And now for our prompt (optional, as always). This is one that we’ve used before, but one test of a good prompt is that you can come back to it! For this prompt, you will need to fill out, in five minutes or less, the following “Almanac Questionnaire.” Then, use your responses as to basis for a poem.
Happy writing!
Almanac Questionnaire
Weather: scattered showers
Flora: wilted daffodils
Architecture: colonial
Customs: sunday morning cartoons and Arnie donuts
Mammals/reptiles/fish: two cats
Childhood dream: never sleep
Found on the Street: rocks
Export: ideas
Graffiti: tattoos
Lover: Telly
Conspiracy: we never landed on the moon
Dress: tshirt and blue jeans
Hometown memory: Cherryvale Mall
Notable person: John Coltrane
Outside your window, you find: burnt sienna fence
Today’s news headline: WH tried to move a reporter to the back of the room, she refused, then Trump walked out.
Scrap from a letter: your disability claim is under periodic review
Animal from a myth: Half man half horse
Story read to children at night: aesop’s fables
You walk three minutes down an alley and you find: a couple making out or breaking up
You walk to the border and hear: the silence of humanity
What you fear: inability to communicate
Picture on your city’s postcard: rappahannock river
Almanac
26 April 20
0640
It’s a Sunday morning watching cartoons with my daughters
As the scattered showers fall I peer put the window as birds and squirrels battle over the seed spread across the burnt sienna colored fence
Last night they listened to Aesops fables again
And dreamed about the White House moving a reporter to the back row, she refused and the president left the press conference
Maybe they dreamed that they were that reporter from the banks of the Rappahannock River
I sit here with my tattoos, my lover and their mother asleep alone in our big bed
The girls faces covered with pink icing from the Arnie donuts they ate from breakfast
My blue Jean’s and tshirt loosely hanging into my body
Our cats feed food they seem to dislike roam to find scraps on the floor
Only to find my letter from the VA stating that they are doing a periodic review if my disability claim.
My children have nightmares about the virus, the only way I beat mine was to try to never sleep
But I’m confronted with the fact that we may have landed on the moon as told to me by the half man half horse creature peering into my thoughts
John Coltrance never played at CherryVale mall, but if he did I’d never be able to communicate it to anyone
As I would walk to the border and hear the silence if humanity
And I watch couples in alleys make out or break up among the rocks in the street
Outside my colonial home the daffodils are withering in the rain
As we are entertained with these animated morality plays instead of attending church services online.
