2020 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Results

Thrilled to be among the finalists in the 2020 Writer’s Digest Chapbook Challenge!! Congrats to De Jackson and the other finalists!! 

2020 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Results

Advertisement

Want to Know More?

 Robert Lee Brewer, Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of the poetry collection, Solving the World’s Problems has just released a list he is calling The Poetry World A to Z.

This list includes poets, events, publishers, and more. He writes, “it’s a good starting point for poets who want to know more about what’s happening.”

And don’t forget that November is approaching. And that means November PAD Chapbook Challenge.

Working blue

Working blue

my fingers
need a home A warm
place to breathe and roam
They trampoline over coal
domes combing letters to grow
a tome of groan or love or poems
to bemoan (oh, woe is me) or
some other overblown
droning on and on
and on
and Oh,
I don’t know . . .
what else I really
can do.

Written for Poetic Aside’s Wednesday Poetry Prompts
Write a poem about work.

Mooning the night

Oh, how I try to love you
not knowing what your love
is now, you in your room

an empty pillow
at your side, and me
across the hall listening for

floor creaks as you sneak
not the first time
out the door in your slippers
to follow the moon
full halo’d and happy
without me.

 

PAD DAY 2
FULL MOON

Orange Matches

 

“Orange Matches”

It’s sad that leaves burn
twice in Fall
first on the branch then
in the pyre,
Burning matches struck
by matches
a fate for Autumn colors,

A keening cloud
hides tiny hands
that tuck
the saved ‘tween leaves
of poets’ lyre

and all the children cry for one
more Autumn rain.

***

(posted and written for: #WSStudioPic (Wordsmith Studio’s Weekly Photo Prompt:This week’s theme is: Orange)and also for the November PAD Prompt 1 “Matches”)

 

Backstory:  In 1953, Frank O’Hara, a New York School of Poets poet wrote a series of twelve poems entitled: .“Oranges: 12 Pastorals” based on his theme: “Oranges.”

And yet, he never once mentions the word or color Orange. Then in 1957  he wrote a poem entitled: “Why I am not a Painter”  in which he cleverly addresses his series of Orange poems that never mention the word orange. You can read about the poem at Modern American Poetry. There’s a whole lot to say about this poem but I decided to combine his idea of not mentioning orange with the WordSmith Studio photo prompt and with the very first November 2012 PAD prompt. (Yikes, I must be mad!)

Camping

Camping poem

 Griz breath
on my neck

in the middle of the night

in the middle of the night
Griz claws—

just a canvas-hair’s breath

above my face.

Teeth chattering
wild girl
turned noodle

in the middle of the night.

 

Written for  Poetic Asides Wednesday prompt