A. Garnett Weiss Posts

Harold Abramowitz suggested this prompt: “Write something you cannot remember: a memory of something – a story, an anecdote, a song, another poem, a recipe, an episode of a television program, anything, that you only partially or imperfectly remember. Write multiple versions, at least 6, of this memory.”

What came to me were distinct ‘verses,’ using the syllable discipline of the tanka form and relating to the same TV broadcast, parts of which I remember, though not all of it.

Reflections: “On the Beach”

                                                     (after Nevil Shute’s novel and subsequent films)

Black and white flicker:
men, women, well-dressed,
standing on Florida sand.
They face west, the ‘mushroom’ cloud,
armageddon, now upon them.

*

Unwilling witness,
my eleven year-old self
watches the action;
cannot tear myself away
from panic or acceptance.

*

Services all off,
a woman on insulin
sees her future
without electricity:
A two days’ supply of life.

*

What happened to them,
the characters in that play?
I do not recall.
It could not end well for them
as their world, their lives collapse.

*

I’ve walked that shore since,
never thinking of the outcome,
of their hopelessness,
but I’ve shuddered in my dreams
at how being trapped would feel.

*

What I can’t forget:
The anguish of no way out;
scavenging, begging;
my survival unlikely;
desperation palpable.

Simone Muench  suggested the following prompt: “write a cento that is a self-portrait, or anthology of your life, utilizing lines and fragments from your own work,” an intriguing and somewhat daunting task.

 

You’re lost if you look, if you listen, if you follow

 

Austere, without edges or colour,
small-smiling, she looks down,

watches, waits for a sign, any sign,

listens for the story
as cardinals sing a requiem among apple blossoms.
Otherwise, she feels invisible.

Her life lies on her lips like a mystery,
like the ice that coats trees when you thought it would rain.

And I begin to understand
the legacy of those cruel shards,

to be herself
what will shatter with her
in a way both welcome and not.

                                     

Cento Gloss: Each line in this ‘self-portrait’ poem is taken unaltered from the following poems written over the past decade+: “Panorama,” “Woman of ice, woman of glass,” The April Dead II,” “Fairy Tales,” “Nero fiddled while Rome burned,” “Huis clos,” “The days of billy boy bad,” (a line from which furnished the title for the cento,) “Debut,” “Elegy for a Thrush,” “Post Partum,” “Vanishing point, “ “Where does it hurt”, “No regrets.”

 

 

 

In response to Noah Eli Gordon’s prompt to “write a poem comprised of a single sentence, spread across at least seven lines of no fewer than 5 words each. Repeat one of your lines 3 times, but not in succession. Include the following: the phrases ‘as when the,’ a scientific term, a flower’s proper name, the name of a country in South America, a person’s proper name, the phrase ‘which is to say,’ something improper.”

Uncle

 You make me do what I don’t want to

but I can’t pretend I don’t understand —

you: Self-satisfied, self-pleasured, self-absorbed, self-ish Sam—

you speak to me in dialects I wish were foreign

or that I’d need a cochlear implant to hear

but I can’t pretend I don’t understand

which is to say I’m like helianthus facing south and west

as when the sun goes down toward Ecuador

and I turn, too, because you make me do what I don’t want to

but I can’t pretend I don’t understand

Here’s Garnett’s response to Sarah Blake’s prompt in the Found Poetry Review Impromptu series for National Poetry Month. She suggested choosing a song and having its dynamics open the door to a poem.  The song Garnett chose is Carole King’s “You’ve got a friend, ” which Garnett sang and read until this poem happened. Perhaps Garth Brooks will be taken by the lyrics and turn them into his next hit! LOL!

Country, western

So it’s a dark day, and a darker night
And the rain’s still coming down

You wanna put down the bottle
but instead you take another swig

And when I call you say you love me
And I hesitate, oh I hesitate

‘Cause it’s hard to believe, so hard to believe
after all that you’ve done, done to me

I wanna say I love you, too, because I do
But I hesitate, oh I hesitate

So I ask, “is it still pourin’? Are the streetlights all on?
Do they shine up the pavement? Ain’t they pretty”?

You take another swig
Then you tell me again you love me

And I wanna say I love you, too, because I do
Still I hesistate, oh I hesitate

till it’s late; time to get off the phone
watch the rain through my tears

 

The prompt from Woody Leslie involves meanings that have multiple words. He said “write a word, make list of other words related to it, combine these words into a woodblock sharing letters, keep rearranging, adding or subtracting words till you have a woodblock you like aesthetically both visually and linguistically… it can stand alone as a one-word poem or….)” Garnett began with one word: ‘reconciliation.’ This is what resulted.

Afterwar