To The Poetry Workshop

NaPaWriMo Day 7 Prompt:  write a poem with seven different phrases, ideas, or just plain old “things” in it. These are: 1) an example of synasthetic metaphor — one that describes one sensory perception using adjectives more naturally suited to a different sense (e.g., “a red noise,” or a “a bitter touch”) 2) a fruit 3) the name (first or last) of someone you knew in school 4) a rhetorical question 5) a direct address to the poem’s audience — “Reader” or “mom” or “Michelle,” or maybe just “You”) 6) a word in a foreign language 7) a reference to a game of chance (darts or pool or the lottery or etc).


To the Poetry Workshop

Ola, dear Reader,

what do you, stranger, know of my life?

You may read these words,

miles, perhaps even years

from my writing of them.

You are playing roulette using an orange for a ball

that will never settle into the slot you bet upon.

You are like Suzanna in the second grade

Suzanna - I remember her beautiful name,

her prefect dark hair

and patent leather shoes,

skirting my life for one school year - never to be seen again,

always a constant figure of my memory

silent and flawless at a small school desk.

Dear Reader, you need not eyes

but ears, and use your green hearing,

not your red pen, not your constant search for metaphors

that fit your life.

My life, these words, live only for the

red, yellow, black or white of the moment

scatter into the universe in this order

pray for recognition, recall, for a quiet response.