Shortly before we moved away, the Ben Franklin store burned down.
Is it possible that I saw, in the ashes, a single cut-glass punch bowl
as if still on display? Is it possible that I saw this from the car window
as we left for Dayton, Ohio (the last move before the last one)?
The road out of town took us past that Ben Franklin store, and also past
my elementary school: Northrop, now torn down, from what I hear.
Still standing is the Rusty Nail: a bar, or a lounge downtown
that my parents whispered about. Am I right that there was a murder?
There was something unsavory,  I know, and highly unusual for
Thief River Falls, Minnesota — this was years before the Coen brothers
punched a big hole in the folksiness of Fargo and towns for miles around.
I know there’s still a Rusty Nail because (get this!) I’m Facebook friends
with a total stranger who lived in our house before we lived in our house —
her parents sold 903 N. Knight to mine. Imagine! What a gift, not to lose places.
What a gift, when you only lived there for two years, but can still smell
the dusty screen door at Erl’s, where your smaller self bought
Archie comics and candy wax pop bottles, never dreaming it wasn’t
forever — never dreaming just how soon you’d be gone.

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I regret that this one will almost certainly not present how I intended because it needed to be in long lines, which my WordPress theme haaaaaaaaates. Anyway, today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write a poem that incorporates names of some places you’ve loved — inspired by the Canadian poet Al Purdy.

Pity the guts of the crocus,
smashed to the ground by wet snow,
ruined before bees could arrive.
Do not take it lightly, this small death,
as the blue sky looks on
and shudders.

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Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write a poem of 100 words or less, incorporating a group of four words (with a few groups to choose from). I chose pity, guts, crocus, and blue.

With terrible visual effects,
Fatboy Slim explains evolution
and ends it all with a fat joke.
But now I’m flashing back to 1998 —
20 years ago — and I’m supposed to be
writing about now, the moment
THE MOMENT
Right here, right now I am cranky
and have things I can’t tell you
and a black-and-white dog
wedged into a corner
of the black-and-white couch.
Right here, right now I dread
walking the dog, flashing forward
an hour from now, into the sleet
or whatever that is outside.
Right here, right now,
I have things I can’t tell you
and a mind that doesn’t speak Now.

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Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write about being in the moment.

We sail for daisies at midnight,
having joined the daisy navy
several nights ago

(while drinking).

We sail for daisies, but you are still
inside your dark house. The time
draws near, and now I fear

that I will sail alone for daisies.

Will you remember my name, if I am
taken by the sea? Will you remember
my name in the harbor town —

my name and how valiant I was,
alone in my stem-green slicker,

alone and sailing for daisies?
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Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write a poem inspired by a Kandinsky painting. I chose The Golden Sail (which is covered by fair use):

Operation, that game of
BZZZZT
endless BZZZZT
endless fun where
BZZZZT you remove a rib
from a man with BZZZZZZT
a red nose, uncomfortably
BZZZZZZT naked body
and an alarmed BZZZZT
look on his BZZZZZZT
look on his BZZZZZZT
on his BZZZZT
his face. Operation,
the game BZZZZT
that my brother BZZZZT
that my brother and his
BZZZZZT and his friend
BZZZZZZT had to play
BZZZZT in the
BZZZT play in the
basement because BZZZT
when I was BZZZZT
when I was three BZZZZZT
when I was three years old
BZZZZT I was BZZZZT
I was afraid of
BZZZZZZT

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Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write about a children’s game.

The rain has washed and laundered us all five,
my brothers and sisters and me, in overalls
that none of us own, wholly, or remember
as belonging to one of us or the other.
That’s how we are, all we five — sharing
in common our hearth-blue eyes, all stones
in all pockets equally. Share and share alike,
we say. We share and share alike.

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Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to use a quote from a poem by François Villon and write a poem of no more than 100 words. My first line is the first line of his Epitaph in the Form of a Ballade.

What kind of day is it
when you wake up this morning?

I hope it is a good day
for love
and, yes, for rainbows,

for sneakers and bowties
and for dancing, all together
and just the two of you

What kind of day is it,
where you are,
when you wake up this morning?

I hope it is a good day
for love.

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Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was a lovely and self-explanatory video of a song by Carla Morrison.

For some, the miracle is written
in corpses. Can you rediscover humor,
even before anger ceases?
Flies are masters, though they will never
say so — winnowing creatures down to bone,
the finest editors the world has ever known.

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Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to choose up to 13 words from the following quote (I’ve bolded my random selections) and use them in a poem that has something to say about metaphor:

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.” ~ Diane Setterfield

Beetle
I’m here to do the
beetling
I think my name is —
I don’t know my name
or yours —
but
I am here
you are here
the sun is warm
and you and I have
time

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Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads involved Costa Rica, with several photos as possible starters. I chose this one, by JSB Fotografia:

My spine is the corncob
I toss to the squirrels

This is how your skills align
My kills?
What? No. Your skills.
SKILLS
and how they align in this sector
of corncob

of back — I want it back,
but the squirrels have taken it
to their unseen rooms of long ago.

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Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write a poem of 12 lines or less, inspired in some way by Maya Angelou’s “When You Come.”