unboxing a new challenge

 BEFORE WE BEGIN:  CLIMATE ACTION PSA

More encouragement, whatever your age and *especially* if you're feeling some remorse over the way you have contributed to climate warming, to get involved in demonstration activities coming up soon!

https://www.bustle.com/p/how-to-find-a-climate-strike-near-you-because-theyre-happening-in-over-150-countries-18725388 

 

Did you have the feeling that Hurricane Dorian was unusual? Learn more about how these catastrophic events are directly connected to rising temperatures.

https://www.bustle.com/p/how-does-climate-change-affect-hurricanes-dorian-spotlights-a-growing-problem-18728283

Thanks for your action!

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This week the Sunday Night Swaggers are sharing responses to a monthly poem challenge. This one comes from Catherine at Reading to the Core. She presented photos of a sampling of boxes and asked us to write about one or more of the boxes.



It now being heavy-duty start-of-school time for me, I sought to cheat by searching my blog for something I remembered about "building the box."  I found the posts I was thinking of, here and here, but I DIDN'T find a poem written and waiting for revision and recycling, oh no.  What I did find was a picture that was very intriguing in the context of this coming-of-age WIP that is consuming me.  So this--and don't you, my teacher friends, all know that kid who is compelled to make up their own version of the assignment?--is a poem for my WIP about my self-selected "wonkbox" drawing.  Thanks to Catherine and the Sunday Night Swaggers (because we borrow & steal but we still keep it real) for all their challenging support for this ms!


built of boxes

my head is a dream box:
:press the sleep button and
the dreams stream out
nightlong string of tickets at the arcade
printed perforated flimsy cheap & precious

my body’s a straightup box of awkward
arms and legs crossing unexpectedly:
:knee jerk reactions, elbows like wings
bending and tilting at wrong angles
nothing ever the same size twice

my brain is a juice box
of sticky sugar endocrine, pure 
digital ones and zeros no longer compute:
:throwing exceptions left and right, 
thinking through my nether regions

my hands are two toolboxes I
don’t know how to use, wrench up 
hammer down liar liar pinch the pliers 
ratchet ratchet nail and screw:
:me the builder can I fix it 

       build 

  my way

out         of this 

      box?

©Heidi Mordhorst 2019

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You can see other Swaggers' responses to the box challenge at their blogs:

-Catherine at Reading to the Core -Margaret at Reflections on the Teche -Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone
-Linda at A Word Edgewise

Our hosts today are poet-author-publisher friends, Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong,  at Poetry for Children.  Bounce on over to get info about the IBBY Regional Conference, which looks too good to miss!