Day 6 Prompt:
Our daily resource is Nobel-winning poet Louise Glück’s essay, “Against Sincerity.” Here, Glück muses on the difference between honesty and truth, and how, in poetry, words that ring true are not necessarily those that are “honest” in the sense of recounting events as they happened. After all, a poem isn’t a newspaper article. Making art means selecting, trimming, choosing, exaggerating, and even deceiving, all in service of a goal that differs from a bare recitation of facts.
And now, to put theory in our practice, here’s our optional prompt! This one takes its inspiration from Yentl van Stokkum’s poem, “It’s the Warmest Summer on Record Babe,” which blends casual, almost blasé phrasing with surreal events like getting advice from a bumblebee. In your poem today, try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream.
Dendrophile’s nightmare
within minutes of me commenting, ‘i’m a Dendrophile,’
online,
the landlord’s men rang the doorbell.
their boss, a woman dressed in a black cloak,
hooded eyes, hair spun
like the softest tendrils on pumpkin vines,
back lit against the mid-day sun,
said,
‘these trees—
pointing to five strapping lads—3 Neem, 1 Bodhi,
1 Banyan
—must go.’
‘if they go, I go,’ I started steady, smooth
even, then burst—
‘i planted them. they are my babies.
they’re home to at least a hundred birds.’
they gawped—the black-cloaked manager and
her team of tree hackers—
with eyes as wide as ditches,
where trees trip up, scrape their knees
and dead birds lie, forgotten--
as if they never sang a single lullaby
then, they pointed to the crack in the
boundary wall
agreed, the gap has grown since the last
time I saw it. at first,
the chink
resembled a wink—
(a gardener has many friends, including
cracks in concrete)
then it yawned into a portal, now
a jagged street is growing upwards,
like a river taking the plunge to trace her
roots
she’s decided to flow from the mouth to
the source
in search of something, maybe a ripple or to
fix a rupture
with family, father, mother
one day, i told myself, one day, i’ll fold
an A4 sheet of paper and turn it into a
boat,
the gentle neem’s branch could easily be my
oar
and under the shade of the Bodhi tree
I’ll soar, down this crack’s creek
to cover the lunula
(or half-moons, if you prefer)
between me
and
the real me
