NaPoWriMo Day #30

One year ago today at 7:27 p.m. I gave birth to Ian. Today's prompt was a freebie, so I write about him.

Birth Day

One year ago
I gave birth to you,
both of us feverish
after a long day
of getting you here.
We met face to face
for the first time
hot cheek to hot cheek.
I unbundled you
to rub those kicking feet
that kept me up at night.
I counted fingers
and toes,
rubbed red, curly hair,
kissed a little nose
happy birthday.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 30, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #29

Today's prompt was to write about something in the news, or to use it in a prompt, or to write the poem in the style of a particular type of article.

Picture reading this in the classified ads:

WANTED
One restful night's sleep
Eight hours per night
No cries,
No over-caffeinated wakefulness,
No three a.m. unaccomplished tasks list-making.
Will pay premium rates.
Call today before 8 p.m.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 29, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #28

We're getting there...the month is almost over. And I'm behind again. I've had something going on every night this week, plus 2 birthdays (hubby turns 44 and baby boy turns 1). It's busy, busy, busy.

Yesterday's prompt was about intuition or an aha moment. Believe it or not, I had one of those just last night.

8:30 p.m.

Wednesday night


Brick-oven pizza,
dessert,
lingering conversation,
uninterrupted,
on the patio
full of people.


I look about,
patio spinning—
is this real?
Do people really do this
on weeknights?
Am I the only one
who pajamas-up
by eight-thirty,
too exhausted
on a
normal night?

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 29, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #27

This last week has been the busiest (and will continue to be the busiest) of the month. When I get home late I wonder if I'll even have any energy to write to a prompt. Thank goodness today's prompt was to write an acrostic. I chose to write about junk mail.

Junk Mail

Jumbled piles of mail spill
Under
Newspapers from last week
Kept receipts never recorded
Magazines and catalogs never ordered
Aghast at the mound of paper
I accumulated in a week
Losing my mind amidst paper.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 27, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #26

Today's prompt was to find a scrap of paper or receipt with a poem or part of a poem scrawled on it. Use a part of it to make a new poem.

The phrase I found to use was "robed in leaves".

Here's what I did with it:

Leaves

I found her
robed in leaves,
camouflaged,
shaking like a leaf.
Her mew
quieter than the piles' rustle.
She cowered
when the wind
created a tornado of leaves.
I carried her home
before she could leave.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 26, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #25

I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!

Yes, I'm a day late for Day #25, but yesterday I was in the bed with a fever and a swollen throat. I won't go into more detail, but as much as I wanted to post last night, I wasn't able to.

Yesterday's prompt was to take a phrase or a word just heard and use it in a poem. The first phrase I heard was "life has begun". It was actually in the song, "From This Moment" by Shania Twain.

Here's my poem.

Beginnings

Life has begun
again

on the peach baubles
reading to plump up with juice,
inside the next,
filled with quiet noise,
under the soil
where a seed sends down roots,
around the protective sepal
holding on to a peony
about to burst,
in the blown bubble
carried by the warm breeze.

Life has begun
again.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 26, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #24

Today's prompt encouraged us to use a phrase, be it an idiom, cliche, saying. I used the Phrase Finder the prompt suggested and came up with a poem with multiple phrases in it. Growing up in Thailand, and being around people who didn't speak a lot of English, it becomes glaringly obvious how many idioms and sayings we really use in the English language.

Peas in a Pod

Kris and I

were two peas in a pod.


Most days
we were as good as gold,
but in the dog days of summer,
we ran around
like chickens with our heads cut off.


We’d trudge home
our mommas would say,
“Were you raised in a barn?”
For the rest of the day,
we’d toe the line,
lie low,
watching trash on TV.


The next day,
the wild goose chase
began again.
“Pipe down!”
our mommas would say,
“The babies are napping!”


We’d sneak off,
traipsing through the woods,
studying bugs,
wading in the creek,
skipping back for dinner,
making it in time,
by the skin of our teeth.


It wasn’t long
til we had to face the music
with long faces
begin school.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 24, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #23

Today's prompt was to pair two unlikely things--a speaker and an event.

The pollen is killing me, so I wrote a limerick about a bee who is allergic to pollen.

The Bee Who Hated Pollen

There once was a pollen-hating bee
Every flower he touched made him sneeze,
Pollen stuck to him like glue,
So, what's a bee to do,
When he's allergic to the trees?

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 23, 2010

Origami Yoda on the Local News

Yesterday, I spent 13 hours with my fourth graders going on a field trip to Charlottesville. Most of the time on the bus was spent making trash-runs up and down the aisles, but I did sneak in a few chapters of The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger, local author.

Several of my boy students saw the book I was carrying and started asking lots of questions. They were intrigued. I told them about Mr. Angleberger and how they should go see him at Barnes and Noble this weekend. He'll be at Barnes and Noble, Tanglewood, Roanoke on April 24, 2:00pm.

The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda is also featured in a recent Scholastic Book Club order, so I ordered a copy for my classroom library. After I finished reading it, I quickly wished I'd ordered multiple copies because just like Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, I won't be able to keep this book on my shelves.

This morning, I was getting ready for school and Tom and his book were being featured on WDBJ7. You can read the newsstory and the watch the video clip here.

NaPoWriMo Day #22

Today's prompt was brought to us by a wordle. It was suggested we use the words in the wordle (or some of them) to create a poem. If you've never played around with wordle, it's fabulous fun.

Dust Storm

Squall
from the east
brought dizzying wind,
peppering dust
across my face
making me flinch,
blushing my cheeks saffron.

Is this how a dust storm
whips,
rippling across the sand,
reverberating
upon a vast
openness,
corroding everything?

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 22, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #21

I just spent the last 13 hours on a bus with a bunch of ten-year-olds on a field trip. I'm a bit worn out, so I hope this poem makes sense.

Today's prompt was to write about imperfections.

Vision of Imperfection

Sprawled out on the dentist's chair
every imperfection
highlighted
in fluorescent--
snow-capped zits,
bottle-cap glasses.

The dentist finished off the ugly painting
by adding
a mouthful of silver.

Me--
at my ugliest.

Two dental hygenists
with smooth brown skin
free of flaws
rubbed my arms
claiming I was
an American beauty.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 21, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #20

Today's poem was about heroes. I give you an ode to my parents (heroes for many more reasons than just this one):

Ode to Book-Loving Parents

O, Mom and Dad,
you filled our house
with books,
encouraged the giggling
when Fudge finally turned Ben
into a story-lover,
stuffed mailbags
full of books,
paid exorbitant postage
so our new Thai home
would hold our favorite stories,
took extra time shopping
so I could speed-read
the latest Sweet Valley High
curled up in the store corner,
brought me every book you could find
when I was sick for a month--
forbidden to move
except to turn the page
of a book.
For all of these stories,
you are heroes.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 20, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #19

Today's prompt was to write about a lightbulb moment--good or bad. I wrote about a chinchoke, a type of lizard that lives in houses in Thailands.

Here's my attempt:

Chinchoke

He scurried,
scaling walls,
dipping behind curtains,
wrangling mosquitoes.

I wanted to catch him.

I jumped high,
smacking walls,
flittering curtains,
poking sticks.

Then once
his lizard instincts
experienced a delay.
I held him in place,
finger on his tail.

He escaped--

leaving me,
with his tail
and guilt.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 19, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #18

Today's challenge was to write about cats--cute and cuddly or ferocious.

Here's my kitty haiku:


sandpaper kisses
content motorized purring
you're the cat's meow

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 17, 2010

Reflections of a Poet's April Challenge

I love to write poetry. I am not particularly skilled at it, but I like to write it. I have been writing poetry since middle school. Seventh grade to be exact. I had to write a poem, so I wrote one about a cat and Mrs. Griep gave me an A+, and she even wrote positive comments on it. The last day of school, she gave me a thesaurus and wrote a note on the inside. She said something along the lines of: I can't wait to get a signed copy of your first book.

Wow! What a vote of confidence. I have never forgotten that little bit of encouragement. I don't have a published book yet, but I am working very hard toward that goal.

The poetry? Well, it's just fun. I don't have formal poetry training. But I love writing it anyway.

In February, I did the picture book marathon. I rose to the challenge and completed the marathon. But I didn't have to post my writings online. Thank goodness. Some of them are not fit for anyone's eyes. I have been working my way through some of the manuscripts with potential, one-by-one, to get them into better shape.

For this NaPoWriMo challenge, however, I have been posting my poetry online daily. I have about an hour to write. Not much time to eek out a good poem. I have been posting them though because I can't stand not  meeting a goal I set for myself. I have been drafting and posting. Each poem goes through 2-3 passes, at best. It feels sort of like letting someone read your diary. Some of the poems I've posted need LOTS of work. I may rewrite them many, many more times before they would every see a real published page. I was feeling sort of strange about the whole thing--sending out my poem "drafts" for the whole world to see.

Then I read this article about poetry by Janet Wong in Hunger Mountain. She is truly one of my favorite poets of all time. I relate so well to her poetry because she has written about living between cultures so honestly. I have written a lot of my poetry about being an American kid living overseas and feeling like I was also between cultures.

Her article discussed how she wrote after her child went to bed at night (ditto) and felt like she couldn't produce anything worthwhile (ditto), but she sat at that computer every night (ditto) and did the best she could to draft some poems.

She talks about how much she has written compared to how much was actually published, but the poems that weren't published were still valuable because they were PRACTICE. They made her better.

So cheers! To practice! Thank you Janet Wong.

NaPoWriMo Day #18

Today's prompt was to be elemental: Earth, Wind, Fire, or Water. I really wanted to write about water, but picked fire instead, since it was more of a challenge for me. I also have really been wanting to try a new form. I tried the Zeno, which is a new form of poetry that was featured on The Miss Rumphius Effect a few months ago. The Zeno is a 10 line poem with the syllable structure of 8, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2,1, 4, 2,1 and a rhyme scheme of a, b c, d, e, f, d, g, h, d.

Here's my attempt:

Fire

ignition fired, fueling passion
intensity,
will to
fight
where darkness reigned
now is
light
pathways paved to
run to
write.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 17, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #16

Today's prompt was to remember smells. I have always thought that smells really brought back memories, and Read Write Poem's prompt today talks about that. This was probably my favorite prompt yet. Probably because I have so many smell memories.

Here's my attempt:

Fried Rice



I remember the garlic air
drifting in every corner
and out the screened, barred windows
to me.
I biked toward the scent.
The scrape of the metal spoon
clanking against the wok
lured me back for dinner
with its music of stir-fry.


Ten years later,
eight thousand miles away,
the same garlic-layered symphony
woke me in an airport,
haunting me with its rice


for a wafting second
I smelled home.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 16, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #15

I'm not terribly musically inclined, so today's prompt was interesting. I had to pick out a stanza or a few lines from a poem that didn't work. Hum those lines. Find a tune. Sing them aloud, then write two or more stanzas that go with that same tune.

Here it goes:

Famous

I'm three words away
from famous
but I just don't know
which three.

I'm a bus ride away
from town
but I just don't know
which line.

I'm a brick wall away
from a real life
but I just don't know
how to climb.

I'm a poem away
from sanity
but I just can't find
the words.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 15, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #14

Today's challenge required a little bit of reading and research, but it was well worth it. I am working out of town, so I didn't have as much time as I had hoped. The prompt was to write a cleave poem. It's a unique 3-in-1 poem. Read the bold-faced lines on the left as their own poem. Then read the regular print words as one poem. Then read the whole line as one poem. I find it fascinating. For more about cleave poems, check out this page.


I want to love this place, I hate it here
inhaling the smells I don't recognize
triggering fond memories the lure of place
listen to the language, babble I can't comprehend
understand with my soul why my mother loves
call this city home again

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 14, 2010

Okay cleave, I'll be back again.

NaPoWriMo Day # 13

Today's prompt was to borrow a first line of a poem by Norman Dubie and create your own poem from it.

The first line I picked was: "Worlds are being told like beads."

Here's my attempt:

Memorized

Worlds are being told like beads,
each one
with its own story,
its distilled backstory.
She rubs each bead,
a comfortable smoothness
like a familiar memory.
She counts every bead,
over and over
trying to remember
which one is missing,
rediscovering the pain
ripping off
a scab.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 13, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #12

Today's prompt: write in secret code. In other words, think of a message and give it to something unusual.

Here's my attempt:

Hope Floats



Clouds act out,
charading—
not movies,
or book titles,
but puffed up
with sage snippets,
corralling birds
into formation.
Together
they paint
the sky
with hope.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 12, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #11

Today's prompt was to write about the thing you didn't chose and write directly to it.

Here's my attempt:

What Might've Been

Your winds

might have carried me off
whipping off Lake Michigan
chilling me
to my tropical
bones.
Old friends
might have warmed me
like a cup of lemon tea,
but the sour taste
of being far from
home
would linger
reminding me
that this big city
isn’t mine.
Skyscrapers
pushed to the sky
can’t substitute
for the mountains
that I would have missed
if I had made
a different choice.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 11, 2010

Spring Haiku Makes the Roanoke Times

Last month, I had a haiku published in So Salem. Today, one of my haikus was published in the Roanoke Times.

Here's the link. Scroll down (mine is sixth on the page with the animal haikus).

NaPoWriMo #10

Today's prompt was to write about a celebration recently. I experimented with an ABeCedarian form because it seemed fitting for the subject matter.

Easter Egg Hunt

April
Baskets
Carried
Dyed
Eggs
Finding
Grabby
Hands
Instantly,
Jostling
Kneeling
Little
Monsters
Nestled
On
Pillows
Quilted
'Round
Spring
Tulips
Until
Very
Weary
eXtraordinary
Yolk-finders
Zonked out.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 10, 2010

Origami Yoda on a Saturday

I'm always excited when a local author does well. Tom Angleberger and wife, Cece Bell, are two of my favorites.

Tom Angleberger's new book is out, and he was doing a local signing at the very awesome independent bookstore, Ram's Head Bookshop. Even though his new book is too old for my five year old daughter, I took her anyway and I bought the book for myself. Tom kindly showed her how to make an origami Yoda. Here are the pictures.

Makenna makes an origami Yoda. Mommy thinks she needs a new camera. These pictures look a little fuzzy.

This week, I get to go to a Debbie Diller conference in Richmond--alone. I will be taking The Strange Case of Origami Yoda with me to read in the hotel.

I did a review of Tom's (aka Sam Riddleburger) first book The Qwikpick Adventure Society. You can read the review here.

NaPoWriMo Day #9

I've always thought the more you write, the more you get into the habit, the easier it gets. I don't struggle with sitting down everyday to write. But everyday these poetry prompts seem to get more difficult for me. Today, I felt my students' pain when I say write sentences and you must use all of the spelling words.

Today's prompt included a word list, and then a few other rules. I had to use twelve of the suggested words, include something that tastes terrible, include some part of another poem that didn't pan out, and include a sound that makes you happy.

Doing one or two of these things might not have been so bad, but doing all of them was really tricky. Kind of like a puzzle. When you are fresh, it can be kind of fun. On a Friday evening, I was brain dead.

Here's my sad attempt:

On the Fringe

Winter wind scrubs my face
raw
like a pumice stone
against a callous.

I stow hand warmers
inside the flap
of my jacket,
strumming my fingertips
against their heat
until I bruise.
I click my tongue
over the bitter cold.

A campfire by the swishing river
wattles through my mind.
The fringe of my scarf
flapping
startles me back to reality--
I am a marionette
in the talons
of Old Man Winter,

ready for spring
to robe me in sunshine.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 9, 2010

Poetry Stretch: My Own Reverso

The Miss Rumphius Effect put out the challenge to write a Reverso this week. This is a Marilyn Singer special. She wrote this lovely book of reverso poems called Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse. They are poems that when you read them down, they say one thing. When you reverse the words, changing punctuation, they can mean something else. All of the poems in Singer's book are based on common fairy tales. It's like getting two sides to each story. She is a master at this technique. She has carefully crafted each poem so that even though they have the same words, the pair of poems means the opposite. I have to take my copy back to the library, but I have to have a copy of this book for my own because this whole form fascinates me.

This week's Monday Poetry Stretch from The Miss Rumphius Effect was to try your hand at it. It was just serendipitous because I had this on my list of things to try this week. I read Mirror, Mirror last weekend and knew I had to try it. Reverso is hard, but very, very fun. I tried several and I am having trouble getting the right effect, but I am going to keep at it.

Here's my attempt:

Poem #1

Rain

washes away remnants of

pollen,
clogging my throat.
I cough
spring
rather than singing
and
flittering about
in the flowers.




Poem #2

In the flowers,
flittering about
and
rather than singing
spring,
I cough.
Clogging my throat?
Pollen—
washes away remnants of
rain.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 8, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #8

Today's prompt was to write about unusual love connections. I don't think I've written a love poem since I was a teenager, and here I've written two in one week. These prompts are definitely making me stretch.

Here's today's attempt:

you are the pictures

coloring my pallid words

us=complete story

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

April 8, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #7

Today's prompt was to write a humorous love poem using the tanka form. I found this pretty hard. Normally, I like forms, but this was hard for me. I wasn't supposed to use punctuation, but this needed it. I wasn't able to stick with the syllabic form of 5/7/5/7/7, but that wasn't required. I do want to try this form again, but with a different subject matter.

If you greet me with roses,

there will be no second date.

You show up with a houseplant,

call it a housewarming gift--

I end up keeping you both.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

April 7, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #6

Today's prompt is to "converse with images". Use an image and see what kind of poem it leads to. I checked in my "haiku pictures" folder on my computer and wrote a haiku for a picture I haven't written about before.

Peony, dressed up

waits in her frilly ball gown

wind asks her to dance

photograph and haiku by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

April 6, 2010

The Small Stuff

When you pay attention and look around, you might see things you never noticed before. At least that's what my husband said when he tried to convince me to keep my nose out of a book on our weekend trip. You see, I had a Vera Bradley bag full of books. I only got to one of them.

Instead I soaked in some "paying attention"--to the small stuff. For the small stuff is what poetry is made of.


butterfly wind-whipped
caught in highway speed tunnel
stroke of luck--escape

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 5, 2010

abandoned farmhouse
weathered gray boards tell stories
etched into wood grains

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 5, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #5

Today's prompt is to make your poetry personal--giving it a personality and even a name. I had trouble with the naming part, but decided to go with a poem of address.

Here's my attempt:

Poetry

You grow inside the cherry blossoms,
droop down from the blueberry bushes.
You squirm in the dirt,
wrestle with the roses.
You flip-flop down with the helicopter seeds,
flirting with the bees.

You keep me awake at night,
running your words
through my head,
pestering me til
I scrawl them down
in the dark,
hoping I can decipher them
in the morning

when you dangle like dew
from the spider's web.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 5, 2010

A Literary Easter

Literary Things We Did Over Easter:

1) Check out our kids' Easter baskets.

Our 11 month old son got Duck in a Truck by Jez Alborough and Hot Rod Hamster by Cynthia Lord (which my husband declared a "very awesome" book at 7:00am on Easter morning).

Our 5 year old daughter got Jan Brett's new The Easter Egg, several I Can Read books, and a cool doodling book.










2) Hubby and I got away for an anniversary trip to Charlottesville. I usually stick my head in a book while he drives on long trips. He was sleepy, so I had to try to keep him awake, and he says I always "miss things" with my nose in a book. So I spent my time "paying attention". I'll post the poems that I wrote post-paying attention.

3) Charlottesville is the host of the Festival of the Book. I didn't get to go this year because I had to work, but I can see why Charlottesville can host such a wonderful event--it's such a literary town. Our little getaway took us to the Historic Downtown Mall area. I love, love, love their bookshops.

Read It Again, Sam is a very neat (and by this I mean clean and orderly) used bookstore. It had a small, but treasure-trove of children's lit. All of the books were in impeccable shape and were reasonably priced.

New Dominion Bookshop was larger, but is an independent bookseller of new books. Also, very neat (clean and orderly) and had a large and phenomenal children's book section. I spent a fortune.

O'Suzannah is a great little gift shop, and had an extraordinary selection of kids' books.

There were several other bookstores, but my wallet and time were insufficient.

I will definitely be going back to Charlottesville soon. The bookstores alone are worth the drive. But there are plenty of good restaurants and other local shops to enjoy too.

I love short and silly books!

Books I Wish I Had Written #2: Billy and Milly Short and Silly

Perhaps I should change this series to "Books I Admire and Want to Learn From". I'm featuring books I think are brilliant--books that I want to learn more about what I think makes them great. Last summer Candice Ransom encouraged us to type up the text of favorite picture books and study them. It helps to see the text without the pictures (if you are a writer-only) to see what makes these books "tick".

Billy & Milly Short & Silly

by Eve B. Feldman

illustrated by Tuesday Mourning

Penguin, 2009

This book comes in at a whopping 49 words. In the class I took last summer on picture books, we had to keep our manuscripts under 500 words. You can see why. So many of the phenomenal picture books being published are super short.

This text is told in individual words, grouped in threes or fours that tell the story. "Tee Tree Bee Flee" is on one spread. The illustrations show Billy hitting a golf ball off a tee, smacking the ball into a bee's nest in a tree, then running away when the bees come after him.

The first time I read this book I honestly thought it was an author/illustrator book. I thought--this text is brilliant, but I know it didn't sell on text alone because the pictures tell way more than a typical picture book. But I was wrong. The text and illustrations are by different people. Then I thought--even more brilliant!

Each set of words rhymes, and each set of words tells its own episode in Billy or Milly's world.

WHY I WISH I HAD WRITTEN IT: It's amazingly short, but each word works perfectly. The text allows for a lot of illustrative interpretation.

I definitely want to give this super-short text idea a whirl.

Spring Tulips

thirsty for sunshine

tulips stretch open and drink

spring satisfaction

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

April 4, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #4, Second Dose

In my last post (this morning), I received a kind comment from Ron. It made me think...perhaps I should do a follow up poem. It seemed sort of fitting on this Easter Sunday.

So, here's my second inside out poem

my tea stain is clean

not because of my good deeds
but because of grace

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 4, 2010

NaPoWriMo Day #4

Today's prompt is to write about something inside-out or outside-in.

Here's my attempt:

Words

As soon as I said those
words

I wish I hadn't.

They tumbled out
quickly, irrationally

like overturned tea
that can't be returned to its cup
leaving a stain on a beautiful tablecloth.

I wish I could push
rewind.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 4, 2010