sounds in a basement

Greetings, Poetry Friends! No, this post is not about my likely peptic ulcer, which came with a 2-week headache and has now thankfully calmed down, UNLIKE just about everything in my immediate environs here in Maryland, just 7 miles from the White House. 

No, this post might also be titled "Why I Do the Work I Do" and I hope you'll never get tired of me sharing raw poetry by kids in the wild, uncut gems shaken loose by 30 minutes of reading, playing and writing in a WHISPERshout Workshop.

This residency is with 2nd graders and is focused on Valentine's Day-adjacent themes of friendship, inclusion and social-emotional learning, with a hefty dose of figurative language to move us past "I like Allison. She is my best friend. We play together," if possible. (For a few 2nd graders, writing these 3 sentences is what's possible. No shade.)  So we read poems that use straightforward examples of this, like "A Purple Place" from my book SQUEEZE, and we play with describing emotions using this little guide:

Then off they go to write, and some kids need a reminder to pick up their pencil, and some kids need to show me their 60 words about chocolate chip cookies after three minutes ("I'm done!") and some kids don't say boo, and then I get home and find a poem by Zeke titled "sounds in a basement." If you know 2nd grade boys, you'll understand my "oh geez here it comes jump scare horror movie poem"--and then I read this:

sounds in a basement

are clicks and dings for games,

people talking on tv,

people talking in real life,

people doing workouts.

there are lots of sounds 

in a basement. but there 

is one that is the best,

love moving from person

to person.

Go on, shut down all the medical research, fire all the scientists at the NIH.* I know the cure for peptic ulcers, for plenty of other ailments: Take one poem--one raw, uncut gem of a 2nd grade poem--and be healed.

******

Thanks to Laura Purdie Salas and her beautiful new board books for hosting us today! And now that you're feeling, I hope, a bit restored and determined, here are a couple of ways to act on that, because *no, don't!

5Calls app: easily contact your reps with prepared scripts on your choice of issues

iPhone

Android   

INDIVISIBLE'S Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink

and next Friday...

 

full moon rabbit's laundry advice

Greetings, Poetry Patriots--here we are pledging allegiance to the power of poetry to get us through tough times, one way or another. LFG!

Today I'm "sowing two seeds with one throw," which is of course the woke version of killing two birds, with an Instadraft™ for both the Inklings' monthly challenge and today's prompt from Laura Shovan's February Poetry Project, which has as its theme this year SPACE.

Mary Lee asked us Inklings to  Type a color into the search bar of public domain image archive and choose an image to write from. Hoo boy, I had not known what riches I was missing! I explored quite a bit (although frustrated that when I typed in my favorite the best color, turquoise, NOTHING came up) and then cheated, in the sense that I knew that the other prompt I was trying to meet would best be served by the color white. That prompt was

How do astronauts do laundry? Hint- they don't. NASA is working on it but maybe you can think of a way to help NASA, or what sparks your most memorable laundry day?https://www.mentalfloss.com/do-astronauts-do-laundry-in...  

So here you go, a 2-for-1 at the low, low price of my writing hour this morning!

Thanks to all who take the trouble to provide thoughtful, whimsical, wide-open, gently demanding impeti (I'm sure that's the plural of impetus) for writing, and to all who meet our responses with generosity. Can you tell that I'm leaning into community this week, as an antidote to the rank selfishness that's ordering and executing cruelty and uncertainty across the globe? Thanks for letting me lean on you.

Don't forget to see what the other Inklings have come up with, below, and thanks to Carol at Beyond Literacy Link for collecting and protecting our tender heartnotes today.

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading 

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core, who also has a moon poem!

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche