Tag: April PAD Challenge

• April 3, 2014

  One-Sided Conversation

  Feels good to write again. My poem for day 3’s prompt of Writers Digest’s 2014 April Poem-a-Day Challenge: Write a message poem.

  r u hungry? let’s go 2 panera!! :)
  thats cool. im busy 2. :(
  still need help w/math?? im a wiz! :)
  no didnt take statistics :( maybe i can help anyway :)
  how’s the essay coming along? need help with that? :)
  no. i never read that book.
  ready for a break? let’s hang out a bit. i’m just chillin’ in the library.
  that’s a lot of homework. i have lots too. i should work on my essay.
  No, I finished it, but I should probably look over it again. :) See you next week!
  Oh. Well, have fun at Disneyland with your boyfriend. I’m so jealous.
• April 2, 2014

  Minimum Day

  It’s about time I wrote again. My poem for day 2’s prompt of Writers Digest’s 2014 April Poem-a-Day Challenge: Write a voyage poem.

  Home lay over the overpass,
  but a yellow sign forbid two ten-year-olds from crossing.
  I thought the trek around would be as straight,
  but streets branched into industries
  we never saw on drives back home.
  The paths I hoped would lead us back
  ended in walls we wouldn’t scale.
  I understood street names as little
  as graffiti on the sides of empty buildings
  and company logos unseen at Toys’R’Us.
  The few passersby that drove these streets
  would neither stop nor slow for us—
  we knew not to talk to strangers anyway.
  A nudge and a prayer guided my way.

  We crawled through the labyrinth
  hungry for food and home and Sega games;
  I wished I could reset now that we were stuck.
  I would’ve listened to my brother when
  he said we should walk to grandma’s two blocks from school
  or even wait for mom to pick us up,
  but I knew the way home, just not below
  the overpass we had driven across before.
  Halfway through, we couldn’t turn back.
  Tall blocks of buildings hid east from west—
  as if I could read a compass anyway—
  but a hunch encouraged me forward.
  I just had to find the right direction.
  Home lay only a few blocks away.
• April 26, 2013

  Fleabag

  Wrote this for day 15 of the Writer’s Digest April PAD Challenge: “Write an infested poem.”

  That French bitch brought home fleas–
  refugees from the tramps
  she beckons from alleys.
  The vermin make their homes in my stucco,
  blot white-washed walls with foreign specks,
  and nibble at my well-lubricated chest.
  Did the alleys not offer them enough
  to fill their dirty families? My leftovers
  could feed an African family for a year,
  but these bloodsuckers want much more
  than what I toss into the black and brown bins.
  They want to turn my country home
  into a hostel for whatever roach
  will come. Rats, frogs, everything but the wasps.
  What happiness can they find here?
  Air conditioning, broadband, satellite TVs
  won’t feed them. Will they follow me to my office
  and multiply until I’m the minority
  forced to seek sanctuary in the alleys we built
  for them? The bombs set off don’t help;
  they breed like dirty, brown bunnies
  and have hard shells that could survive hell.
  I might as well burn down the house
  since I can never tolerate this itch
  that gnaws my nuts, my chest, my fists.

  I finally had the bitch put to sleep;
  I claimed she was a stray.
  I still keep pictures up of her
  at home, at church, on bumper stickers and shirts
  to prove to the world
  I loved Liberty.