In our Creative Writing I course a class favorite (not!!) is our section on “Le Mot Juste.” We talk about images and language and the big themes that writers ponder.
So what happens when these fiction and creative non-fiction writers have to spend some time working on a poem to sharpen their language and image skills?
Well first they groan, loudly. Then they squirm in their seats. And after a few tries of trying to talk their way out of it, they settle in and chew on pen ends, scuffle paper, write and scratch out, write and scratch out.
But when all is said and done, their work is amazing! Below are a few examples
of our 15-minute poems:
Half light drips from the sky and
Falls on jagged, electric beams.
Bathed in blue heat,
My hands clasp wrought iron,
Calling, calling, but you are not
There.
Stacy T.
****
Hands.
Hard hands as thick as steel
that can carry handfuls of the shattered window and not break or bleed.
My hands are like warm wax,
molded into shape,
three connected parts to each five fingers,
cupped to catch the glass you pass.
They don’t break or bleed but the glass falls deep in my folds like quicksand,
the wax molding over the wounds.
Joanna K.
***
Short and pure white
The outside
Dark. Burning red hot
The inside
Smokey. Hazy.
Filtered Love.
And like gray ashes
Discarded
Carol D.
**
Betrayed by his body
Time and time again
He wants nothing more than to be free
I want the same
This struggle
This push
This time so close
Pulled from the edge
Held prisoner in his skin by tubes and wires
Guardians of the sanctity of life float by
White as ghosts
Betrayed by his body
Which begins to heal
Despite his spirit it grows stronger
As does the pain behind his heavy lidded eyes
A fight he will win eventually
A betrayal he will revenge
And I will not be there next time
Kelly C.
***
A bend and then a break. My heart rushed to the back of my throat.
A promise made with certainty, ‘It’s perfectly safe,” someone wrote.
But now I’m falling in peril because I placed it all on you.
A board on a bridge, you laid beneath me.
A board that I fell through.
Mike H.
**
The weight of what’s gone is the same shape
Of my wife--in her sleeping gown--in our bed
Four quivering legs fell to the floor
Head bent down, machine no more
I carry him--to the yard--in my arms
My two plodding trees knotted in ground
Our last, what we had, snapped like bones
Mollie F.
**
Certainties
fig. 1
God is a button in the brain
A psychoactive rapture touched off
An accelerant that can’t burn out
There is nothing there is blood boiling
fig. 2
Time is a clock melting in the mind
Haven’t we always been here
How to know our number hasn’t been called
There is no one no knowing but knowing
fig. 3
Brain is a time melting in the God
A cartoon zygote zygoting
A picture tube’s disappearing dot
There is nowhow this erasure creating
fig. 4
Mind is a button melting
You can push but you can push
This certainty is there
A grail you can’t hold but drink
Kevin R.
