Today's prompt encouraged us to write a poem about an animal, which was an excellent excuse for me to to write about a cockroach for the first time! I dedicate this one to my patient hissers, Kafka and Rilke. The Cockroach He burrows, searching for the trail left him by his ancestors, alive with the warning …
Early 20th-century Photo-Postcards
Found these two lovely photo-postcards at a flea market in Italy. Judging from the clothing style and the automobile, I'd date them to the early 20th century, possibly the 1920s, but please do correct me if I'm wrong. They were displayed together with other photo-postcards in which various people from the group photo also …
A Dialogue Postcard
The Pyromaniac and the Salamander You burn me. They say if you die in flames, your shadow burns with you and so you may not enter heaven. I am heaven. I burn you because I am incandescent, in me you have your greatest wishes fulfilled. Desire scorches but it does not crease the soul. You …
Riddle on a Postcard
Had lots of fun coming up with a riddle for day thirteen of NaPoWriMo! I won't give out the answer straight away though! So read it and leave me your guesses in the comments! ;( Riddle Me This Hunt me, chop me, boil me, fry me, to summon good fortune you must kill my rush. …
Another Double Post
Hopefully, this will be the last time when I have to make up for one "skipped" day in the NaPoWriMo scheme. For yesterday's poem in Sapphics, a sequence inspired by this rather uncanny 1951 New Yorker cover: Stage Fright With a jump, the monster was there, beside her: in their seats, the viewers were dancing …
Catching Up on the Postacrds
Finally, the inevitable happened: I skipped a day. Which, considering it was the first time in 39 days consecutive days of writing a poem on a postcard a day, it's not too bad. I am, however, making up for the blip today, with both a calligram for day nine of NaPoWriMo, and an abecedarian poem …
A Postcard for the Greedy
Buy and Sell Gold trappings to keep the congress of our masks in place - one only puts so much wealth into heartbreak as one can afford to lose. Behind the treasure, little dark slits mark the uselessness of looking, and noticing. Like indigenous puppets, whose bare eye sockets exorcise misfortune, so we place our …
A Postcard for the Flighty Ones
For day six of NaPoWriMo, of course. Morning Birds I could have chosen to close my eyes against the budding sun, to plunge back into the sedate chaos of improbabilities fuelled by your nest-like warmth. But I could not ignore the expectant taps if your heart, so clearly audible with only the thin calls of …
Postcarding Emily Dickinson
Now, today's NaPoWriMo prompt was fun: Today’s prompt (optional, as always) is a variation on a teaching exercise that the poet Anne Boyer uses with students studying the work of Emily Dickinson. As you may know, although Dickinson is now considered one of the most original and finest poets the United States has produced, she …
A Memory-Postcard
And so I work my way into (or around) the fourteener. The Great Flood This is from the day when I knew the coin had two faces, both the same, both yours. On that day, my final doubts shattered: unhinged, my heart slipped out of its cave and, hitting the bridge, became a river which became …
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 