The picture above is supposed to represent a gardener's shed that stood near my parents' house. It caught fire the summer I was twelve, and let's just leave it at that.  In Aimee Nezhukumatathil's book, Lucky Fish,(Tupelo Press, of course)  she has a poem "Twelve" about that peculiar halfway-in, halfway-out stage of girlhood. It set me to remembering that year, my struggles with my mother and hers with me. The poem's called "Threshold" and is posted in total here. But here's a piece of it:

Daddy’s building us a new house,

my pregnant mother said. And soon

I’d have to set the table for one more

left handed brother.

All that seventh grade year

I hated her

because she said she liked

my braids, said my glasses were

sophisticated, and the girl

who made fun of me

was only jealous.

In English class, I sat with a book

in my lap and all day boys walked

past me in the hall—

their shoulders, 

their big-knuckled hands. 

One of the best ways for me to get ideas for new poems is to fall in love with other poets, and then go trawling through their books looking for a poem I wish I'd written. Then, I try to write my version of it. I may borrow the subject matter or the form or the structure, or leapfrog off an image. The trick is to end up with my own piece that's not simply a derivative of someone else's. Sometimes, it works, sometimes not, but at least I'm writing a poem. Take a look at Lucky Fish if you can. It's a lively, wonderful book. 

I'm down to five prompts and I have SEVENTEEN poems left to write. Panic is setting in. I just snapped at my entirely innocent dog. You don't want to feel responsible for dog suffering, do you? I didn't think so. Consider going to my donor page here and leaving me a note. Dixie will thank you for it.