Today I’m out to capture the stubbornness in irresolution and irresolution in stubbornness: Determination not to change one’s attitude of uncertainty and hesitation and uncertainty about determination not to change one’s attitude or position on something. I think I can capture that in the mirrorworld with the denial filters I made yesterday.
2023 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 22
Today’s prompt is to write a setting poem.
The Cliché Small Town
It’s become a cliché, the idea
of small town simple life
like baseball, apple pie,
and fireworks on the fourth of July
This small town lives in its people
as much as the people live in it
They may be as stubborn as the hills, immovable
or the river carving its path, irrepressible
Or they may be irresolute as the hawk
watching from a post along the highway
or the deer in headlights
But they must work hard like the beaver
building its den in the gold-green light
through the cedar and fir
They must have steel constitutions
to raise families in the shadow of a volcano
in a small valley town with nowhere to go
but uphill
Today’s poetry prompt got me thinking about my story’s setting. I’ve been playing around with the idea of a bad storm knocking out all the power for a few days—long enough for all devices’ batteries to run out. How would this affect my small town in crisis?
I read a passage in The Uncomfortable Dead (assoc. link) by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos that inspired my poem and how I am thinking about setting. Here are the parts I found inspiring:
It’s already becoming a cliché, this notion of being tied to the city by an umbilical cord, trapped in a love-hate relationship. . . . There is no hatred. Just an immense, infinite sensation of love for this ever-changing city that he lives in and that lives in him, that he dreams of and that dream of him. A determination to love that goes beyond all the rage, possession, and sex, and dissolves into tenderness. It must be the demonstrations, the golden hue of the light at the Zócalo, he book stands, the meat tacos, the currents of deep solidarity, the friends at the gas station across the way who always say hello when he passes. It might be that marvelous winter moon. It might be.
Paco Ignacio Taibo II
There’s so much I like about this paragraph. It got me thinking: what are the clichés of a small town? Who would talk about a small town this way, in my poem? In my novel? What things about the small town would my speaker(s) list?
Then I asked myself: What about a small town is stubborn? What is irresolute?
Today, as I write, I want to find places in my novel for three of my characters to talk about the town like this from his or her POV.
Experience Writing 