Today’s poem is “I Return to Fayetteville After Twenty Years” by Fleda Brown from the journal, RUNES, A Review of Poetry, Memory (Arctos Press). The journal is available for purchase here.
I Return to Fayetteville After Twenty Years by Fleda Brown
Four starlings bathe in a pothole, dipping
and shivering. The Methodist Church chimes
electric hymns—same town, but brightened,
wide-eyed, no nostalgia to hide in.
A high-rise apartment for seniors has been
superimposed on the old Junior High,
and so on.
Me, I’m sitting in detention hall
in Junior High, desks bolted to the floor.
I’ve grown so tall though, that I hover
over myself, where I am scratching a crude house
on the desk top with a straightened paper clip.
I lean down as if life is a lesson I have to teach.
Look! I say to myself, that’s you in the house,
crumbling shredded wheat in the bowl.
There’s your mother, so alive the hairs on her arm
glisten. There are the chimes, and the space
between hymns where this other can get in.
Prompts:
1. Begin with “electric hymns…” 2. Begin with “sitting in detention…” 3. Draft a poem exploring a visit to a place where you once lived. 4. Draft a poem that is prompted by a memory from school.
5. Photo by Brett Sayles via pexels.com. Use image as a writing prompt.