Cutting Letters – Heterodox Haiku Journal

Good afternoon. Thanks to Jerome for including one of my haiku in the latest heterodox haiku journal – Cutting Letters you can read the entire anthology or listen to it at the link.

Mother’s Day here was pretty quiet. Shawn grilled a tri-tip and my mother-in-law brought over some lobster tails and we had broccoli and corn to complete the meal. I wrote a haiku for the #haikuchallenge word back on Friday, for my mother, the word was jay and my mom would tell me how blue jays were the bullies of the bird feeder, chasing the other birds away when they were there.

reminders of mom
bird feeder set out each spring
blue jay eats alone

I remember when I was a little girl, catching fireflies during warm summer nights. Apparently I have to go to teach someone how to write a good cover letter now.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Wrap-up

Good afternoon and welcome to my wrap-up for #NaPoWriMo 2024: better late than never. 😉

In total I wrote 40 poems in April. And at the start of this month I made a couple submissions. Other than that I’ve been busy sending out graduation announcements and catching up on all the chores I let fall by the wayside when I’m enmeshed in poetry madness. WordPress sent my April statistics the other day, so I thought I’d share them here. One plus to not getting to my wrap-up on May 1st.

Screenshot – April Blog review

Thank you to all my readers who have joined me in April and everyone who left me comments. I appreciate your time and encouragement. Hopefully I’ll be back soon with poetry submission news.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Thirty

Midas’ Green Thumb

Palo verde – green stick
set ablaze by flaming petals
under the hot Arizona sun.

It’s as if King Midas
turned his golden touch
into a green 
thumb.
Green branches
grow more vibrant.
Golden hues blaze across
the clear, blue sky
as yellow flowers pullulate.

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our last prompt of the year – optional, as always! Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend, as in  Claire Scott’s poem “Scheherazade at the Doctor’s Office.”

Good morning and welcome to the last day of #NaPoWriMo 2024. I was playing with a quadrille for the dverse prompt yesterday. And yes, I was using the palo verde as inspiration again. I looked up info on the tree and learned the palo verde is the Arizona state tree. Then I was watching the local news and the meteorologist, Sean McLaughlin, mentioned he just learned the palo verde was the state tree. I didn’t share my original quadrille because it was rather didactic.

Palo verde tree – green stick
ablaze in yellow flowers every
April under the blazing Arizona
sun.

Its green trunk gives the tree
a bigger surface area for
photosynthesis.
Green bark helps
the tree survive in an
arid climate
with a scant amount
of rainfall.

So this brings my 14th year of #NaPoWriMo to a close. I wrote more than thirty poems this year. I’ll be back tomorrow to write my wrap-up.

Toasty Avocado

Avocado

Green berry
Blanket
Toast
Warm cardigan

I’m going to spill the tea. Shawn had a twin sized quilt his mother bought about thirty years ago, and it’s been falling apart. I’ve wanted to get rid of it for a few years now and this past winter Shawn finally let it go. When he was over in Miami a couple weekends ago, I washed the bedding and I folded up the quilt to store away. Then I found Shawn pining over the winter quilt and I told him; No it’s been washed and put away until November.

But I got rid of my snuggly quilt. I need it.

No you don’t. That is a queen quilt that covers the whole bed and it’s way too warm to have a quilt on the bed now.

But the other blankets are too scratchy.

Then use my tortilla. (Great Christmas gift, by the way. Everybody loves how silky, soft it is.)I had to buy Gretchen a waffle blanket so she’d stop stealing my tortilla. Now Shawn has an avocado blanket he can snuggle with at night that won’t make me boil to death. I hope this stops the longing looks he’s been giving our winter quilt.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Nine

Incandescent

The palo verde is ablaze with yellow flowers in April.
I go outside to enjoy the sunshine casting an ethereal –
golden glow as petals float down, I search for inspiration.

As I mentioned we had a gorgeous weekend weather wise. After writing and posting my sijo I went back outside to enjoy the afternoon. The sun was right above the palo verde, shining through the branches and I wrote another sijo for it. As the second wraps into the third line, I’m not sure it is a true sijo, but I like how it reads.

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our optional prompt. If you’ve been paying attention to pop-music news over the past couple of weeks, you may know that Taylor Swift has released a new double album titled “The Tortured Poets Department.” In recognition of this occasion, Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. We hope you don’t find this too torturous yourself, but we’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title.

Chase after fireflies
Gazing into pitch black skies
Incandescent glow

Since I wrote the first poem yesterday, I composed the #haikuchallenge today using incandescent too.

#HaikuChallenge Sunday April 28, 2024

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Eight

Sunday Pondering

I wonder how April will end as I go outside with my dog.
Sitting under the palo verde ablaze in yellow flowers.
Words drift away like the delicate petals falling at my feet.

Palo Verde in Bloom in My Backyard

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Finally, our optional prompt for the day asks you to try your hand at writing a sijo. This is a traditional Korean verse form. A sijo has three lines of 14-16 syllables. The first line introduces the poem’s theme, the second discusses it, and the third line, which is divided into two sentences or clauses, ends the poem – usually with some kind of twist or surprise.

Good afternoon and welcome to day twenty eight of #NaPoWriMo where I decided to take my poetry journal out to the backyard and enjoy the cool Sunday breeze. The palo verde is in full bloom and I wrote a haiku about it a few days ago:

yellow petals drop
palo verde set ablaze
flames adrift in wind

It was very windy here on Friday as we had a low pressure system blowing in, it’s made this last weekend in April very nice. I decided I needed to go out and enjoy my coffee on the back patio while I can. Of course the dog came out with me. One of the sijo I wrote a few years ago focussed on the palo verde and I do love writing poetry about it even when the yellow petals become detritus on my patio.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Seven

Grand Canyon – American Sonnet I

Here I sit, the final Saturday in April
my pen scratching across the page,
adding lines to my first American
sonnet.
Maybe I should include the magnificence
of the Grand Canyon.
Of how over the summer, the impossible puzzle
cost me the grand sum of $10
and it took Gretchen one month to complete.
In honor of her hard work, I found a frame
to display the panoramic slice of an
American landscape where the
Colorado River carved through rock
over countless centuries, sinking the canyon’s
depth a mile down, down… down.

Grand Canyon Puzzle

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our prompt – optional, as always!  Today we’d like to challenge you to write an “American sonnet.” What’s that? Well, it’s like a regular sonnet but . . . fewer rules? Like a traditional Spencerian or Shakespearean sonnet, an American sonnet is shortish (generally 14 lines, but not necessarily!), discursive, and tends to end with a bang, but there’s no need to have a rhyme scheme or even a specific meter. 

Good morning and welcome to day twenty seven of #NaPoWriMo the final Saturday of 2024. I decided to write my American Sonnet about the Grand Canyon and our fun with the impossible puzzle this past summer.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Five

Colbert Questionert

Celebs sit in the hot seat and answer important questions about life. Best sandwich? Should always be cut diagonally. One thing you own you should really throw out? My childhood journals filled with secret longings. Apples or oranges; why not avocados? The first autograph I received was an award for a writing contest. I wonder if Stephen has the same number in mind no one ever gets right. Some questions rotate in and out, but everyone ends with five words describing the rest of their life: messy chaotic dribbles of poetry.

aisle or window
fifteen questions to be known
answers may vary

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Last but not least, here’s our optional prompt for the day. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the “Proust Questionnaire,” a set of questions drawn from Victorian-era parlor games, and adapted by modern interviewers. You could choose to answer the whole questionnaire, and then write a poem based on your answers, answer just a few, or just write a poem that’s based on the questions. You could even write a poem in the form of an entirely new Proust Questionnaire.

Good afternoon. I decided to answer a few questions off the Colbert Questionert. Some of the celebrities have some out of the box responses. When Prince Harry was asked aisle or window he said, cockpit. And I really liked Matt Damon’s answer to what happens when we die? We go home. In my life, I’m a big introvert and not a fan of ice breakers which is what these questions are really about. I prefer to sit in the corner and remain a mystery to everyone else in the parlor.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Six

Onomatopoeia

Words defined by sound
Found to mimic
Abound in
Nature
Purr
Pronounce with extra oomph!

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that involves alliteration, consonance, and assonance. Alliteration is the repetition of a particular consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds elsewhere in multiple words, and assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. Traci Brimhall’s poem “A Group of Moths” provides a great example of these poetic devices at work, with each line playing with different sounds that seem to move the poem along on a sonorous wave.

Good morning and welcome to day twenty six of #NaPoWriMo and I need to go back and work on yesterday’s prompt. In the meantime, I had fun playing with sound and defining onomatopoeia in a teacup dictionary poem. An easy way to write a shape poem, because when centered on the page it resembles a teacup. I am off to enjoy my coffee and the beautiful spring day in the desert. I should be back later to catch up on the missed prompt.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Four

A Monsoon Splendor

And be my love in the rain
every summer monsoons
ease the sweltering heat
as storm clouds build
blocking out the sun
come outside with me
as heavy raindrops fall
and run down our lashes
lips steam with passion
from your fervent kisses
under the summer sky
our love sizzles in the rain

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Finally, our (optional) prompt for the day is another one pulled from our 2016 archives. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it. This will work best if you just start with a line of poetry you remember, but without looking up the whole original poem. Or you could find a poem that you haven’t read before and then use a line that interests you. The idea is for the original to furnish the backdrop for your work, but without influencing you so much that you feel as if you are just rewriting the original! 

Good evening and welcome to day twenty four of #NaPoWriMo. I had written this poem earlier today, but I let it sit. I’m not impressed with it. The opening line is from A Line-storm Song by Robert Frost. I actually went back to my 2016 poem to see if it would offer me any inspiration to no avail, so I decided to post what I wrote earlier today. At least there is only one more week to go.