Simone Muench suggested the following prompt: “write a cento that is a self-portrait, or anthology of your life, utilizing lines and fragments from your own work,” an intriguing and somewhat daunting task.
You’re lost if you look, if you listen, if you follow
Austere, without edges or colour,
small-smiling, she looks down,
watches, waits for a sign, any sign,
listens for the story
as cardinals sing a requiem among apple blossoms.
Otherwise, she feels invisible.
Her life lies on her lips like a mystery,
like the ice that coats trees when you thought it would rain.
And I begin to understand
the legacy of those cruel shards,
to be herself
what will shatter with her
in a way both welcome and not.
Cento Gloss: Each line in this ‘self-portrait’ poem is taken unaltered from the following poems written over the past decade+: “Panorama,” “Woman of ice, woman of glass,” The April Dead II,” “Fairy Tales,” “Nero fiddled while Rome burned,” “Huis clos,” “The days of billy boy bad,” (a line from which furnished the title for the cento,) “Debut,” “Elegy for a Thrush,” “Post Partum,” “Vanishing point, “ “Where does it hurt”, “No regrets.”
Impromptu poem 8 (Found Poetry Review)
Harold Abramowitz suggested this prompt: “Write something you cannot remember: a memory of something – a story, an anecdote, a song, another poem, a recipe, an episode of a television program, anything, that you only partially or imperfectly remember. Write multiple versions, at least 6, of this memory.”
What came to me were distinct ‘verses,’ using the syllable discipline of the tanka form and relating to the same TV broadcast, parts of which I remember, though not all of it.
Reflections: “On the Beach”
(after Nevil Shute’s novel and subsequent films)
Black and white flicker:
men, women, well-dressed,
standing on Florida sand.
They face west, the ‘mushroom’ cloud,
armageddon, now upon them.
*
Unwilling witness,
my eleven year-old self
watches the action;
cannot tear myself away
from panic or acceptance.
*
Services all off,
a woman on insulin
sees her future
without electricity:
A two days’ supply of life.
*
What happened to them,
the characters in that play?
I do not recall.
It could not end well for them
as their world, their lives collapse.
*
I’ve walked that shore since,
never thinking of the outcome,
of their hopelessness,
but I’ve shuddered in my dreams
at how being trapped would feel.
*
What I can’t forget:
The anguish of no way out;
scavenging, begging;
my survival unlikely;
desperation palpable.
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