Tag Archives: Esther’s Writing Prompts

Deep Voice for Esther’s Writing Prompts 76

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Deep Voice

I am being visited by words.
Some come from the world
immediately around me.
Travel, experience.

Some come from my grandmother.
I listen to their shadows.
The voice of my mother
echoes from the center of our house.

Poems of the body,
where do you come from?
Books,
Sunday School
and Saturday night movies,
all equally determining
my voice.

Some fade away
but remain backseat drivers
as one after another takes control.
Nothing ever lost.

The Writing Prompts prompt this week is “Voice.”

“Sign of the Chameleon,” for Esther’s Writing Prompts, June 25, 2025

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I can’t resist reblogging this blog that I wrote 11 years ago and because I liked the comments as much as the blog, I’m reblogging them, too. This reblog is published for Esther’s Writing Prompts because this week’s prompt is ‘Signs.” If you want to publish your own response to her prompt, a link to it is given at the end of this post. Thanks, Esther.

Sign of the Chameleon

For Esther’s Writing Prompts, the prompt word is “Sign.”

“Outside” for Esther’s Writing Prompt

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Painting Outside the Lines

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Painting Outside the Lines

Our lives are made, by end of day
with rules we choose to disobey—
those pathways we choose to walk down
to find a different part of town.
Strange roads to new territory
that make the ending of our story
one unplanned, our life replotted.
All carefully scribed plans now blotted
out, with new ones wildly scribbled
in new colors brash and ribald—
breaking rules carefully set
for new patterns you won’t regret,
making our lives messier,
more “maybe” and less “yessier.”
Every rigid rule undone
might simply make our lives more fun.

 

For Esther’s Writing Prompt: Outside

“Wallpaper” for Esther’s Writing Prompt, June 4, 2025

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Since I used to be a papermaker, I have dozens of blogs about paper in some form..from handmade washi lamps to toilet paper (not homemade.) This one, however, is the first poem in my new book of love poems, out within the month, I hope, and it is titled “Wallpaper.”

Wallpaper

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Wallpaper

Clinging to the wall
like an old wallpaper scrap
are the words
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you.

Their refrain slides up and down
the musical scale—
an old country tune,
plaintive and clear.

Why do I want you?

The first time I met you,
there was something about the curl of your hair.
Your eyes, so familiar­—puzzled, as though
you, too, were trying to remember.

After that, it was
the set of your shoulders—
the arm stretched between your seat and mine
with your hand on the back of my seat.

All of your restraint an aphrodesiac.

The truth is
that I pined
for two days after I left,
then went on with my life.

Still, that scrap
of wanting
comes up early in the morning
as I waken

and my mind walks,
looking for someone to pin it to,
and every time
it stops at you.

For Esther’s Writing Prompts, the prompt is “paper.”

When I searched 13 years of my blog  for the topic of “paper”  I came up with almost 400 blogs! As a writer and a papermaker, I guess that isn’t surprising.  I made the paper, starting out with tree bark that I soaked, pounded, then combined the fibers with formation aid suspended in water and dipped numerous times to make huge sheets of washi paper. I made some of my own forms for the lamps, to spread the paper over. Other larger forms were made by my husband and I devised shades for them out of my paper. Since we were both writers as well, paper formed an important influence in our lives. HERE  are some of our lamps.