Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

My Room

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My Room

Papers on the desktop, laptops on the bed,
sticky notes for everything I can’t store in my head:
birthdays of my family, phone numbers of friends–
all the things I need to buy, the listing never ends.
Shoes up on my night table because my new dog chews
everything that he can reach; but, especially, shoes!
Two alarm clocks, one for me for when I must get up,
the other for the medicine I must give the pup.
Stacks of books and manuscripts finished and unfinished,
and an empty Kleenex box I know should be replenished.
Flashlights, lanterns, batteries–for when the power goes out.
In the rainy season, it will happen—have no doubt.
Closets crammed from wall-to-wall with sizes twelve to grander,
I’d probably have a lot to wear if I could get a gander
at what’s inside but I’m afraid it won’t be happening soon;
for thoughts of organizing it make me want to swoon!
Many pictures on the wall and bookshelves full of books,
sculptures on the mantel, in crannies and in nooks.
There’ll be a new addition in about a minute,
for my room is not completed until I am in it!

For the dVerse Poets prompt: Rooms.

On the Fix

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On the Fix

She’s on the fix:
repairing hems, 
cleaning the oven,
puttying cracks,
organizing drawers,
straightening picture frames
with no idea
of how to fix
a cracked heart. 
She needs a breaking
of old habits
—a lesson 
on letting be,
leaving her broken things
to heal themselves.

 

 

Here is the prompt: https://dversepoets.com/
and below is where you can go to read other responses:
For the dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: Fix

Cold Jack Ice

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The dVerse Poets prompt was to write a poem inspired by one of these vegetable names. I’m going to try to use them all: Black Beauty, Trail of Tears, Lazy housewife, princess, purple queen, Jacob’s cattle, The Czar, Wizard, golden acre, dazzling blue, purple sword, Jack ice, Reine de Glaces, blue fire, aurora, tender and true.

Cold Jack Ice

As accomplished in his love-making as at a game of dice,
his name was John Dukakis, but they called him Cool Jack Ice
because his smile could warm or freeze, depending on the way
his luck played out or didn’t, as it changed from day to day.

When he purchased Jacob’s cattle and his Golden Acre Farm,
He thought that he would use them to impress the new school marm.
He’d be a wizard as a cowboy, a czar of cultivation.
He’d win her as his bride before the coming school vacation.

He’d heard she was an ice queen a real “Reine de Glacé.
And since he was the King of Ice, he knew the game to play.
He donned his purple sword and a coat of dazzling blue.
If he was to be her Lochinvar, he knew just what to do.

He swooped down on his Ellen at the school fete,
saved her from the stag line and took her on a date.
The aurora borealis shone down from far above
As, feigning true and tender, he declared undying love.

He called her his sweet princess for those months he sought to woo her.
It was only after they were wed that he began to rue her.
She was a lazy housewife, he said, and counted coup,
taunting her as his black beauty as he beat her black and blue.

She fled into the freezing cold, a trail of tears behind her,
taking refuge in a secret place where he would never find her. 
And as her bruises turned her into a purple queen,
she plotted out her vengeance, silent and unseen.

They say it was blue fire that streaked across that night
that both Jack Frost and Black Jack Ice took their final bite.
What footsteps there were left were so filled up with snow
that not a single tracker could tell where they might go.

Severed from its body, Jack’s face had ceased to smile
as the one who wiped it off his face sped onward, mile by mile.
on Jack’s steed, and since that day, no one has defamed her,
for to put it bluntly, not one who knew him blamed her!

And, in case you didn’t read it before, here’s another poem I wrote about an heirloom tomato: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2020/02/12/aunt-lous-underground-railroad-tomato-for-black-history-month/

FordVerse Poets prompt.

Visitations

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Visitations

He hovers in the corner less frequently now. His face is rarely seen in clouds. He leaves no further messages as the cats walk over my computer keys. It is true that sometimes I catch the scent of him, but it’s not often and not for long. Who knows how long a spirit is tied to earth? The cats sense him sometimes, as do the dogs. The candelabra with its arms arched upwards and the carved wooden Virgin of Guadalupe statue rising up like a head in front of it, in a dark room backlit by kitchen lights, has given me a start now and then; but I soon realize it is not him. None of these places are where I keep him now. It is only long after midnight, when, exhausted, I fall to dreams, that his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream.

 

 

For the dVerse Poets Pub prompt, we are to write a 144 word prose piece that contains the quote “his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream” from Maya Angelou’s poem “Caged Bird.” Read other responses to the prompt HERE.

Funny Man

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Photo by janko Ferlic on Unsplash. Used with permission

Funny Man

He invented silly. It began with how he looked.
His eyes were slightly bulbous and his nose was long and hooked.
But he had such charm within him that it really didn’t matter.
Choosing between Brad Pitt and him? I would choose the latter!

 

 

 

For dverse poets quadrille prompt: silly and Here is where you can read more poems on the subject. A quadrille is a poem that contains exactly 44 words.

Shelter in Place

17 Replies

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The dVerse Poet’s prompt today is the word “flush.” The poem is to be a quadrille—-exactly 44 words, not counting the title.

Poetry

38 Replies

 

Poetry

There
Is a place in all of us
Where we converse
With a different part of our mind.

Anyone
Can do it.
All it takes
Is turning off the television
Or the free cell solitaire
And bringing up a blank page on the screen
And filling it.

A poet
Is someone who chooses to go there often
And to add to the bank
Of wisdom
That comes from the part of us
Whose language is
Poetry.

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link Night.

Magic

7 Replies

 

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Magic

Wish upon that falling star and
put a four leaf clover in your button hole.
Carve our initials into soap and rub them into us.
Light a candle and chant a spell,
because I want,
because
I’ve got to have
magic.

For dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge

Check List for a Budding Poet

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Check List for a Budding Poet

If you want to be prolific,
better that you be specific,
and when you choose to state each fact,
try to make each word exact.
Don’t use time-worn words or wilted.
Avoid pretentious words or stilted.

Never try to force a rhyme.
Do not fail to take the time
to make your lines scan smoothly for,
uneven meter is a bore.
Words written for effect are hollow,
but where heart is, the head will follow.

So write your poetry from the heart.
Put your horse before the cart
and let it pull you up the hill.
Let your words express their will—
you following blindly, just to see
what the next line wants to be.

Let words of different shapes and sizes
furnish pleasure and surprises.
Make your poems resemble zoos
of striped okapis and kangaroos.
Delight yourself and then your reader.
Follow words, then be their leader

by whipping them in line and order,
shaping them within your border.
It never is too late to change
an errant line that’s out of range,
but editing is not what you
initially should seek to do.

Words give hearts tongues to share their pleasure
and their pain in equal measure.
Essayists and authors strive
to make their writings come alive.
They show us where their minds have been,
but poets put the music in.

 

For dVerse Poets “List Poem” Prompt

Feast and Famine

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                     Feast and Famine

 

More is less,
I have heard.
I take another bite of chocolate,
starting more of me.
I keep getting fatter,
tasting delicious
love in my cheeks,
on my tongue.

It nibbles at my teeth.
My dental bills send my dentist to Singapore.
I floss more between my teeth.
I don’t listen
when other people discuss their diets.

It is painful
filling cavities with food.
It gets hard to sit in theaters,
my stomach pressing against my chest.
People ask if I am pregnant.
I say yes.
I am giving birth to more of me.

Meanwhile, I’m a good listener.
People eat my ears up,
take big chunks of them.
I can grow more.
Right now,
this third croissant
is going to my ear.
The next will grow me
more tongue, bigger lips.
When you notice and inquire,
I’m going to tell you stories
that will wind around your skinny waist
like snakes or punk belts,
coil over coil.

This mouth has blistered
in the sun of Africa
in countries now starving.
Well, they were even starving then.
And children sat very close
and learned the words I pointed to.
In the market,
women taught the words
that my mouth needed
to buy their goods.
This is what I bought
in Bati market
on those three hills
where the desert caravans
would wind,
where the high black breasts jutted,
where the scarred faces sought beauty.

In the red dryness,
I bought a silver beaded marriage necklace for myself.
An old woman offered it.
I thought she had done with it, it was such a bargain.
Years later, looking through my photographs,
I saw my necklace on the neck of a young girl––
her bride price purchased for ten dollars.
I never wear it.
It is so beautiful
and I am growing larger
to feel more ashamed.

I bought also:
lemons, string and wooden beads,
embroidered strips to make a belt of,
Lalibela crosses out of brass,
Shawls as thin as gauze,
a bride dress to be packed away,
camel dung chips for my fire.

On the dead television
in the other room,
some nights they show worlds
that are not strange to me.
Things haven’t changed that much,
 though fewer die now than back then.
I’m not insensitive. I send money
I send money
I send money
but it’s never enough.
What I want to send back
is the necklace.

Too late. That young girl is dead,
buried in a woman forty years older.
I eat for her grandchildren.
I imagine their bellies
swelling with the food I eat for them.
I can hardly ever eat enough.

 

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Picture taken at Bati Market, Ethiopia, 1973

 

For the dVerse Poets challengeto write about some hidden part of ourselves–something we would ordinarily not talk about.