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amycre · 3 years
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mother
my college professor told us once, mid-lecture,
that every time she looks at her hands,
she sees those of her mother.
i find myself turning into my mother now, too.
and this week, i just feel full of love for her:
for her laugh and her smile and our girl time,
for the recipes she emails me, all typed in lowercase,
signed off with the same:
"yum
love you,
mom"
i am going to miss her when i move away.
quarantine has gifted us a year of living
under the same roof, yet on different floors.
the only direction i need to spend time with my mom is:
go downstairs to say hello at 5pm
when she takes her daily break for a daily walk.
rejoice in her joy when she invites you along.
maybe in miami we will take daily walks
separately,
together.
Day 30 (Last day!) Prompt: Write a poem in the form of a series of directions describing how a person should get to a particular place. It could be a real place, like your local park, or an imaginary or unreal place, like “the bottom of your heart,” or “where missing socks go.” Fill your poem with sensory details, and make them as wild or intimate as you like.
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amycre · 3 years
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views from my windows
the street from half underground
cars rolling by;
the quad with students running
across it;
the lush green forest trees behind
the bean-shaped campus;
many, many shaftways;
a balcony to myself, looking out over
calle juan de dios;
the kitchen window, with its perfect
cut-out of the madrid sky;
a gas station and the school garden
from my first classroom;
paneled floor-to-ceiling windows with
juliette balconies;
the bay window from chez gerry
peak brownstone sublet;
and soon to be a highway-view
from floor #32.
Day 29 Prompt: This one is called “in the window.” Imagine a window looking into a place or onto a particular scene. It could be your childhood neighbor’s workshop, or a window looking into an alien spaceship. Maybe a window looking into a witch’s gingerbread cottage, or Lord Nelson’s cabin aboard the H.M.S. Victory. What do you see? What’s going on?
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amycre · 3 years
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Poet wonderings
What happens when you are not a poet,
nor have you written for years and years,
but you have been writing poems for 27 days
and on the third-to-last day
you almost forget
to put pen to paper
(well, you know, the computer equivalent of that:
text on a blank page)?
Why do some habits stick and others don't?
What made this challenge work for me?
Was this month not busy enough?
Did I learn anything from it?
Did I improve as a writer?
I don't really know, what do you think?
Do the poems need to be fleshed out and revised?
Is it okay that these have all been one-and-done,
shitty-first-drafts kind of poems?
Does it matter if you think it's not okay?
Who am I writing for, after all?
Is it not just— me?
Day 28 Prompt: Write a poem that poses a series of questions. The questions could be a mix of the serious (“What is the meaning of life?”) and humorous (“What’s the deal with cats knocking things off tables?”), the interruptive (“Could you repeat that?”) and the conversational (“Are those peanuts? Can I have some?”). You can choose to answer them – or just let the questions keep building up, creating a poem that asks the reader to come up with their own answer(s).
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amycre · 3 years
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Lilo
n. a friendship that can lie dormant for years only to pick right back up instantly, as if no time had passed since you last saw each other.
I have never been too good
at keeping in touch.
Picking up the phone
crossing sound waves
remembering to ask
"how are you doing?"
I think I have gotten better
throughout the years.
Realized that the simple act
of sending a short
"thinking of you" text
is better than its absence.
I know now that best friends
are rare as they come.
These lilo friendships,
unaffected by a years-long pause,
picking right up from
where you last left off.
Day 27 Prompt: Write a poem inspired by an entry from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. The entries are very vivid – maybe too vivid! But perhaps one of the sorrows will strike a chord with you, or even get you thinking about defining an in-between, minor, haunting feeling that you have, and that does not yet have a name.
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amycre · 3 years
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Beachy Crazy
I took a big juicy bite, peach juice rolling down my chin I looked to you as it fell, but then you walked away I wiped my chin with my hand, sticky sweet stuck to the sand I wondered where you would go, oh when you walked away
Your hair was glowin', sun beams, boat's a rowin', Hot day, and I'm floatin' Where you think you're going, baby?
Hey, summer love now, feeling lazy We're on the beach yeah, we're going crazy It's hard to not like, the beach baby We're on the beach year, we're going crazy
Day 26 Prompt: Write a parody. Besides being fun, writing parodies can be a great way to hone your poetic skills – particularly your sense of rhyme and sound, as you try to mimic the form of an existing poem while changing the content. Just find a poem – or a song – that has always annoyed you, and write an altered, silly version of it. Or, alternatively, find a poem with a very particular rhyme scheme or form, and use that scheme/form as the basis for a poem that mocks something else.
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amycre · 3 years
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Occasion
Today marks
my first herb plant purchase
of the spring season.
Basil, fresh aroma
wafting up as I walk her home.
Hands in soil,
packing the bottom third
of a clay pot.
Carefully take basil
out of her plastic cup
and surround her
with more earth.
Pat it all down.
Water her.
Sun peeks out through
the clouds—ready.
Day 25 Prompt: Write an “occasional” poem.
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amycre · 3 years
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The Giant Overthinker
High in dense thought forests
in the misty, foggy mountains of your brain
lives one of the world's rarest mammals:
the giant overthinker, also called the overthinker.
Overthinkers eat almost nothing
but worrisome and ridiculous thoughts.
Occasionally they eat other vegetation,
fish, or small animals, but these thoughts account
for 99 percent of their diets.
Overthinkers eat fast,
they eat a lot,
and they spend about 12 hours a day doing it.
The reason: They digest only about a fifth of what they eat.
Overall, thoughts are not very nutritious.
To stay healthy, they have to eat a lot—
up to 15 percent of their body weight in 12 hours—
so they eat fast.
Overthinkers can freak out as many as
13,000 times a day, and are also very good at panic attacks.
Sometimes male overthinkers (try to) relax
by doing handstands against trees.
Overthinkers are shy; they don't venture
into reality where most people live.
This restricts overthinkers to very limited areas.
Day 24 Prompt: Find a factual article about an animal. A Wikipedia article or something from National Geographic would do nicely – just make sure it repeats the name of the animal a lot. Now, go back through the text and replace the name of the animal with something else – it could be something very abstract, like “sadness” or “my heart,” or something more concrete, like “the streetlight outside my window that won’t stop blinking.” You should wind up with some very funny and even touching combinations, which you can then rearrange and edit into a poem.
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amycre · 3 years
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school dances
i never did know how to grind, felt
uncomfortable leaning my backside
against a boy my age, afraid
of what i'd feel there.
how does a girl who has no rhythm
dance in rhythm against another?
i was so focused on my inability to shake my hips,
i didn't realize they weren't thinking about my moves.
no, a middle school boy is not thinking
about your dance moves really at all.
Day 23 Prompt: Write a poem that responds, in some way, to another. This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem. You might use a favorite (or least favorite poem) as the source for your response.
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amycre · 3 years
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Citrus
When I was a child, playing soccer matches on weekends, we took turns preparing snack for the team, and always—always—someone brought orange slices. Pre-cut, ready to eat, grab and peel back the skin as you sink your teeth into the pulpy flesh.
My students this week were split 50/50 on whether they preferred orange juice with pulp or without. Most agreed, though, that when fresh-squeezed, pulp was fine, even preferred.
In Spain, they eat everything with a fork and knife, fruit included. I was always amazed by how they could de-bone a fish and get all the meat out, its delicate spine lying clean on the side of their plate. So too with an orange: cut off the top and the bottom, make slices along the rind, peel it off, and use your fork and knife to cut the now naked orange into bite-sized pieces.
I eat oranges now for dessert like I did back in Barcelona after dinner. I slice it like my mom did for our soccer team, wipe the sticky juice off my cheeks with my sleeve. Then lean back, flushed and refreshed, the peels wobbling and knocking together like empty boats on the plate.
Prompt: Write a poem that invokes a specific object as a symbol of a particular time, era, or place.
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amycre · 3 years
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Day 21 haiku
Repetition feels
like tripping on all my words.
No time for poems.
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amycre · 3 years
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Anxiety
Waiting for a reply to your email, exasperated.
You re-read it. Could you have worded it differently?
Stop! Take a deep breath. You're overthinking again...
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amycre · 3 years
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Apartment Pet Peeves
Leaving dishes in the sink overnight
Forgetting to turn off the lights
Not hanging the bath mat over the side of the tub
A half-open tap going glub glub glub
When the stove is covered in splatters of oil
Or water takes a million years to boil
The sound of your neighbor's cackling laughter
Or a creepy crawly mouse up in the rafters
Crumbs from the floor attaching to bare feet
Freezer door left open, defrosting the meat
The smell of trash that needs to go out
These are apartment pet peeves that make me pout.
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amycre · 3 years
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controlled abandon
that's what this year has been, hasn't it?
a controlled abandon of what we thought we could control.
oh! how misguided we were, for truly,
what can we really control in this life?
the pandemic took my life and shook it like a snow globe.
STOP!
—it urged me—
TAKE A MOMENT AND JUST LOOK.
watch the slow flakes float to the white-painted ground.
what kind of life do you want for yourself?
is this the life you envisioned?
and if not:
how can you abandon what was and manifest what will be?
i am abandoning this life
in favor of one where i can see the sun and the sea
every damn day.
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amycre · 3 years
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17
There's something strange
in the speedy stillness of
sitting in a silver shuttle
slicing through the sky,
the moon as our only witness.
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amycre · 3 years
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Today I'm very tired.
I almost feel quite wired.
Awake 20 hours,
feel like a cold shower
could give me some power.
Soon I'll live in the sun
get to go on some runs
show off deez buns (ha).
I'd like us to be
living near the sea
or with a view of it at least.
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amycre · 3 years
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Sing through it
I can see my father
sitting in the living room
on our old, white canvas futon,
guitar propped on his knee,
improvising some song
to narrate our actions in the kitchen.
Amy, she's making herself
a PB & J.
I'd look at him and roll my eyes,
embarrassed.
I find myself nowadays
not just singing to narrate
but to push through
uncomfortable moments.
My students are surely now
the ones rolling their eyes.
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amycre · 3 years
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I used to hate my middle name
I found it too girly
Too long
A stark contrast to my short first name
But then this fall
I had to dig into the story of my name
And I searched for the meaning of each part:
Mar-is-sa
While it could be interpreted as “little Mary”
More likely it means “of the sea”
Del mar
De la mar
(In Spanish you can actually say both
Which I think is quite beautiful)
And I realized that
I may just like it:
Being of the sea
A little Mary? Nay! A little mermaid
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