gets the job done
Their dents tell stories
Tammi, I am in awe at how well your poem captures the personality of trucks. I adore your closing line and know exactly what the corn stalk type trucks look like. I think your poem shows the underside of what some might think the American dream includes. Powerful poem!
Exactly! Your poem perfectly reflects the big ego trucks and the real ones. Those dents are earned!
Tammi,
Years ago I heard a joke about those giant belt buckles: Know what this is? (in reference to the belt buckles.) Answer: Tombstone for a dead dick. Your poem reminds me of that joke. Now that’s how I see those crazy, giant trucks. We have them everywhere. Your poem is a fantastic companion to Margaret’s poem,
Tammi, wonderful! “hulking, gas-guzzling trucks” They can go off-road, “but do they?” I think your poem is such a great commentary on the senselessness of conspicuous consumerism.
Tami,
Love the contrast you expose between suburban and rural.
Fantastic ending!
This feels like my welcome home poem. You are mostly describing my neighborhood in Oklahoma. White pick-ups with red dirt caking the undercarriage. I love the line that the dents tell stories.
THIS I BELIEVE
shall I compare them to a child’s fit?
to take what’s made and knock it down and scream?
they claim to purge, perfect our founders’ wit
and yet each move reveals corrupt and greed
this evil regime reveals ugly scars
and our protest rages like a rushing river
soaking healing into soil near and far
citizens demand their rights deliver
their tantrum woke the sleeping parents
it’s us, the fervent strong “We the People”
we lock arms to stop the ugly cruel errant,
our vibrant multi voiced no longer feeble
look past headlines of fear and hopelessness
see streets, courtrooms, communities RESIST
—————
Wonderful to be here with Ethical ELA! Thank you, Glenda for this provocation…I haven’t tried writing a sonnet in ages; this was a real challenge.
Maureen,
Yes — “look past headlines of fear and hopelessness
see streets, courtrooms, communities RESIST” — I am with you. So many are swept up in the fear, we definitely need to unite.
Maureen, this is a rallying poem if I’ve ever read one, full of calling out and calling in. I love the line “soaking healing into soil near and far” in this literal-figurative grounding of the place that holds so much history of harm. And the image of locked arms is a physical move that, I think, is so needed. I reminder that the words affect real bodies. Good to be with you in this way, today. I am also grateful for Glenda’s provocation for discernment.
Maureen, I love the shift in your poem to show the “fervent strong “We the People”
we lock arms to stop the ugly cruel errant,” resisting. Love that RESIST is capitalized at the end and hearing the vibrant multi voiced singing out in this one. Bravo!
Maureen,
Children don’t throw fits half as bad as those coming out of the regime! They’re purging, for sure, but the way a hurricane purges. The literal destruction is still hard to fathom. I know it’s soul-crushing to you and all who live in and love d.c. I love that you end on a hopeful note. Despite scotus, I still have faith the judicial system will save us. And if not the courts, then the Grim Reaper,
Maureen, it is great to see you today. Your sonnet is soaring today. The difference in what “they claim” to what is in reality happening is stark and so well put. “the fervent strong “We the People'” give me hope in you poem, especially that important call to action in the final stanza.
Glenda, yes!! You steered me in the direction I needed to go today. You nailed it!
You asked, “Can I still love this country, and can I write a sonnet for it?” You referenced Terrance Hayes’s poem, “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin.” He is the creator of the Golden Shovel, so of course that’s what I wrote and also kept with the 14 lines for a sonnet. Your question was the perfect striking line for my poem. Thank you for leading and hosting us today.🩷
Golden Shovel Sonnet
Don’t ask me how I feel being an Ameri-Can
born and raised in a nation with a president I
deplore. Freedoms denied, as if this is still
1919. Hatred abounds and love
drowns in murky seas of sorrow. But this
is the heart of America. A country,
divided, falling, broken, and
laughed at. We can’t dream or hope. We can
vote. We can fight for justice. But I
won’t carry this burden or write
a clarion call. Sing your own anthem, try to forge a
severed, single-starred sonnet
or kneel at the altar and pray for
healing. But will God do it?
©Stacey L. Joy, 7/18/26
Stacey, I love how you wove Terrance Hayes’ line into your poem – “a golden shovel sonnet,” I am captivated by your phrase “Sing your own anthem,” and wonder if this isn’t a clarion call after all…if each of us does the work of singing out our anthem, our voices will unite and we shall overcome.
Stacey, that is perfect, the golden line down the spine of the poem and the question at the backbone of our writing today. That shift, “but I won’t carry this burden” is another anchor for me this this poem, cutting right across the border on the left of the poem, right across to answer the question. I am sitting with this line.
Stacey — love your choice of a golden shove. These lines “Hatred abounds and love
drowns in murky seas of sorrow” — are harrowing as well as your question at the end “But will God do it?” The last line is a good reminder that sometimes prayers aren’t enough.
Wow, Stacey, I love every word within your poem. I especially appreciated the line: “love
drowns in murky seas of sorrow. ” I feel that sorrow and see how divided this country has become. I often want to flee. Your final question resonates. You are a genius at writing the golden shovel poem. Stunning work and Canva rendition.
Thank you!
Yes, He will! Because He hears the cry of the poor.
Stacey,
This burden is not yours to carry. It’s mine and all the other white folks who let this horror happen. Your calling is to create and enjoy your well-earned retirement! I can’t wait to see all your adventures. I do love all Terrance Hayes has given out poetry hearts, and your golden shovel is spectacular. The internal rhyme creates a heartbeat as well as a calm to action. I thought about you as I wrote this prompt and worried about doing justice to those who inspired it, except that sack of excrement in the WH. He’s not the kind of inspiration I want.
DITTO! TRITTO! What you’ve captured and shown in your poem, and the comments coming in about it,
My favorite lines are
is the heart of America. A country,
divided, falling, broken, and
laughed at. We can’t dream or hope. We can
vote. We can fight for justice. But I
won’t carry this burden or write
Your poem gives me hope!
Stacey, I thought about Terence Hayes and Golden Shovel, but you actually delivered! I admire your strength and resolve in these words: “But I / won’t carry this burden or write / a clarion call.” I think it is our shared burden and hope we can heal together. Thank you for your beautifully crafted poem!
Stacey, I always look forward to the golden shovels that you write, and this one is so beautifully written. I like the Canva that you created as well, with the simplistic background colors. I also choose to kneel at the altar and pray. That is the best response – and I pray pretty much every day that the good Lord just decides to come on back and get all of us and take us to the best kingdom of all.
Stacey, wow! These lines grabbed me:
“Hatred abounds and love
drowns in murky seas of sorrow.”
That last question is difficult to read. I know we are at risk. I do want to not give up hope, but sometimes it is hard when I wonder if we are too far gone. Thank you for your speaking out.
Beautiful!
Glenda, I love your selfie, and what a challenging prompt this morning! Wow, your poem is full of teeth–“i tie you to a chair in my nightmares & / resurrect myself as your Abu Ghraib torturer” As someone who saw those Abu Ghraib photos and realized another hard truth about America, those lines are so powerful. I’m glad I took some time this morning to look at the Duplex form and give it a try. This is a time of real double consciousness feelings about America. Thanks for the challenge.
A Duplex for America
Our homeland’s history, rich and based
on lies, broken promises, a land of waste
Centuries of lies and broken promise waste
And yet I am here and grateful, ready
I will be here, grateful but ready
to help history retell her stories
History will retell America’s stories
in truth and justice, honest this time
like Superman, only honest this time
unfinished, we perfect the hill we climb
We are unfinished, ready to climb
Our homeland’s history, rich and unbiased
__________________________________
italicized words from Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb”
Love this. Love your use of Amanda Gorman’s words, too. I feel hope from your duplex, Denise.
Whoa, Denise. “We are unfinished.” Yes, when I was learning about democracy as a process as an ongoing act toward something never to be finished, I didn’t understand it entirely, but I can see now the effort needed to protect and nurture and be here to retell her story that has to be in poetry, lots and lots of poems.
Denise — love the way you folded in Gorman’s words and wove hope and gratitude into your poem.
“History will retell America’s stories
in truth and justice, honest this time” –Yes!
Denise, the hope that resonates throughout your poem is incredibly uplifting. We are unfinished is used beautifully as a thread to build that hope. I am ready to climb and tell, live, become, seed, nurture the stories. Thank you for bringing a much needed balm to our times.
Denise,
The duplex is perfect for reimagining the story we tell about our country. I love the way the repetition both repeats and reimagines. We all have a role in “to help history retell her stories / in truth and justice.”
Denise, your poem is truly a testament of your strength and voice. I know you are ready to share the truth. The climb ahead is great and I’m ready to climb it with you! Fantastic poem full of your vitality and strength.
Amaaaazing duplex, Denise! I am not comfy with writing a duplex, and I am in awe at yours. Maybe I will practice this form soon. Well done, my friend. 🥰
Denise, I read the poem and see you:
“I will be here, grateful but ready
to help history retell her stories”
This is so you! And I agree, “We are unfinished, ready to climb.” Thank you, friend!
I love how you took the words from Amanda G and wove them into your poem, and a duplex at that. Like duplicity. Such a clever form, and I love what you have done so creatively here.
My Country? Really?
My country ‘tis of thee
Sweet land of libert—
Wait–is that how it goes??
Sweet for some,
But bitter for others…
Liberty for many, but
Not for all.
Maybe this song…
America! America! God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherh–
From sea to shining sea
Brotherhood?
How can thee exclude so many?
God’s grace? Do we deserve it?
This song precedes every ball game, hands over hearts,
so everyone must agree with it.
Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
The flag–that works. Nicely patriotic. Good start.
But the free? Define free. And brave.
Do brave people wear masks when they arrest your neighbor?
Woodie Guthrie gave us this song.
This land is your land, this land is my land…
This land was made for you and me.
This land was made for me.
Not you, if you are brown or black or speak a different language.
Woodie would be so disappointed.
This land is my land, this land is my land.
We need some new songs
Or we need to live up to the old ones.
Gayle Sands
7/18/26
(Note: I came across this James Russell poem while checking song lyrics. Maybe this should be sung at ball games):
Fourth of July Ode 1841
by James Russell Lowell
Our fathers fought for Liberty,
They struggled long and well,
History of their deeds can tell—
But did they leave us free?
Are we free from vanity,
Free from pride, and free from self,
Free from love of power and pelf,
From everything that’s beggarly?
Are we free from stubborn will,
From low hate and malice small,
From opinion’s tyrant thrall?
Are none of us our own slaves still?
Are we free to speak our thought,
To be happy, and be poor,
Free to enter Heaven’s door,
To live and labor as we ought?
Are we then made free at last
From the fear of what men say,
Free to reverence today,
Free from the slavery of the Past?
Our fathers fought for liberty,
They struggled long and well,
History of their deeds can tell—
But ourselves must set us free.
Gayle,
Your poem reminds me how pop culture becomes mythology, how saying something, as in a song, over and over becomes believable. Woody Guthrie’s music does get to hard truths, but I’ve often called our national anthem the war song. I really dislike that song. Thanks for including the Lowell poem/song here. I think you might have invented a new poetry form: The commentary poem.
Gayle, wow, I love this commentary poem, as Glenda called it. I love this line–it made me sigh, but smile: “How can thee exclude so many?” Perfect commentary on the songs we hold dear! And that Lowell song–wow…Yes, no one knows this one, do they? That sures says a lot about the history we learn…
Two of Woodie Guthrie’s verses we never sing. I saw someone on Instagram just singing them over and over.
As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Marvelous response to this prompt, Gayle, weaving in song lyrics.These printed words illuminate the inconsistencies between our professed beliefs and the “lived out truth.” This line stood out for me: “Do brave people wear masks when they arrest your neighbor?”
Gayle — You raise some really good questions “Sweet for some,/But bitter for others…
Liberty for many, but/Not for all” and I agree “we need some new songs”
Gayle, I wonder how many sing the anthem without acknowledging the words. Your use of them puts them forward facing and prompts new thinking, sustained thinking – much needed thinking. I appreciate the new option – as a fourth of July baby, what used to hold pride now feels like something else – this resonates more.
Gayle, you are absolutely right, “We need some new songs”! I loved your dismantling and calling out of these “anthems.” And thanks for adding the ode from Lowell, too.
Gayle, I love how you’ve drawn our attention to the words we often sing without listening…without adhering to, with no thought whatsoever. Your last two lines – superb!
Oh my goodness, Glenda. Your poem is full of American history from huddled masses, yankee dream, Abu Ghraib, and Niagara
Loved reading it over and over.
Democracy Assassin
Say it over again and again, now
Then they will start to believe it
Tell them how China swayed U.S. voters
Believe the Big Lie – our elections aren’t fair.
They might believe when you say it again
Tell them we cheat – our policies so bad.
Threaten the States over election fraud
Then say it and hope they believe the lie.
Don’t say false words to silence my voting
Don’t say you should have won the election
America, close your ears and don’t listen
Deny the lie. Look for reality.
When you believe him, Democracy falls
Let words of truth sound in the halls.
Susan,
Thank you for your kind words and for this poem magnifying the administration’s efforts to steal the election. I’m sure you read Marc Elias’s newsletter. He says the plan is to remove democrats from voting rolls. Your poem is so full of truth, especially this idea people will believe the lies if they hear them over and over.
Oh, wow, Susan, this is so great. Thanks for the clarion call to listen to truth! That last stanza really nails home the point.
I heard someone recently say that we needed a Joseph Welch for our time to say to Trump something like Welch said to Senator Joseph McCarthy, which was his final undoing: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
“When you believe him, Democracy falls” – so very true. I appreciate how you honed in on the latest nightmare of this administration, trying to make voters fearful about voting. I pray that folks are closing their ears!
Susan — Like you I worry that America will believe his lies. I truly hope this stanza prevails “America, close your ears and don’t listen/Deny the lie. Look for reality.”
Susan, I’m drawn to that last couplet. I’ve repeated it again and again, hoping to carry it with me throughout time. So many writers today are sharing truths that are being ignored for lies that they must want to believe. Close your ears, America, indeed!
When you believe him, Democracy falls
Let words of truth sound in the halls.
We are failing as a country, in so many ways. Hoping truth wins out in the end.
Wow. What an amazing prompt. I missed last month’s writing prompts and this is quite the prompt to get me back into the writing. I love the idea of double consciousness.
For the South That Made Me
I make this sonnet a porch and a prison.
I make it a river where prayers sink beside history.
I make my granny rock beside philosophers,
her hymns arguing with every book I’ve read.
I make porch songs before polished speeches
then soften the drawl to fit the academic world
I float pear blossoms fall over forgotten graves.
I watch monuments praise what dirt refuses.
I make my south speak in two voices—
one blessing, one binding.
I make myself daughter of both:
the storytelling porch and the ivy-covered tower,
the song and the citation,
and still I cannot tell which one is saving me.
Melanie,
This is brilliant. It captures the duality of the South perfectly. I love so much about the South, but that fidelity to those monuments, that white-washed history, ugh. I hope you send this off to some southern lit nags. It’s so very good. Thank you!
Melanie, I’m in awe! You just wrote this today? What a perfect interpretation of the double consciousness prompt. And that form with “I make, I make, I make…” Wow. This is beautiful and powerful.
Your opening line grabbed me with the porch and a prison. I can visualize the story telling, arguing and philosophizing from a porch. I feel the south and the contrasts.
“I make myself a daughter of both” I sit beside you in this. I love my southern roots, the storytelling porch, the music of the blues, all the rich cultural things, yet cringe at the American flags flapping on big trucks that can’t even see beyond their prejudices. Your first line is one I’d like to steal “I make this sonnet a porch and a prison.”
Wow. The softened drawl, the storytelling porch, the Ivy covered tower. This poem is amazing!
American Lit
(teaching and lesson planning)
ain’t what it once was
__________________________________________________________
Glenda, thank you for this challenge today! I have a page of duplex-ish stanzas juxtaposing the lines from “The New Colossus” with the atrocities of ICE agents today, along with lines riffing on the difficulties of teaching rhetoric – arguing “fairly” and whatnot – with what “has been going on” the past several years. We teach students to avoid using fallacies, and they can point to any political statement or ad and say, what, like this? But nothing, ultimately, emerged from these scribblings, so, yeah, I’m not too proud, lol, to admit this prompt was too much for me! I tried to, at least, fit the spirit of “double consciousness” into my haiku, though.
Scott,
Tuck the prompt away. Come back to it later. Your double-consciousness haiku hits the mark perfectly. It’s a sad reality, a heart-breaking one.
Scott, this is great. I’m so sorry for the truth in this. I love the idea of the poem you are working on too with lines from The New Colossus with ICE atrocities. Keep working on it! These are important times for artists and poets.
I agree with your haiku!
So true, Scott. So true. And so sad…
Sometimes, less is more, Scott.
This captures it.
Hello beautiful people!
I missed last month recuperating from the school year, I’m still relaxing and recuperating this month on vacation. I choose to loosely consider this double consciousness of “real” life and vacation life. Although not a sonnet form today.I could be much more serious and political, there are just so many ways to go with so much fertile material, but instead I’ll try this as my wife and I lounge by a pool in mouse country for our 25th anniversary/honeymoon and our kids come join us later today, so I’m trying not to check in with world affairs and current events as much as possible and live in my hole in the sand bubble for another week:
wide stance
braced for impact
loosely based around bracing for impact anyway
stuck in a theme park whose theme is hopelessness
all chance and no choice
in the matter
or any matter
for that matter
Palmetto Florida stank roach
belly up and as dry as dead sticks, bark
antennaes and legs breaking off in a slight breeze
ceilings stretching higher and higher, yet the space feels more constricting, not as much air to breathe somehow
But I’m ok now.
Really.
I wasn’t moving around people, people were moving around me
I was static,
I am static,
white noize and immoveability
art, in part, participation
depravity’s opposite? pravity?
I’m in Florida but FLO Rida is back in Indiana
“You know I know how
To make ’em stop and stare as I zone out
The club can’t even handle me right now
Watchin’ you watchin’ me, I go all out
The club can’t even handle me right now
(Eh, yea-ei-yeaaah, eh, yea-ei-yeaaah, eh, yea-yeaaaah)”
He’s at the county fair by my house, and I’m here
blessed and lucky beyond imagination
although I couldn’t afford it then and I still can’t afford it now.
I like the language interplay here–the way you have words that serve different meanings as I move through the lines. I found myself speeding up and slowing down as the flow of the words changed and felt my emotions move to that as well. “All chance and no choice” stuck with me as I was reading. I reread this several times and each time I was just struck by the word play.
Luke,
Happy Anniversary. Nothing wrong w/ digging into the sand for a break. .I took the ignore the world pause w/ Kim in Portland last month and while driving the PCH. You’ve managed to make Disneyland/World seem like the antithesis of the happiest place on earth, and boy howdy does that line about the expense hit the mark!
Well, if you didn’t just go and get a bunch of people with big hearts fired up, Glenda! I love your ability to put your strong emotions into eloquent, inventive, and impactful words!
simply complex
we love your restaurants . . . salsa and sombreros
glad you work the factory line, roof the houses,
decapitate the turkeys, and stain the wood products.
we turn our noses when you Hablo Espanol,
flash Our Lady of Guadalupe on your clothes,
and gather in gangs in the school halls.
we claim to be good people . . . loving , accepting and kind
welcoming newcomers to our tight-knit town,
touting that we love diversity.
reality is we are insular, wanting fair faces flanked by fair hair
filling the pages of the yearbooks
and Dutchy accents with guttural gs asking abrupt questions,
“work hard, play hard” the mantra of most.
we turn our heads when ICE nab the 9U soccer coach,
a hard-working married father of two whose profile pic is
a professional family portrait taken
in a southern Indiana wildflower field.
a 29-year-old friend and mentor
who’s been here since he was two, the end line for citizenship
constantly moving.
we gasp in outrage as his wife finally shares
the had made contact and he’s been hauled
states away and hasn’t had a shower for days,
access to an attorney limited,
his kids asking “Where’s Papi?”
but
we sit on our hands, maybe donate to the GoFundMe,
share her posts and add your own words: “Bring Angel Home.”
comments of support fill the feed
with the outlier adding
“wouldn’t be a problem if he was legal.”
legal.
is there such a thing as
a human being legal
or illegal?
the vitriol starts
with lines drawn in the sand
as if it’s a simple situation
rather than a complex maze of
shifting bureaucracy
that a human–
a good human–
has tried for a decade to navigate
while he worked the line,
loved a girl,
had two kids,
coached your kids,
rose above
against obstacles,
countless obstacles.
it’s simple: he’s a human
it’s complex: half the population don’t care.
these people are more than tacos and sombreros,
they do more than fill jobs “no one else wants”
they live and love and work and worship
and dream and desire
right here among us.
among us
separate but assimilated
how’s that?
~Susan Ahlbrand
18 July 2026
Susan, in the sparse moments I have this morning, I landed on your sonnet and am leaving in tears, I too know “this” soccer coach as well as my hairdresser and the nurse who takes my blood pressure and the wonderful man who was supposed to install my new railing but could not……As you said, “t’s simple: (they’re) he’s human, it’s complex: half the population don’t care.” I do care and have been so overwhelmed with concern I have had a very difficult time focusing on the good in my life and in this country, Your words are powerful and describe how we have allowed lives to be destroyed.
they live and love and work and worship
and dream and desire
right here among us.
And 39% of the country thinks they don’t belong…
Your poem moved me and made my heart hurt. You honed in on the duality and the hypocrisy of so much that we are seeing around us. Thank you. The layering of images of what we celebrate and what we clutch our pearls about but do nothing is striking.
Susan,
Your righteous indignation is 🔥 and I’m here for it. I hate ICE and want that evil cult destroyed. There’s so much truth in what you’ve written today, and those last lines are a zinger: “separate but assimilated.” That’s a fact!
Susan, I want to live with these words, resound them for all to hear, press play on repeat, blast them through congress: “is there such a thing as a human being legal or illegal?” And you follow with this last thought instigator – “among us separate but assimilated.” So beautifully and thoughtfully written! Thanks for this today.
Hi Poet Friends,
Thanks for being here. No need to write a Shakespearean sonnet. If you can count to 24, you’re golden. The modern American sonnet isn’t concerned w/ the traditional formalities of Plutarch or the Bard.
gf
Powerful stuff this morning, Glenda. The irony of this being July and the 250th is strong. I love your opening line and the verbs (digested, swallowed, regurgitated) that push and visualize. I have been feeling so overwhelmed by our country (and the world) that compartmentalization has become a survival mechanism.
An
America
Collected
I take your recent offerings–red, white, and blue–
and drop them into drawers, each categorized and organized.
I take the red of Good, of Araujo, of Guerrero…
twist-tied and double bagged, and lock the compartments tight.
I take the yt and its deep, deep roots, its hoods and robes,
wrapped into bundles, rope-secured, knotted twice, and bury them deep.
I take the blue, the sea of sorrow, the wave of depression
from sea to shining sea, and pour them in, every last drop.
Your wildfire-red skies, your bleached-white fields, your fading-blue dreams –
I close them inside, in an effort to be free, to remain sane, to escape,
shut the drawers (so many), lock the locks, fling keys far and wide.
I can’t think of them today, or tomorrow, or any day, really.
unsolicited storer, witness, collector, of the land of the free.
Jennifer, I understand your survival mechanism. The news is disheartening, to say the least of it, and even in the local day to day world I’ve found myself doing my own sheltering from life going on around me with all its drama and high-cortisol-level interactions. Where is there any peace? Open Write gives us just the right atmosphere. Your poems always make me feel like I’m having tea with you, friend to friend.
Jennifer,
A year ago I didn’t realize how prescient this prompt would be in this moment. I want this month to end, to put the 250th in the rear view mirror. Like you, I’ve locked much away. As Kim says, it’s a survival instinct. Thank you for naming the victims, for keeping them alive in your poem. BTW, I started watercolor painting in early May. It is a calming, cathartic addition to my coping ritual.
Glenda—I wondered if you had edited the prompt recently for our lives today. You really did predict the future, unfortunately. (I started watercolor a couple of years ago. My breathing time…)
You have brought to the forefront all the things that are making me cry for America. We should be celebrating this 250 but the reasons are getting dimmer. Your poem made my eyes mist over with sadness. Love your technique of wrapping these things into separate bundles and throwing them away. I wish!
Jennifer, I love how you used the colors of the flag in this powerful poem: “Your wildfire-red skies, your bleached-white fields, your fading-blue dreams –” I often feel like the only way to keep living is to lock the drawers.
Jennifer, wow, what a powerful and provocative poem. I love the visuals and actions throughout this and the title is perfect. I feel the emotions within each word: the twist-tied, double bagged, bleached-white, bundles and all that wildfire. Simply stunning poem full of undertones rife for the reader to ponder.
Jennifer, your compartmentalizing of the red, white, and blue–with such powerful metaphors for all–is compelling. I’m so sorry we have to do that these days, years. You have not held back, and your power comes through.
That survival mechanism of compartmentalizing . . . I so get. But you took that deeper into the imagery of putting things in a drawer! Just wow! And how you tap into the meaning, connection, and history of red white and blue really drives your ideas–and frustration–home.
Glenda, I thank you for the push this morning. Your poem pushes back. I love the line “i waterboard you in a Niagara deluge &
push the barrel into the churning river“ Woosh!
My husband tells me that more Republicans back their cars into parking spots than Democrats. I have no idea if this is true, but my visits to Walmart make me curse the trucks that are backed in (and usually well over the yellow line.)
I lock you in your white Ford truck backed in
over the yellow line
You are not my kind, hefty and trumped
on four jacked-up off-road tires
designed to crush little people like me
with your oversized parts.
I won’t hitch up my skirt to take a ride.
I park nose front & take my time
not to cross the line. I return
the wire buggy to the cart-horse paddock,
flash a fake smile to the sweaty boy
maneuvering the train.
I hold my superiority under my side slung purse
where my soft belly holds verses of quiet fortitude.
Margaret— do you live in my head!!? The oversized parts, the cart horse paddock, the last two lines. Those last two are the best!
Margaret, I love your nod to the simplicity of travel and the called-out wastefulness and entitlement of oversized trucks. I am not a fan of the new fad of the jacked up wheels and double-parking-don’t-ding-doors mentality of those who drive them. I’m drawn back to the provocative skirt hitching line and each time I read it another meaning comes sidewinding its way in – – I love it!
Clever and fun line “I won’t hitch up my skirt to take a ride.” Love the layered refusal there. And then the “flash a fake smile to the sweaty boy/maneuvering the train” affirming the social culture and need for consideration. It is incredible how there is a holding or even a kind of swallowing of our stances in these public dances. I will say that Dan does not hold his tongue and is at his wits’ end with humanity after a year of travel.
Those two last lines have such a cool flow, and simmering frustration, and most of all – strength.
Kevin
Margaret,
Amen to all of this. My husband has a theory about people who drive Dodge trucks, so next time you’re in Walmart, tally how many Dodge trucks are poorly parked. I also love how you’ve taken a common annoyance and turned it into a rant that elevates a Fried Green Tomatoes kind of moment into a serious poetic form. Love it!
Glenda, funny you should say “Fried Green Tomatoes” moment because I am currently listening to “The Calamity Club” by Kathryn Stockett and those Mississippi voices are echoing in my head.
The hitch up my skirt line feels so defiant and resistant to me and a perfect tone with everything around it. Awesome, well done ! So good
Margaret, whether or not the back in mentality is a national policy, I see it here in the Northeast as well! I always considered it a “me first” pattern, but you have opened my eyes to a possible/probably connection to the political front that really sees some as a superior race.
I love this! I am also really irked at those that back in. Glad to know that those that do that trick are all Republicans. Thanks.
Margaret, this poem is everything in every way – the jacked-up truck, the visual of hitching skirts and all that implies, the double space parking, and your side slung purse echoing the comments held to the side. Beautifully done. Amazingly composed.
Glenda, thank you for hosting us today! I’m enjoying reading more about the American Sonnet….I’m still stuck in the aabbccddeeff gg ten-syllable line structure….old habits die hard. Love your poem and your inspiration and encouragement. A sonnet for a Saturday can change the world! Note: I am not a knitter. I have no idea where this muse hid.
Instructions for Knitting a Poem
knit one, purl two, I hook words as I write
cool peace, with shades of panic-level fright
these variegated colors of yarn skein
like phases of moon cycles: wax and wane
crack of thunder harkens a derecho
aftermath: look up and see a rainbow
cast on, bind off ~ weave from all this SABLE
knit one, purl two, count along a cable
change skeins ~ dye lots show unstable jogging
tug trail legs: necessary frogging
sometimes we can’t undo what has been done
new leading legs knit common threads as one
a cozy mitten pair: rich mosaic
poetry can change the dull prosaic
Kim, I am loving this extended metaphor of knitting as you imagine it to be. It certainly works as a double consciousness. The legs and hands are beautiful “new leading legs knit common threads” and the “a cozy mitten pair” — all of the weaving toward prosaic. So many beautiful words here, Kim.
I appreciate the knitting process. I don’t knit, but good friends do and I’ve heard them use phrases you’ve used. They too create lovely blankets, clothing, etc.
“… I hook words as I write”
Wonderful!
Kevin
Kim,
This is a wonderful metaphor. I noticed you sneaked in your blog name, Common Threads. Very clever. I love the closing couplet paying homage to all a poem can do. This would be a lovely poem for postcard poetry, too,
Kim, this knitting metaphor is a strong one. I really DID and STILL DO see our country as that powerful variegated mosaic; however, I worry that the damage of years of verbal assault have damaged our collective mentality in ways that are going to be hard to change. YET, I really hope you are right that “poetry can change the dull prosaic” that some feel is a desirable mentality.
Look at this fabulous rhymes and knitting lingo! You must have been a knitter in another life.
Kim, your knitting words are exquisite. I love the visuals of the yarn skein, phases of moon and dye lots. I also feel the emotions, the sense of panic and how we keep our hands busy to soften that crack of thunder that damages our beloved spaces. Your final couplet is inspiring.
Kim, love your adherence to the traditional sonnet and how beautifully you composed the rhythm and rhyme. You don’t have to be a textile knitter to be a word knitter! As with sonnets, the last two lines stand alone and stand long with the reader, and yours does so perfectly. Love!
Kim, this knitted poem caught my eye with its lovely design and wrapped me in the warmth of its message.
Your ability to use language just astounds me, Kim. Sure, the structure of a sonnet gives rhythm and rhyme, but your words create additional power that just propels these lines forward with beauty.
For not being a knitter, you sure nailed the terminology, imagey, and impact.
the winged girl knew she was part machine
da Vinci’s ornithopter strapped to back
she nested in borrowed pigeon holes
not knowing which was a slaughterhouse
barely disguised as medieval free range
nor did she know streets were rife with home hunters
throwing dimes that choke drains during rest hours
she was lulled by salt breezes in the distance
rotting the rods that held her hole open,
and was never to detect a heat could reach
degrees to boil her flesh from bones
a seeker she fled on machined wings cursing
her weight in grief as spires pierced her gut red
pondering airbus fare or drinking jet fuel
she opted to paint her steel parts cloud white
Sarah, a powerful poem that on the first read felt harsh. When I read it again, I felt more sympathy and kindness toward the seeker in grief painting the steel white. Your imagery amazes me.
Sarah, I sense the experience of travel and art museums here in your poem today, and I gave a quick search to the winged girl of daVinci’s art, wondering so much about all the rich art you have seen in your sabbatiment. I like the modern blend of the unintentional consequences that we never consider – risking life and clogged drains in our quests for adventure and tradition. I’m intrigued by the final line – – a new start of purity or angel wings reborn, and the way the reader can decide. Pure inspiration!
I love that first line. What a hook!
Kevin
Sarah,
This poem is a fitting end to your sabbatical. The complications, the expectations, the realities of living and traveling are all here. I’m so grateful for these machines that give us wings. The privilege of exploring, learning, being humbled is one I’ll never take for granted. I hope your year has enriched your soul and that returning to Oklahoma will feel like home.
Sarah, this image of “the winged girl” will now be associated with you in my mind. I like how you weave in your year of travel in a few lines here. Love this line “she was lulled by salt breezes in the distance.” The heat this summer was ferocious in Europe. Hope the AC in your apartment works well.
Glenda
It’s been a long time since I tried my hand at the sonnet, with its rules of rhymes and syllables. I went with a traditional (I think) Shakespearean form (14 lines, 10 syllables per line, 3 quatrains + 2 couplets)
Kevin
A Sonnet For Charlie Parker
A Bird of free range flying through the night
wrapped in chords of compositional scratches
and tangled like roses, thorns as sharp as flight;
yet within noise, the melody flashes
I am an earbud audience, in awe
of the way the sound moves in near motion
so that when I close my eyes — not a flaw –
only quick winds and waves on the ocean
Yet he remains a complicated man,
a puzzle of complexity, a wire
who could channel beauty on the bandstand
while nearly losing himself to the fire
Some music that’s played becomes a life, lost,
and listeners often forget the cost
Sonnets are hard and since they take so much time and attention, I don’t usually write them. You have done a wonderful job with the rhythms and rhymes. That last line hits hard “listeners often forget the cost.” So true!
Oh, wow. Wow. Earbud audience…puzzle of complexity…nearly losing himself to the fire–just gorgeous phrasing. That last couplet grabbed me and held on. The last line was particularly strong.
Kevin,
That concluding couplet is a profound statement holding so many truths. Well done on the sonnet. I’m listening to the audiobook for “The Creative Act: A Way of Being,” and your poem today echoes some of the author’s ideas.
Kevin, I too chose the more traditional sonnet form. I like your rhymes for the rhyme scheme and your metaphors!
Kevin, I love the truth of your last line: “listeners often forget the cost.” I second this sentiment for art, literature, performers, etc. We, the “audience,” often don’t know the trials and tribulations of the artists. Thanks for this!