Our featured participant today is A Rhyme a Day, where the MC5/Jane Kenyon-inspired poem for Day Fifteen packs a lot of punch into six short lines.
Today’s resource is the Museum of Photographic Art, which is part of the San Diego Museum of Art. Through the museum’s online collection, you can explore a number of current and past exhibitions, including a series of portraits by Bern Schwartz (I rather like the one of Ralph Ellison) and a group of very painterly compositions by Lynn G. Fayman.
And now for our optional prompt! The Kay-Ryan-inspired prompt for Day Fourteen asked you to take inspiration from the sounds of the natural world. Today’s prompt twists that idea around a bit. Start by taking a look at this poem by James Schuyler.
FAURÉ’S SECOND PIANO QUARTET
On a day like this the rain comes
down in fat and random drops among
the ailanthus leaves—“the tree
of Heaven”—the leaves that on moon-
lit nights shimmer black and blade-
shaped at this third-floor window.
And there are bunches of small green
knobs, buds, crowded together. The
rapid music fills in the spaces of
the leaves. And the piano comes in,
like an extra heartbeat, dangerous
and lovely. Slower now, less like
the leaves, more like the rain which
almost isn’t rain, more like thawed-
out hail. All this beauty in the
mess of this small apartment on
West Twentieth in Chelsea, New York.
Slowly the notes pour out, slowly,
more slowly still, fat rain falls.
Like Kay Ryan’s poem, this one invites us to imagine music in the context of a place, but more along the lines of a soundtrack laid on top of the location, rather than just natural sounds. Today, try writing a poem that similarly imposes a particular song on a place. Describe the interaction between the place and the music using references to a plant and, if possible, incorporate a quotation – bonus points for using a piece of everyday, overheard language.
Happy writing!
Again, note before you start reading: Wow, I didn’t mean to write this. But, this prompt made me think a lot about how certain songs refuse to stay in the past. How they sneak into random places and suddenly bring the whole emotional archive with them. Some songs don’t ask for permission — they just show up. This poem came out of that, out of leaves of the plants that are the best silent witnesses to heartbreak. And some quotes were inspired by conversations I found online. So this is also a small nod to the strange, forgotten corners of the internet — where people speak from the heart without realizing they’re writing poetry. Some of their voices ended up here, too. Mostly, it’s about what lingers, long after the music stops. Some things don’t get closure. They just echo. Like sound turning into atmosphere. Like memory dissolving. Like grief disguised as background noise. In fan noise, in static, in the chorus that won’t die.
"Blur, Then Fade"
I. Bougainvillea, Blur
Somewhere on a cracked Goan patio,
the speakers buzz with Wonderwall,
half-lost beneath the ceiling fan’s hiccuping hum.
You said: “This place could use a good storm,”
while brushing ash from the windowsill—
the bougainvillea nodding like it agreed,
drunk on salt and dust and maybe the chorus.
The petals, paper-thin and defiant,
don’t dance, exactly. They wait.
Each note—loose, lazy—curls around the plant pots—spills across the floor, nudging around the terracotta like spilled water
and clinks against the half-empty beer bottles,
like smoke from a too-long stub, circling, waiting,
like they’re trying to forget their own meaning.
The sun is low and loud.
Oasis never quite belonged here, but neither did we.
II. That Song Again, in the Tumbledry
A month later, maybe more,
Fleetwood Mac slips in —
“You can go your own way” —
“...because maybe...” —
and yeah, it’s that song again.
through busted speakers above
the hum of tumbling socks and static cling,
above the cactus by the front window
wilting like a tired commuter.
The plant’s got three arms left.
Two lean west, one’s cracked clean.
It stares at me with the same judgment
as the old man folding flannel,
muttering to his wife:
"Did you check the pockets this time?"
The dryer door bangs like a snare drum,
timing out heartbreaks — mine,
theirs,
yours,
whoever this song was written for.
Outside, the sun scalds the sidewalk,
but in here it’s a cool purgatory,
and the chorus lands soft
as lint on a black tee.
I fold each shirt like an apology,
pressing regret between sleeves,
badly. The collars never sit right,
creased, half-meant, slightly damp with something that might be guilt.
and let the song finish what I couldn’t say
in that parking lot three Julys ago.
III. Epilogue in Transit
In the fluorescent hush of Gate 42,
the music’s gone ambient—
not a song, exactly, but the idea of one:
piano notes melting into the PA’s breathy static,
someone’s playlist leaking from cheap headphones,
no words, just weightless chords
folding into the evening like origami clouds.
Beside me, a pot of bamboo
leans hard against the glass—
a parting gift, still ribboned,
swaying as if remembering wind.
Two seats over, a woman says:
"We were just kids, what did we know?"
Not to me. Not even loudly.
But loud enough.
I close my eyes and wait for boarding,
the way a field waits for rain,
or a record waits for the needle,
or a song waits
to be heard again
by someone who no longer needs it.
{or, by someone who outgrew it and didn’t even notice?
or, by someone who deleted the playlist and pretended it was never theirs?
or, by someone who still hums it, even now, but can’t remember why?}
- Oizys.
- Oizys.
Oasis - Wonderwall (Official Video)
Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way (Official Music Video) [HD Remaster]
Lovely imagery in your poem in three movements, Oizys, so much to choose from. I especially enjoyed the ‘bougainvillea nodding like it agreed, drunk on salt and dust and maybe the chorus’; the echoes of Fleetwood Mac, which reminded me of my youth, when Rumours first came out, and it was all I listened to; and the ‘weightless chords folding into the evening like origami clouds’.
ReplyDeleteKim, thank you. I am GLAD you liked it. <3
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