Write.as Cues

NationalPoetryMonth

By Barry Graham

It is almost exactly ten years since we shared drunken kisses in an unheated bar in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Later that night, drunker still, a kiss broke into laughter when we rolled off my bed and fell to the floor.

Ten years later: you still in Tennessee, in Nashville, me in Phoenix, Arizona. A catch-up conversation: You told me about your kidney transplants, addiction to pain medication, recovery, getting engaged, breaking it off, buying a house, rescuing dogs, traveling, getting happy. “I learned a lot and am so not afraid of things. It’s pretty great!” you wrote. You said your health was the best it had ever been, and we laughed about the new series of Beavis and Butt-Head. You had just found a new boyfriend: “I am absolutely nuts about him.” Seventeen days later, you died in your sleep, forty-six days past your thirty-seventh birthday.

Writing to someone who will never read it—a worn-out poetic convention, still in use only because of its necessity. Elegies, like funerals, are survival tools for the living. I write these words of love, beautiful Danielle, because silence fails me.

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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By Adam Piggott

I Look Up, outstretched arms yearn aloft towards that mellifluous lunar Muse forever far from touch save for the sweet caress of words.

Her distant, haunting inspiration brings forth rivers of verse ‘to which plunges my Soul Reserved drenched in the words will reach

the ocean vast past the beach and the Girl With the Skinned Knees stalking the beach for shells whispering wise words from her future self.

Into the inky waters I float amongst the stars arranged just so with Little Bear craning her ear towards the silent Moon’s song

accompanied by gentle melodic waves and serenaded by this September Stardust each poem a lunar dapple of crepuscular Moonlit words.

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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By Emery Rose

there is no love felt in the light of a million diodes and the laughter carried over a thousand miles of fiber still cannot fill the room or be felt in my chest a constant stream of unicode tells me we are here together but my heart tells me

connection lost service unavailable

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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By Billy Jackson

Lugnut and Old Boy bark at a four point buck eating fermented apples under a gnarled old tree

They bark at joggers fit and annoyed at the intrusion into their ritual

Their shift starts before mine Before I leave And ends after mine Before I sleep

They howl at the sirens of police and firemen heralds of needed help

And they greet the delivery people so that they know they may not stay long

They ward off the wild things the raccoons and opossum and yell at the uncaring ravens to begone

And the Coyote's call the yammering yelps sing a song of battle in Lugnut's heart so he paces back and forth and whines – “Let me at em!”

Then in the evening they come inside, fences secure treats and headrubs and wrasslin

Until we all sleep Old Boy on the couch, sprawled out and Lugnut next to our bed, childishly close and wary as Cerberus

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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By James Goner

if addiction a pain, then depression another, said either decease or live and suffer. yet frightened of death like none other. now fix it the person who created the mess. was it ego or was it ignorance?

saw a way out, still hardships surround, yet it's the only path that the mind has found. tried and failed not once not twice, it was indeed, hundreds of times.

whenever gave up and asked, 'what is the point?', the mind said 'future is dark, but it could be bright.'

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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By Case Duckworth

I want to hear your voices, to gaze at your elbows. There are only so many ways to do anything. I want, I want, I want, I don't know how not to. It comes in waves, rolling like a car over a speed bump. There is no body there except the body, except your bodies, folded over each other like paper. Like dollar bills wadded in my pocket. Like brows furrowed. Like trees' roots always searching for nitrogen, or each other.

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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By goofy

Flickering and lonely light drifting away from the night who could frame and sooth your pain when you try to reach in vain the ever fleeing distant suns

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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By Hudson Gardner

The red woven towel hangs limply from the oven. I have already used it twice to dry my hands today. The wind outside moves new leaves of bushes. The ants have begun to build tunnels. A metal shack by the beat up street has a padlock I have never tried to open. The lock hangs from a handle that is rusting off. The apricot tree nearby has never been pruned. Yet every year it produces new fruit. Cars still pass on Agua Fria street. The sun still rises and wakes me up. I feel confused about how I feel when each day is the same. This endless cycle of waking and sleep.

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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By Christine

head in the clouds i thought we had something had was the word

why did you ghost me? did that 2 weeks of texting mean nothing? we shared a part of our lives nothing private but it was more than just being strangers i thought hm maybe we could be acquaintances or something more

its been a month since we last spoke i thought im over it

but, you blocked me something i've never experienced left me dazed and confused did i do something wrong? should i have never added you into 'close friends' list? was that a mistake? probably

funny thing is who wanted to text off tinder & get my IG? you. who stopped replying? you. who blocked me off IG? you.

made me realise that boys would do anything to just fuck around and when they're done, they're done chivalry is really dead

but hey thank you and i would come back stronger and be better, while you? idk, au revior M. if its meant to be, it will be. 有缘再见。

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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By Bob Haugen

In my dream, the user interface was liquid, encased in a rectangular wooden box about 4 by 6, composed of bubbles, shimmering, undulating, jostling each other. When I touched one, it expanded and smaller bubbles emerged from its depths which were connected by tendrils to other bubbles, all composed of energy of different kinds. Beings appeared in the bubbles at the ends of the tendrils and wanted to talk.

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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