By Thomas Page
I am student teaching a senior level class in Washington, DC. They have to write some poems on these prompts. I decided to try all 30 of them. However, I will not say what the prompt was but what it number was.
Prompt #13
I am surrounded by things beginning with you
When I scrambled to find a subject
Like the bucolic poet stationed in the city
Dreaming of fireflies hovering above harvested corn
A poet without a cause
Like a song written in the key of b
Grasping at straws as he flips through books
Looking for inspired allusions
Poetic theft of the commonest form
As those echoed four chords on the radio.
The sound,
Voiced bilabial stop,
Mewling like the babbles of a baby
Surrounding the five finger exercises
That are off-center
Producing a different timbre
That evoke memories of better vistas
Casting a different sunset
Over the same ocean disappearing into the pupil.
What are these rambles
Crowded like bulls in the pen
Meant to be?
Some chaos in the key of b?
Academy of the Heart And Mind 