Tag: poem

poetry

The Girl Who Shouted No

Sally17 Comments

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

She was cute, although
Her favorite word was NO
She shouted it often and loudly
Her mother sat her down
And said, with quite a frown,
“Daughter, you do NOT do me proudly.

“I know this sounds absurd
But could you choose another word
One without such negative implication?
If you can’t do that for me
I’m afraid that you will be
Quite lonely when we leave you for vacation.”

“NO” formed on her lips
As she planted hands on hips
Then she looked to see her mother really meant it
So she took a deep breath in
(And grinned a little grin)
Saying, “I will do my best to prevent it.”

Such an eloquent little girl!
Complete with little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead
She gave up shouting “NO”
And with sweet face quite aglow
She shouted words that were even more horrid

This is my submission for the W3 Challenge this week. Poet of the Week Violet (Congrats, Violet!) gave me the kind of challenge I love — a story poem. However, I did not follow all her guidelines. Here’s what she said:

Tell a story in verse—true or imagined, rooted in memory or invention. Let it unfold in a place you know well or one you’ve only dreamed of.

You can let the voice guiding the poem speak in a dialect—regional, ancestral, invented, or intimate. Let that voice shape the rhythm, grammar, and soul of the piece. Whether it’s Appalachian twang, Mandarin-inflected English, Nigerian Pidgin, or your grandmother’s Russian-accented Hebrew, the dialect is not a flourish—it is the storyteller.

While this use of dialect is optional, it’s highly recommended. Give us a poem that walks and talks in its own shoes.

I DID tell a story. However, I didn’t use a dialect. Trust me, this is good — my original attempt was to write a poem in Pig Latin.

poetry

Hip Surgery

Sally10 Comments

“Here’s the things that you should do.
Doing them is up to you.
Don’t do too much or too little.
It’s all spelled out — jot and tittle.
I’ve done my job. Now you do yours.
You’ll find there are no magic cures.
Good luck. Work hard. I’ll see you soon,”
With that, the surgeon left the room.
Empowerment.

This week’s W3 prompt comes on the heels of my total hip replacement. Here’s what POW Dennis Johnstone challenged us to do. He called it “Let the noun wait.”

This week’s prompt invites you to write toward something, rather than starting from it. You’ll be building pressure, rhythm, and meaning without naming your subject until the final line.

Step 1: Choose an abstract noun

Pick a single abstract noun that carries weight, mystery, or tension for you—something like liberty, danger, truth, love, exile, justice, forgiveness, joy, grief, silence…

Don’t use it until your poem’s final line.

Step 2: Delay the subject

Start each line with a description or action that leads us toward the noun, not from it. This is called left-branching syntax—it means delaying the main subject or verb.

You’re working with delay, accumulation, and unfolding. The noun you’ve chosen arrives only at the end. Until then, build around it, toward it, beneath it. Let readers feel its shape before they hear its name.

Faith · family · poetry

Grammie

Sally12 Comments

My grandmother was a worrier
(Or, some would say, a prayer warrior)
She fretted all the time
(probably from womb to Easter tomb)
Her immigrant family worked hard
At menial jobs for which they were hired.
They moved up the social ladder.
Education, honesty, and faith would lead her
To a comfortable American life.
You would think she turned over a new leaf!
But she worried and worried and worried,
Though her faith in God never wearied

This is my submission for the W3 challenge this week — brought by the host with the most, David himself.

Here’s the challenge: Write a poem using pararhyme throughout—where consonant sounds match but the vowels shift (e.g., fill / fell, stone / stain). Let this half-matching quality reflect a theme of incompleteness, near-misses, or strained connection.

Can I say that it’s not even a near miss to be a worrier and a person of faith?! The two stand in stark contradiction to each other, and yet, that was my grandmother.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · poetry

N is for News

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We’re all of us caught up in our own small wars, both hot and cold. We have our crimes and passions, our failures and successes. …

Maybe there’s nothing on earth more important for us to do than sit down every evening or so and think it over, try to figure it out if we can, at least try to come to terms with it. The news of our day. Where it is taking us. Where it is taking the people we love. It is, if nothing else, a way of saying our prayers.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

The W3 prompt this week is to write Waltz Wave, which is a single, unrhymed stanza of 19 lines with the following syllable count: 1–2–1–2–3–2–1–2–3–4–3–2–1–2–3–2–1–2–1. The poem’s theme should be “Strength and Vulnerability.” (Thanks, Suzanne!)

This probably doesn’t totally match the theme, but it sprang from watching/reading/listening to the news, so I’m putting it here with the Buechner quote, and giving it the title of “News”

A
Power-
ful
Person
Blusters on
Without
A
Shred of
Awareness
How his actions
Impact the
Country.
I’d
Rather
Read about
Leaders
Who
Really
Care

Life · poetry

Red Herrings

Sally9 Comments

A life full of red herrings
Misdirection left and right
The shoulds crop up — they’re stinking
Misguiding smell and sight

You shoulda done this, you shoulda done that
Path strewn with stinking fish
I look around and listen
But can’t say what I wish

No one has lived my life but I
And I’ve lived it best I could
I say to those who shoulda me –
Have you stood where I’ve stood?

In truth, I do not say those words
But I struggle ‘neath the weight
For had I chosen different paths
What would be my fate?

Honestly I embrace my life
With all its faults and flaws
And when someone says shoulda
I just take a breath and pause

This week’s W3 prompt:

Write a poem that gives voice to what is usually left unsaid — a buried truth, a silenced voice, a hidden struggle, or the quiet ache of the heart. Let your words speak for what the world tends to overlook: an internal conflict, a marginalized experience, a truth tucked between breaths.

You may write from personal experience, an imagined lens, or even embody the voice of an inanimate object or force of nature. All forms and lengths are welcome — whether you choose free verse, haiku, sonnet, prose poetry, or something entirely your own.

Optional: Weave in metaphors of sound, silence, echoes, or resonance to deepen your imagery.

This prompt invites vulnerability, transformation, and truth-telling. Let your poem be a space where the unspeakable is finally heard.

This is my response to the W3 prompt. No one should look back at their life with shoulds. (See what I did there?)

poetry

Talking to Martin Hopkins

Sally12 Comments

Hey, Martin!
I am angry! Disheartened —
Kept that dory near your boat
[FLOAT!

GOD DAMMIT!}
You know, we ran the gamut
Of Nantucket fishing holes
Shoals

I’m waiting —
Waiting — we should be baiting
Trawling hauling up some catch…
Scratch

That daydream!
Sitting on this pier, sunbeam
Flickers on the water, but
What?

What happened?
You’re gone. I tip my cap and
Move on. But, brother, I cry
Why?

This is my response to the W3 prompt by Leslie Scoble. (Congrats, Leslie!)

The prompt: Write a monologue poem in which a character—historical, fictional, or original—takes center stage. Step into their voice and let them speak. Who are they, and whom are they addressing? Reveal their personality through their words, tone, and actions.

  • Set the Scene – Your character must be seated on a bench. It could be a park bench, a courtroom seat, a workbench, or even the dreaded school “naughty bench.”
  • Use Subtext – What remains unsaid is just as important as what is spoken. Let hidden emotions or unspoken truths add depth.
  • Engage the Audience – Though alone, their words should feel directed at someone or something—whether a specific listener, a memory, or the universe itself. 
  • Finish Strong – End with a revelation, a twist, or a lingering thought that leaves an impact.

This is loosely based on some family history of my great-grandfather, Martin Hopkins, who was a Nantucket fisherman who died when his schooner went down in a storm in 1899.

poetry

Emotions as Objects

Sally6 Comments

This is the W3 Challenge for this week, given by Anupama, the Poet of the Week.

  • Challenge: Reimagine emotions as objects;
    • What if feelings took shape? Anger could be a blade, sharp and biting. Loneliness might be an echo in an empty room;
  • Poetic form: Any
  • Length: No more than 12 lines

I struggled with this. My first attempt was using the Irish Snam Suad. I put the rules below the poem — and I, of course, didn’t follow all of them. Also, is introvert an emotion or just a state of being?

A closed box
Rarely talks
Readily

Disconcert
-ed by crowds
Too too loud
In a shroud

Introvert

Rules for Snam Suad:

  • all lines have 3 syllables with the following rhyme pattern: aabcdddc
  • lines four and eight are 3-syllable words, all other lines end in monosyllabic words
  • lines two and three share consonance
  • lines three and four, six and seven, and four and seven share alliteration
  • line seven uses alliteration

Frankly, I was not satisfied with my introvert poem so I tried again with a different Irish form: Deibide baise fri toi and different object-emotion pairing. Water — Peace. It makes sense to me, but I’m not sure I communicated it.

The water —
When the world is a-totter
I go to the lake to lease
Peace

Sea, river
Stream, pond — they all deliver
From the frenetic to calm
Balm

Rules for Deibide baise fri toi:

  • The poem and/or stanzas within the poem are quatrains (or 4-line stanzas).
  • Rhyme scheme for each stanza is a simple aabb pattern.
  • Lines one and two rhyme on a two-syllable word; lines three and four rhyme on a monosyllabic word.
  • Line one has three syllables, line two has seven, line three has seven, and line four has one
poetry

Listen: an almost limerick

Sally14 Comments

I met a prattling woman
From her mouth, the words kept a-comin’
Critical talk-talk-talk-talk
Like a hen: bawk-bawk-BAWK
’til I finally exploded and said,
“You realize, don’t you, that you aren’t the only person in this room,
or this organization,
this town,
this country,
or this world,
right?
You need to stop talking.
Stop talking.
Listen.
Take a breath.
Other people have thoughts and feelings.
They may be different than yours but they are just as valid.
The biggest problem right now in this country isn’t
transgender troops or
government waste or
Venezuelan gangs.
It’s that people don’t listen.
They don’t.
They talk over people.
They mock.
They belittle.
They shut down conversations.
They think everything is about them.
Please stop.”

Actually I didn’t say that. But I woke up in the middle of the night wishing I had.

This is my response to this week’s W3 prompt: write an Almost Poem, a poem that’s almost something, but not quite.

Actually, I’m not sure how almost this is. It’s based on my day yesterday. Or a snippet of it.

Congrats to Jaideep, this week’s Poet of the Week. I HIGHLY recommend reading his poem You, Me and the Catastrophe of Love. It’s amazing!

gratitude · poetry

In the Waiting Room

Sally6 Comments

I was sitting in the waiting room
Lost in thoughts of gloom and doom
Wishing spring was more a-bloom
When my thoughts were interrupted

I had been focusing on my hip
Good God — this pain! Worse than the grippe!
Wishing a magic healing ship
Would sail right over to me!

Instead it was a lady old
Struggling with her earring gold
Who pedalled over and took hold
Of me — my thoughts disrupted

“Could you, would you, help me, dear?
I can’t quite get this in my ear —
I can’t tell if I’m far or near —
It’s hard! I just can’t see!”

Well, I could see her red earlobe
That she had tried to poke and probe
The ear and earring matched wardrobe —
She soon was reconstructed

“Thank you, dear! Thank you so much.”
She patted me — a gentle touch —
Pedalled her wheelchair off with such
Ease. I think you would agree

That helping someone who’s in need –
Performing just a small good deed –
Can lift one’s spirits and can lead
To gratitude unobstructed.

Yep, this really happened to me this week.

poetry

Boo!

Sally11 Comments

He presses
Himself to the wall. Guesses
She won’t see him out of view —
Boo!

So surpised!
You! she yells, giggling disguised
As annoyance, but she’s not
Hot

She’s laughing!
The fun is telegraphing
A bond they share. It’s such prime
Time.

’cause sometimes
I think being scared (oft-times)
Is half the fun… More than half!
Laugh!

This is my response to this week’s W3 prompt. POW, Violet, gave us three quotes to choose from to incorporate into our poem — all having to do with “The Human Condition.” I chose a quote from Krystal Sutherland, House of Hollow: “Sometimes I think being scared is half the fun.”

I used a Celtic form called Deibide Baise Fri Toin. Syllable counts per line are 3-7-7-1. Lines 1 and 2 rhymes on 2 syllables. Lines 3 and 4 rhyme on one.