Category Archives: Poetry Super Highway

Prompt Sixteen from Poetry Superhighway

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“April 16, 2022: Poetry Writing Prompt – J R Turek

Write a list poem titled “Everything is Broken” but offer no solutions to fix anything.

If you write a poem from this prompt, post it as a comment underneath the prompt in the Poetry Super Highway Facebook Group.”

Everything is Broken

The charger that sits on my night table won’t charge my phone.

The curtain that keeps snow off the deck, doesn’t.

The blind in my brother’s room, hangs crooked now.

My pretty green car has scuff marks on the far side where I didn’t see.

The bird feeder, destroyed over and over by something in the night.

***

And then there’s the body:

my heart, my kidneys, my spine, my thumbs, my wrists, my knees.

Everything hurts, everything objects when I try to use it the way I used to do.

Carol A. Stephen

April 16, 2022

April 10 Books, Books, Books

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Prompt from Poetry SuperHighway

April 10, 2022: Poetry Writing Prompt – Elizbeth Marchitti

Write about your knick-knacks, your chatchkes, your Dollar Store finds.  Explain why you can’t quit buying them, and what you think your heirs will do with them when you die.

If you write a poem from this prompt, post it as a comment underneath the prompt in the Poetry Super Highway Facebook Group. #napowrimo #poetry

Books, Books, Books

In the kitchen. Living room. Bedroom.

By my bed, in the night tables, on two bookshelves.

In boxes along the floor. In my study, outside

my study. And all the e-ones on my Kindle.

Always buying the next best book, but before

it arrives, another one’s in the cart somewhere.

They’ll build a book table, or a chair, arms

resting on poetry books, cookbooks, art books

and history books. Health books, fiction books,

how-to-do something or other books.

Most ironic?

The how-to books on clutter. Most of mine? Books.

Carol A. Stephen

April 10, 2022

NaPoWriMo 2016 Day 20 These Feet

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Today’s prompt from FPR is quite a time-intensive one, and one that I will tackle later. This morning I have time constraints, so I decided to work with the Poetry Super Highway challenge to write a poem of place about my feet.

 Here is the prompt:

April 20, 2016: Poetry Writing Prompt – Ellen Sander

posted April 20th, 2016

Look at your feet. Are they bare, stockinged, shod? Recall some of the places your feet have been, e.g. the beach, grandparents’ home, the stairs of a school you went to. Write a “place” poem that starts with your feet.

This poetry writing prompt submitted by Ellen Sander.

My attempt:

 

THESE OLD FEET

 

These tootsies, cushioned and cozy,
wrapped round in sheepskin slippers,
real homebodies now but oh,
the places they’ve been!

The toes remember the tan sand beaches of Georgian Bay,
white sand of Cancun, the rough broken coral in Acapulco Bay
as the wash of tides roared in, tossed shells along the beach,
then slid back to join the deeper sea.

Acapulco, the town were the telenovela is set.

Acapulco. (Wikipedia)

They’ve suffered through the many rooms of Schönbrunn Palace
and Hampton Court, feared torture in London’s ancient Tower,
rested while we sipped a brew in a pub in Portsmouth,
sat out as inlaws danced at a rustic csárda in Budapest.

Hampton Court. View of the Great Gatehouse fro...

Hampton Court. (Wikipedia)

Soles have sweltered in unforgiving sandals wandering streets of
an August Rome, then thankful for the respite of street car ride,
Piazza Venezia to the Spanish Steps, and happy too to find running shoes
from Seoul to cushion bunions every step upon St. Peter’s marble floors.

The same old dogs walked twisted alleys along Venice’s canals,
tackled the top of Hong Kong’s Peak, curled to watch the milking of a Thai snake,
compressed themselves in ice-block boots to schuss down Mogul Alley,
and they still freeze at the touch of sole to kitchen floor back home.

 

Carol A. Stephen
April 20, 2016

 

Csárda is an old Hungarian term for tavern, from which Csárdás, the name for the traditional dance was derived.

NaPoWriMo 2016 Day 5 a Three-Fer

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NMP-BANNER-DToday I have a poem for each of three challenges, the NaPoWriMo.net, Poetry Super Highway, and the Impromptu #5 from Found Poetry Review.

 

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At NaPoWriMo

The daily prompt challenges us to consult seed catalogues and seek out heirloom plants as inspiration for a poem today.  I chose the suggested tomato plants, for the reason given: the names are so wonderful.  Here is my poem, Heirloom:

My source is an Ontario location, in order to use plants that I could actually grow here in the Ottawa area http://www.terraedibles.ca/index.html

 

HEIRLOOM 

Various heirloom tomato cultivars

Various heirloom tomato cultivars Wikipedia)

 

No one there is who does not love tomatoes
is what Frost should have said each spring,  as gardeners
turn to catalogues and dream their August dreams.

No Belgian chocolate for me, instead an Amazon Chocolate,
full of flavour in its flattened oval, sliced on a plate
beside the yellow-red streaks of Allegheny Sunset.

Ghosts in the shadows, silver-sheened leaves
of this year’s  prize Angoras garnish a summer salad:
yellow Apricots jostle Azoychkas and just ripe Banana Legs.

Believe It or Not, every one of them tomatoes.

Carol A. Stephen
April 5, 2016

(first line paraphrases  Robert Frost’s Mending Wall)

 

At Poetry Super Highway, today’s prompt was a fun write, encouraging us to write a Creation Myth poem for a kitchen item.  Here’s my attempt, a Creation Myth for Oatmeal.

 

CREATION MYTH: OATMEAL

In the beginning was the Flake,
flat, without colour. Flake needed substance,
to cling to its brothers, to form a greater whole.

Oatmeal directly from the packing.

Oatmeal directly from the packing. ( Wikipedia)

With the first rains from the heavens, each Flake knew joy.
Each Flake swelled into greatness as it welcomed
the worshipping moisture.

But the Flakes were not yet whole.
Their joy soon dimmed as they floated
without substance upon the waters.

Behold, the rain passed away and there came the sun.
And a second time each Flake swelled but
joy was elusive.

And the Flakes dreamed they must know water and warmth
together. They consulted Oracle who told them verily
to seek out the Lord High Bowl, that they must cluster there.

And the Flakes sought out Lord Bowl, and climbed inside
Bowl’s vessel. For the first seven days, they waited. The eighth day
the heavens opened and behold, there fell a sun shower.

Rain poured down into Bowl. Sun heated Bowl till it glowed.
And Flakes were transformed. On the ninth day Bowl beheld
Oatmeal and it was good!

Carol A. Stephen
April 5, 2016

Breakfast of raspberries, blueberries and oatmeal.

Breakfast of raspberries, blueberries and oatmeal. (Wikipedia)

High Fiber Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies. (Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the Found Poetry Review prompt, today from Sarah Blake, calls for a poem that follows the rhythm of a song.Found Poetry Review

At first, I was imagining I’d need a month to even start to tackle this one. Until I remembered the blues.  It may be a bit of a shortcut, copout or cheat to go with that, since it is a rather simple form. But it’s what I went with and on a day when the thermometer has slipped well below zero (Celsius) the lyric is appropriate!

English: Comparison of Centigrade (Celsius) an...

Centigrade (Celsius) and Fahrenheit thermometer scales (Wikipedia)

Weather Blues

 

Don’t want that chill wind hangin’ outside my door
Said I don’t want that chill wind hangin’ outside my door
Bringin’ me blue fingers like it done before

It brings me the shivers, it brings me cold feet
Yeah, it bring me the shivers, an’ it bring me cold feet
Cold bringin’ me down when the weather ain’t sweet

Don’t want that chill wind hangin’ round my door
No, I don’t want chill wind hangin’ round my door
If it ain’t good for springtime, don’t want it no more

Wind blows in the mornin’, and all afternoon
I said it blows in the mornin’, and all afternoon
It ain’t good for springtime, and it ain’t good for June

Fridays it blows in, blows all weekend too
yeah Fridays it blows in, blows all weekend too
Come Monday morning, man, colour me blue

Don’t want that chill wind hangin’ outside my door
Said I don’t want that chill wind hangin’ outside my door
Bringin’ me blue fingers like it done before

 

Carol A. Stephen
April 5, 2016