G is for grig- Poem: The Horror Show

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Photo by Martin Brosy on Unsplash

Today’s new word:

grig n. 1. a cricket or grasshopper. 2. a small or young eel. 3. a lively person.

National Poetry Writing Month prompt:

Think about the argot of a particular job or profession, and see how you can incorporate it into a metaphor that governs or drives your poem. The provided list of Professional slang is full of inspiration.

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

Write a lucky number poem. Some people have lucky numbers, some don’t. Wherever you fall on the lucky number spectrum, you can still write a poem about the phenomenon of lucky numbers and/or luck in general.

My poem

The Horror Show

The horror show began after
the baby catcher handed me the grig
I couldn’t find any joy
in the things that I previously did

The baby catcher said I had
pneumoencephalopathy that would clear up in time
but the grig stopped its bubbling
And I couldn’t stop its crying, so

I was sent to the Freud Squad, but
they made things worse
acted caring at first, but
were pill pushers all, and

The pills made me dizzy which
led to a fall and by trip number four
to the slashers and gassers they cured
my Acute Thespian Syndrome, but
replaced it with Mysterious Internal Spongeitis

 

The Planner Pages

Sorry I didn’t get these out yesterday, but life. One of the lessons I’m learning from this experiment is that an important part of successful planning is being flexible. Missing a deadline isn’t the end, it’s the opportunity to create a new deadline.

2019 April Week Two

Reading

Today’s poetry book for inspiration is Deep Well by Dan Bellm. I’m really enjoying this small collection about a man facing his mother’s death. It’s beautiful in form and format.

Happy Reading and Writing!

F is for fainéant

cut wood between trees

Today’s new word:

fainéant n. an idler. adj. idle; indolent.

National Poetry Writing Month prompt:

Write a poem that emphasizes the power of “if,” of the woulds and coulds and shoulds of the world.

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

“After (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles include: “After Dinner,” “After You,” “After Hours,” and/or “After I Finish Writing This Poem.”

Note: My poem has been deleted because it will be coming out in an anthology December 2019.

Reading

Today’s poetry book for inspiration is Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

Happy Reading and Writing!

E is for eleemosynary- Poem:Donations Eaten by Bureaucracy

iStock_000013284658_Small burning money

Today’s new word:

eleemosynary adj. 1. of or relating to alms, charity, or charitable donations; charitable.
2. derived from or provided by charity. 3. dependent on or supported by charity.

National Poetry Writing Month prompt:

“Write a poem that incorporates at least one of the following: (1) the villanelle form, (2) lines taken from an outside text, and/or (3) phrases that oppose each other in some way.”

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

“For today’s prompt, write a stolen poem. And no, don’t steal anyone’s poem! But you can write about doing such a thing. Or stealing hearts, stealing time, stealing minds. Or steeling your mind (remember: I don’t care if you play on my original prompt). Steal away into a comfortable place to write and break some lines today.”

My poem

Donations Eaten by Bureaucracy

Your altruism is in the mail
to eleemosynary systems of dilution,
stirring the cycle of hopelessness

You try to bypass through donated time, but
bureaucracy can ruin every good intention
Your altruism is in the mail

Regulations, rules–there must be control–change
behavior through punishment or reward,
stirring the cycle of hopelessness

You try to circumvent: offering temporary shelter;
donating clothes; preparing meals: inconvenience
Your altruism is in the mail

No one wants your eleemosynary roofs
if they mean invasive monitoring and checks
your altruism is in the mail
stirring the cycle of hopelessness

 

Reading

Today’s poetry book for inspiration is Native Guard: Poems by Natasha Trethewey

Happy Reading and Writing!

D is for dysphemism

Today’s new word:

dysphemism n. 1. the substitution of a harsh, disparaging, or unpleasant expression for a more neutral one. 2. an expression so substituted, as “cancer stick” for “cigarette.”

National Poetry Writing Month prompt:

Write your own sad poem, but one that achieves sadness through simplicity.

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

Pick a painter, make him or her the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

Note: I have removed this poem because it will be coming out in an anthology. 🙂

 

Reading

Today’s poetry book for inspiration is Poems: Maya Angelou

Happy Reading and Writing!

C is for cathect- Poem:Call of the King Fisher

800px-Houghton_MS_Am_21_(50)_-_John_James_Audubon,_belted_kingfisher

Today’s new word:

cathect vt. to invest with mental or emotional energy

National Poetry Writing Month prompt:

Write something that involves a story or action that unfolds over an appreciable length of time.

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

Write an animal poem. The poem could be about an animal. Or it could just mention an animal in passing. Or include an animal in your title and fail to mention the animal once in your poem.

My poem

Call of the King Fisher

Surrounded by tall fir and cedar,
wizened rhododendron and cherry plum
She chooses a plastic pole (for securing a boat)
Perched atop, only room for one

Squat, blue and white, protruding needle
Her song, unique among the chatter,
cathected call commands my attention
She used to fly off when I came to the window

Day after day
The pole closer to the house
Not the other one
Year after year
Beak parallel to the windows
Not pointing in at me

This spring there is another
They chase each other
flirting through the skies
The farther pole stays vacant

 

Reading

Today’s poetry book for inspiration is Wade in the Water: Poems by Tracy K. Smith.

Happy Reading and Writing!

B is for Brobdingnagian-Poem: Before Work

Today’s new word:

Brobdingnagian adj. of huge size; gigantic; tremendous  n. 1. a giant; a being of tremendous size 2. an inhabitant of Brobdingnag

I came across this word in a book by Roy Peter Clark. It was fun to find out it comes from the fictional land of Brobdingnag from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. It’s funny how you don’t recognize things sometimes, when they are out of context.

National Poetry Writing Month prompt:

Write a poem that resists closure by ending in a question.

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

Today is Two for Tuesday. Choose one or both prompts.

  1. Write a worst case poem. What’s the worst that could happen?
  2. Write a best case poem. Take the worst and reverse it!

My poem

Before Work

I could not return to dreaming of lovers
And so the day has begun, I roll over
and push my legs from under the covers
Aches, stiff joints and pulsing veins
A few tempered steps before toe meets metal frame
Ignore the shooting pain
Tell me that’s the end

Drag that heavy ass up the stairs
There’s coffee to be made, but I glare
into an empty bag. I start the tea pot
In the haze of brainless morning I gulp,
The boiling liquid sears my tongue and throat
burning in my chest as if singeing my lungs
How will I know the end when it comes?

I relax in my chair and flip on the tube
I can’t seem to stop myself and turn to the news
Another shooting and so many lies
scandals, celebrities, murder and suicides
A Brobdingnagian pile of hubris and greed
putrid stupidity repackaged as need
I do not know when the end is coming

The shower runs cold, the water won’t heat
My clothes from the dryer smell bitter-sweet
I rush to the car, my hair worse than bad
The key does nothing, the damned thing is dead
I look up at the sky, all cloudless and blue
And instead of why? ask
Is the end coming soon?

Reading

Today’s poetry book for inspiration is When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz.

Happy Reading and Writing!

A is for Agita- Poem: How to take a picture of the mountain in the morning

the mountain in the morning

Today’s new word:

agita n. 1. heartburn; indigestion 2. agitation; anxiety

National Poetry Writing Month prompt:

Write a poem that provides the reader with instructions on how to do something.

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

Write a morning poem

My poem

How to take a picture of the mountain in the morning

Imbibe the pink hue on the air
Imagine its reflection off of the glaciered peaks
Rush downstairs and scour the regular places
Race back upstairs and inspect the most recent surfaces
Retrace your hurry downstairs, instrument in hand,
out the glass door, startling the birds at the feeder
Dart across the freshly cut grass, your naked toes
collecting cuttings wet with ice-cold dew
Ignore the agita of your stirred morning coffee,
rumbling in your blackened bowels
Steady your arms, your eyes, and your breath
Select the detail that will capture what is left
of the beauty you missed in your flailing
Push the button
Adjust your view
Push it again

Reading

Today’s poetry book for inspiration is The Best American Poetry 2015 (The Best American Poetry series) with guest editor Sherman Alexie.

 

Happy Reading and Writing!

The Planner Experiment: The Second Quarter

second quarterHere we are. It’s the end of March, the end of the first quarter of the year. A good time to review our progress and create new goals for the next quarter. We’ve finally left winter behind and this quarter, April, May, and June will lead us from spring into summer. There will be more distractions and more sunny days that will tempt us away from work. Things to think about while planning our writing, reading, and submitting.

This last week, I took my goal of submitting three times a day seriously and made up for not submitting earlier in the month, still beating my February submissions numbers.

This quarter will be a little different. I’m no longer focusing on deadlines, but the start dates of reading periods. This first month, April, I’ll focus mainly on journals that are open year round.

I’m excited to announce that for my birthday my sweetie got me a special subscription to Ploughshares, AGNI, Harvard Review and New England Review. Also, when I submitted to One Story, they offered five issues for five dollars, so I took them up on it. I also got the latest Willow Springs, Paris Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, so this quarter I will be able to share what I think of all these journals from first hand experience.

Tomorrow I begin my daily posts for the April A-Z challenge and National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), but I’ll still continue the Planner Experiment posts on Sundays.

2019 Second Quarter and first week of April

 

The Planner Experiment: Fickle Spring

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This week spring sprung, pounced really. We raced from snow to Seattle summer weather with speed that could induce spine-snapping whiplash. The cherry plum trees in my yard went from bare to full blossom in forty-eight hours. I woke up one morning and found myself instinctively picking things up and putting them away everywhere I walked.

The sudden change in the weather is easy to correlate with my change in behavior, but I’ve noticed a different sudden change in behavior that doesn’t have a ready correlate. Lately, I’ve been moody in my reading. I’ll start reading a book, decide I don’t like it, and put it down. A while later, I’ll try it again, decide I don’t like it and put it back down. Another day, I think I’ll return it to the library and suddenly, it’s great! It’s as if I had to be in a specific state of mind and the stars finally aligned.

This made me think about submission rejections. The readers at literary journals, reading and reading stories all day, don’t have the time to pick up your story over and over until the stars align perfectly and they are in just the right state of mind to see the brilliance of your story. You have to keep submitting your best work, giving it the best chances by following submissions guidelines to the journals that appear to be the most likely to be looking for your stories, but then it is out of your hands.

I admit, the rejections got to me. I stopped submitting this month. Then when I did motivate myself to submit, the journal’s submission window had closed early.  But I am determined to make up for my little dip in motivation and confidence. This week, I have set a firm goal of three submissions a day for seven days! When I accomplish that goal, I will increase my submissions total from last month which was this month’s goal. It will be difficult, but I know I can do it. Wish me luck. I could use some encouragement. I hope you’ll join me.

The Pages

For this week’s pages, I chose a photo I took of the cherry plum blossoms in my yard. The white blossoms become little yellow, tasty plums. For the background I use GIMP to change the opacity and lighten the colors.

2019 Planner March Week Four

Coming in April

Last year, I participated in National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) for the first time. I also did the A-Z blog challenge, exploring a new word starting with each letter of the alphabet. I enjoyed how the new word interacted with the daily prompts. This year, though I know I will be spreading myself thin, I want to do both events again and add the Writer’s Digest PAD (poem-a-day) challenge. Since I’m finding that most journals will not publish anything that’s been posted to my blog, it makes sense to attempt two poems a day, at least.

What challenges are you looking forward to this April?

 

 

The Planner Pages: Changing course

March week three pages

The Experiment

This month is flying by and I have very few submissions to show for it. My main issue is trying to read enough of each journal to get a feel for it and then when I’ve spent so much time reading the journal, I decide I don’t have a story that fits.

I’ve been debating if I want to continue to list deadlines, or reading period openings and I have officially switched to openings. This week, I finally convinced myself to submit to a magazine only to find they had closed submissions early due to too many submissions. I’m seeing more and more that journals that use submittable will only take a certain number of submissions per month due to costs which makes their deadlines indecipherable. I am also finding that I procrastinate, so deadlines are not really helping me plan ahead. It makes more sense, for all these reasons, to start looking at journals by when their reading period opens. So, after this week, I’m changing course.

This means I will have to redo all of the pages from this quarter for next year, but it was all an experiment, so I’m glad I’ve come to this decision now instead of in the fall.

Reading Discoveries

Though I have hit a slump in my submitting, I have made some fun discoveries through continuing the experiment. After reading an interview with the editor of Hinnom Magazine, I picked up a copy of The Nameless Dark: A Collectionby T. E. Grau. The first story, “Tubby’s Big Swim” is thoroughly entertaining.

In Blackbird I enjoyed Miniature Man by Carrie Brown and was excited to read This Is The Age of Beautiful Death by John Dufresne. I have read and enjoyed John Dufresne‘s books on writing and recommend them often. It was fun to recognize an author I admire as I was reading through the magazines.

In Shenandoah, I enjoyed Tender by Shruti Swamy.

I hope you’ll make some time to treat yourself to these great stories.

The Pages

Here are this week’s daily planning pages with new writing prompts and magazine information: 2019 Planner March Week Three

I hope you are finding the daily planning pages helpful, informative, and motivational. What do you think of the writing prompts I’m making up? Have you tried any of them? How are your submissions going? Do you think you’ll reach 100 rejections this year?

Happy Reading, Writing, Planning and Submitting!