a gothic writing prompt
October 24, 2008
(Click on the excerpt to read the entire piece.)
warning: this post has crabs
October 24, 2008
Retrospective of a Myth (continue) by RossinaBossioB
Hey, you. Yes, you. Go check out Postal Poetry. We just shared the first of several winning submissions from our September contest. We’ve also kicked off a second contest, and you have until Nov. 15 to submit work. The details on that contest are here. I’m warning you, though, wearing feather boas is involved. So you’d better have a couple at the ready.
(If contests aren’t for you, no worries. Just send in whatever work you like. We accept submissions outside of the contest.)
Also, don’t miss Read Write Poem. It has a new layout and several additional features, including a Monday image- or word-based writing prompt and a newsfeed featuring links to poetry- and participant news.
While you are making your way around the internets, check out Ouroboros Review, a new publication that Christine Swint and Jo Hemmant recently started. It’s going to be fantastic.
Those are all the places I can think of to send you. These links should keep you occupied for a least a little while.
Oh wait. Just one more link. This one is about hermit crabs. They have a housing shortage, you know. It’s serious stuff.
*I made the poetry postcard above with an image by RossinaBossioB in accordance with her Creative Commons license on the piece.
read write poem #49: operant conditioning
October 22, 2008
— for Cory
I
Wear a bag over your head long enough
and you will forget who you are.
II
Recount your last wishes.
Dig your grave.
Watch videotaped snuff.
Fire blanks at your own head.
It’s only over when we unload rounds
near your feet, when you dance.
This is your final warning.
(Consider yourself lucky.)
III
Eventually, the pressure on your fingers
will be too great. Arms stretched high
on the wall, legs several feet back and spread.
(These small bones weren’t meant to bear your load.)
IV
Stand. Sit. Run in circles. Stand. Sit.
The whole room hisses. The hissing
moves through you like snakes,
like a rough-vowen rope, like a demon.
V
(Nobody will believe you.)
VI
Sing. Sing for us. That’s right. Louder.
VII
What can’t be pushed back and stitched in.
What will not be reabsorbed or reattached.
On the table, you almost go slack.
You are wet with topical antiseptics.
The last of your heat wafts from your body.
Parts of you are sucked out through tubes.
The whole room is marked BIOHAZARD,
is marked TERROR, is marked WAR.
VIII
We half expect you to scream.
We half expect you to move
again, the way we want.
* * *
This is a draft. Very much so. I am sure I’ll be noodling around with it a lot in the coming days and weeks.
A shout out to Tom for linking to an article on operant conditioning recently. It’s the inspiration for this piece. This started out as a personal piece about sexual abuse and ended up being about war-related torture. It’s really about both, for me anyway.
echolalia writing prompt
October 21, 2008
(Click on the excerpt to read the entire piece.)
(collaborative) read write poem #48
October 15, 2008
For this week’s Read Write Prompt, Nathan Moore — the newest member of the RWP team — asked participants to write a collaborative poem draft word by word over on the Read Write Poem site. A number of people contributed words, some leaving only one and some coming back to provide more than one. To see everyone who contributed one or more words, check out the comments of this post, which is where all the action went down: Read Write Prompt #48.
Oh, and don’t skip over the post itself. Nathan shared a gorgeous essay on collaboration, and you wouldn’t want to miss out on that good stuff. No way.
The second part of the exercise was to take the draft and shape it into a poem. We were told that we could do as little revision, or as much, as we wanted. I didn’t add that much to the words we came up with, but I did add a little here, take a little away there. (I should note that the words I left out were simply ones I couldn’t fit into my version of the piece. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with them.)
I really enjoyed the exercise, and it’s given me some ideas for other poems that might play off this one. I can’t wait to see what directions others went in with the piece.
* * *
And tatterdemalion slink across chrome alleys
jettison the days away,
scavenge what you need
your life no more than
a littering of tribal artifacts
irreparably damaged memories
etch sacred tablature
thighs hold tight
whomever strays close
your body a clasp
with faulty closure
what twinges like a guard’s
off-pitch obscenities
villas are depleted,
courtyards emptied of walkways
men make their way through,
no sure surface on which to stand
read write poem goes even more collaborative
October 10, 2008
fishing for poems
September 20, 2008
After you sit down to write your poem, draw one word, and let that word be a part of the first sentence or line you write. Continue writing your poem, drawing another word each time you come to a pause. Try to write eleven lines.
explore the elegy
September 10, 2008
poets like to watch
September 5, 2008
catching words
August 29, 2008
This is my blog wherein I, Dana Guthrie Martin, write things and stuff. Most of the time, writing and I hobble along in a sort of three-legged race where there is no finish line. (more...)
It’s not every day that the world arranges itself into a poem. — Wallace Stevens (Yes, it is. — Me)
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beg, borrow, but don't steal
This work is licensed under Creative Commons. If you don’t credit Dana (by using her full name and preferably by linking back to the appropriate post) for however you copy, distribute, transmit or adapt her words, you are being bad. And naughty. And she will have her servant monkeys hunt you down and cut your hands off so you can never copy, distribute, transmit or adapt anyone’s work again and call it your own.
(Unless, of course, you were to use your butt cheeks to manipulate your keyboard with the copying, distributing, transmitting, adapting and whatnot, but Dana fortunately has only met one person whose butt cheeks are that talented. He could play a major third on a piano using nothing but his ass. She kids you not.).
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flick, flick, flick
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i cannot be bought
