National Poetry Writing Month prompt:

Write a poem that incorporates homophones, homographs, and homonyms, or otherwise makes productive use of English’s ridiculously complex spelling rules and opportunities for mis-hearings and mis-readings.

Writer’s Digest April PAD (poem a day) challenge:

Pick a state (or province, territory, etc.), make it the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

My poem

Washington

Mom used to tell me as we road tripped the state
that it’s like the whole country condensed in one place
There’s the ocean’s salty waves that wave from the west
to the rainforest’s trees their trunks, their thick necks
bare to the blade, our trunk full of junk jammed to fill
does not buck with the bumping we pass through
the mountains along treacherous, winding passes and
tire the tires breaking all the way down then pass
the cows ducking ducks and craning cranes
the tank tanks as heat shimmers along the blank horizon
and we worry we’ll tumble like tumble weeds in the wind
but we flow like the currently generated current
to Mom’s hometown where arid space led to space
then I retrace, re-verse in reverse
and retrain the terrain so I can see
that we’ve tripped from sea to shining sea.

Reading

Today’s poetry book for inspiration is Locomotion by Jaqueline Woodson. I was excited to come across this book as I really enjoyed Brown Girl Dreaming.

The Planner Experiment

How are your submissions going? I hope you’re staying motivated and reaching your goals. The project is changing slightly as I’m getting my hands on physical copies of the magazines. This week, I read Alfred Hitchcock and Fantasy & Science Fiction. They were very different and intriguing in their own ways. I hope you’ll look over my descriptions of these magazines and tell me if they are helpful.

This is the final weekend of The Writer’s Games. I’m excited that I was able to write a new story each week. It’s a practice I hope to continue. I’m looking forward to editing the new stories and finding homes for them as we continue this year-long journey.

2019 April Week Three

So how is the experiment going for you? What aspects of the planner are the most useful? What parts aren’t you using?

I’m thinking about adding the poetry editors along with the fiction editors. I also think I’ll start putting the journals that have both fiction and poetry in each of my deadline boxes. That way people that are only interested in submitting poetry will find this planner as useful as writers submitting fiction or who submit both. What do you think?

Happy Reading, Writing, Planning and Submitting!