Inkling's Prompt 3.21.11

Inklings Prompt

OPTION 1

List:

2 places you’ve been within the past month

2 people you’ve met within past 5 years

2 objects that you’ve lost in the past year

2 emotions you’ve felt in the past 2 weeks

2 childhood memories from… childhood

Write a poem in which you compare any of these 10 objects, no minimum or maximum.

OPTION 2

Write a poem using 5 of the 8 words of the following words:

1. Belligerent

2. Red

3. Whimsical

4. Drunk

5. (Your name)

6. Oranges

7. Repetitive

8. Clueless

Scary Movies

BY KIM ADDONIZIO

Today the cloud shapes are terrifying,

and I keep expecting some enormous

black-and-white B-movie Cyclops

to appear at the edge of the horizon,

to come striding over the ocean

and drag me from my kitchen

to the deep cave that flickered

into my young brain one Saturday

at the Baronet Theater where I sat helpless

between my older brothers, pumped up

on candy and horror—that cave,

the litter of human bones

gnawed on and flung toward the entrance,

I can smell their stench as clearly

as the bacon fat from breakfast. This

is how it feels to lose it—

not sanity, I mean, but whatever it is

that helps you get up in the morning

and actually leave the house

on those days when it seems like death

in his brown uniform

is cruising his panel truck

of packages through your neighborhood.

I think of a friend’s voice

on her answering machine—

Hi, I’m not here—

the morning of her funeral,

the calls filling up the tape

and the mail still arriving,

and I feel as afraid as I was

after all those vampire movies

when I’d come home and lie awake

all night, rigid in my bed,

unable to get up

even to pee because the undead

were waiting underneath it;

if I so much as stuck a bare

foot out there in the unprotected air

they’d grab me by the ankle and pull me

under. And my parents said there was

nothing there, when I was older

I would know better, and now

they’re dead, and I’m older,

and I know better.