Today’s (April 13) prompt from Found Poetry Review comes from another Canadian poet, Sennah Yee. To read more about Sennah, and to read the other poems from participants, visit the FPR site here. 

The prompt itself is quoted below:

Wanderlust

Travel websites have always intrigued me with their language—visual, lush, and sometimes a bit dramatic and naive. Browse travel websites and write down any words/phrases that interest you: descriptions and/or customer reviews of resorts, landmarks, attractions, hotels, restaurants, etc. Craft a poem using only these words/phrases. You may arrange them in any way you wish. Here are some sources to get you started:

TripAdvisor’s Top 25 All-Inclusive Resorts
TripAdvisor’s Top 25 Beaches
TripAdvisor Travel Inspiration

The sites I used are shown below the poem, which is drawn from three travel sites and several articles, then remixed.

Nobody Tells You About Circus Wagons – Self-Catering Ain’t What it Used to Be

You have to carry a 70 pound suitcase full
of everything in your room at home. You regret
cobbled streets in Europe, anything with wheels,
a longtail and a beach in Cambodia.

Longtail boat (Wikipedia)

Glamping is the way forward through rice fields
from canvas pavilions and yurts.
Who knew free breakfasts would become
the things that don’t fit anywhere else?

Free Wi-Fi might only be in hidden and zippered pockets.
It’ll immediately go down. Breakfast becomes your highlight:
eat as much as possible, sneak a couple of rolls into the world’s
worst airport, a piece of work hellhole, a decaying hulk.

Terminally congested passengers exit directly onto land
shaped like an arrow reclaimed from the sea; the old city
a painless skybridge of yellow.  A masochist flag carrier was
assassinated on the  tarmac in 1983,  collapsing like a bad smell.

You get fed up with talking. It’s never pleasant. Conversations
revolve around the same five questions.
There’ll always be a creepy guy there in a dark corner watching
in silence. The old man in Hualien, in Taiwan greeted me with,
Don’t worry: I’m not a sex pest. I wanted to change rooms.

You expect the snorers, the occasional dodgy bathroom.
You wake up in the middle of the night to the sound
of throwing up in the middle of the room, not just vomit.
All kinds of bodily fluids have been expelled.

Integrate immersion through the language using writing and yoga
as touchstones. Desert camels wash in the sink with shampoo
and dry overnight.

Waiting time between footsteps can be slow in San Miguel de Allende.
The ancient burial site is the entrance to Starbucks, the streets
for thousands of years constructed by the Otomi dolls.
They don’t take up much room in a suitcase.

San Miguel de Allende, Guanjuato, Mexico ( Wikipedia)

Carol A. Stephen
April 13, 2016

Sources:  About.com/travel, NomadWomen.com, Journeywoman.com

a longtail is a type of watercraft native to Southeast Asia