This week for teacher appreciation, they bring us junk to eat, like chips, and candy, bread, pancakes, syrup, none of which I can eat, sadly. Yesterday, kids wheeled in wagons full of goodies into classrooms from which I could only choose bottled water. Somehow, this week I don’t quite feel the love; appreciation is notContinue reading “#280: A Mostly Unrhymed Food Dipodic at the Close of Teacher Appreciation Week”
Tag Archives: A poem a day for a month
#279: The English Teacher Reveals the Writing Prompt for the Day
The English teacher reveals the writing prompt for the day and tells his students to start writing and one student doesn’t have his notebook and while it’s supposed to be quiet another kid tells the kid without a notebook that he saw him leave it inside the lunchroom and the notebookless kid doesn’t believe him andContinue reading “#279: The English Teacher Reveals the Writing Prompt for the Day”
#278: When I Was Away, Before I Was Born, I Have Never Been
I attended a writing workshop last weekend taught by the Oregon Poet Laureate Emeritus Paulann Petersen where I was asked to participate in a generative process very much unlike the process I am used to in my own creative work. It was a very particular kind of brainstorm activity she called “priming.” Now, as aContinue reading “#278: When I Was Away, Before I Was Born, I Have Never Been”
#277: The Topography of Our Intimate Being
The Topography of Our Intimate Being is a box or a series of boxes. I’m in there, over four decades on hundreds of scattered pages, in a drawer, on a shelf, the most recent version of myself in a box on my writing desk, or, where the oldest pages are stored, in bins in theContinue reading “#277: The Topography of Our Intimate Being”
#273: One Must Have Toys at Work
I had to hide my rubber ducks because for some reason my freshman boys could not leave them alone. Now they are hiding inside my office with my owl lip balm and my librarian action figure with shushing motion and my James Joyce finger puppet and my Shakespeare, complete with quill pen. They’re all gathered around myContinue reading “#273: One Must Have Toys at Work”
#272: Let There Be Rock
In the beginning Back in nineteen fifty-five Man didn’t know about a rock ‘n’ roll show And all that jive The white man had the schmaltz The black man had the blues No one knew what they was gonna do But Tchaikovsky had the news He said Let there be sound There was sound LetContinue reading “#272: Let There Be Rock”
#271: The Neologist Speaks about Food
Lately, I have had two dreams, both inexorborific, one concerning jelly beans, another about beer, farfignewtons. I will dream next about cheese. I have not had a sandwich in ten horrorflopnoggen days. Candy is no longer thingful. I wouldn’t recognito a potato chip if it bit me right on the keatettle. I’ve not had milk.Continue reading “#271: The Neologist Speaks about Food”
#270: A Poem Spoken in the Dark
I’m not proud of it, but yeah, I made it up on the spot in this video and then transcribed it. That’s why I’m speaking so slowly. I’m not drunk. I’m just trying to choose words: The reason my last two poems have been prose poems is because I have been composing them using theContinue reading “#270: A Poem Spoken in the Dark”
#269: A Letter of Gratitude to My Wife and Son (another prose poem)
Dear family, I am about to begin my journey home. Almost everything is put away and the trailer is hitched up (I never did unhitch); all I have to do now is climb in and start up the engine. It was a good trip. Even though I was with my brother and his friends, I spentContinue reading “#269: A Letter of Gratitude to My Wife and Son (another prose poem)”
#268: The Middle Way (a prose poem)
Somewhere between asceticism and an orgy of consumerism and excess lies the middle way. I must confess I have not found it yet. I tend to waffle in my struggle to find the center. Against my better judgment I tend to err toward excess. Here I am camping in comparative luxury with my new trailerContinue reading “#268: The Middle Way (a prose poem)”
michael jarmer 