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.
