Ezekiel's Daughter

http://writersisland.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/napowrimo-day-3/
http://www.napowrimo.net/2011/04/day-2/

So here goes: Cesar Vallejo wrote a pretty famous poem that begins with him saying that he will die in Paris, in the rain, on a Thursday (different translations from the Spanish make it hard to quote precisely in English). So go ahead and write a poem predicting your own death — at night in Omaha at the Shell Station, in an underwater Mexican grotto after a dry spell. It’s less morbid than you think!



On Tuesday night the smell of jasmine intoxicates her
She pirouettes and stumbles on rain slick streets
The cry that escapes her lips is sharp and brief
as parcels tumble into the road.

She pirouettes and stumbles on rain slick streets
The alarm of banshee brakes match her cry
as parcels tumble into the road
The howl of companions echo ‘twixt inert glass canyons.

The alarm of banshee brakes match her cry
As metal wheels tear into flesh
the howl of companions echo ‘twixt inert glass canyons
The scent of blood cloaks nearby jasmine blooms.

http://writersisland.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/prompt-13-for-2011-unlimited/

The thirteenth prompt for 2011 is “UNLIMITED”, inspired by this wonderful image from jaime lluch.
So consider the various meanings of the word, such as… • reaching to forever, • unrestricted, • unconfined, • boundless, • infinite, • vast, • without exception, • unconditional, • unconstrained, • unrestrained, • unfettered — let the word unlimited spark your muse… perhaps let the image above be your inspiration… or choose to go in your own direction with your piece this week. Just let yourself go with whatever it is that moves you to write.



I don't know the morality of using real people's names in a fictional matter in poetry.  Anyway, none of the following implies a knowledge of the Edwin Hubble's personal life.  He just happens to be the person who discovered that Andromeda was actually a separate galaxy.



At midnight, Edwin opens
his eyes on Mount Wilson and realizes that Grace
is receding from him.
Her affection is as variable as the Cepheid star that he pursues.
Now, that star signals to him.
It has barely cleared Mount Lookout, but it’s ready for tonight’s fitting.
One dress for Andromeda, a standard candle in length.
Grace sleeps five nanoseconds away in their shared bed;
M31 is two and a half million light years further,
but both are fleeing from him in a speed that is
measurable
he decides with satisfaction.
What can be measured can be contained--
in a marriage,
in a universe that will eventually fall into order.

  http://writersisland.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/prompt-6-for-2011-beguile/

Temptation

Two mounds of silky loveliness
and daylight will not beguile me into rising

My hero is a woman,
      but she is no heroine.

A Heroine has one adventure:
      the search for the Ring and the man who will rule her.


My hero read the “Hero’s Journey” and groaned.


She doesn’t want to meet the goddess.
      She wants to be the goddess. 

She doesn’t want to love the Father.
      She wants to kill the Father

and serve him
to us
      over pasta drenched in tarragon sauce.







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This is the prompt:

http://writersisland.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/prompt-24-for-2010-envision/

 

> The twenty fourth prompt for 2010, an image I entitled: “ENVISION”.

You can let yourself be inspired by the title. What are the levels of meaning one might attach to the word ‘envision’? A few synonyms are: conceive, conjure, dream, envisage, imagine, fancy, fantasize, feature, ideate, picture, see, and visualize.

Or let the image itself evoke in you the inspiration to write. Hold it for a while in your mind’s eye, then whatever it is that strikes you as you view, express it.

 

Yehudah (יְהוּדָ)

“That land there”, he points
“That was Jesse’s.”
We look and I consider
the bramble imprisoned by razor wire
and the story:
a day of hard words over cotton prices
followed by
a night filled with the sound of slaughtered pigs
and my great grandfather fleeing for his life to the big city
My Jewish family would call this a pogram;
my Black one—just business as usual—
Black folk having their land stolen.
“They say that we could get that land back,” my elder says.
The words hang in the air, an unanswered question
and in my mother’s family tree
Jesse follows Jesse with ne’er a David in sight.
I’ll tell you when the Messiah is here.
When Jesse’s David pastures his horse again
in that field
over there.

I know where Sunday ends and Monday begins.
I see it on the first workday morning when
midnight is a down coverlet twisted around the trunks of neighborhood trees.
Two doors down, the tallest cypress is like my six foot one father.
Already, his beard of Spanish moss is full of
sunlight, thin as wedding lace
in the gray morning.


http://writersisland.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/prompt-22-for-2010-whimsy/