Poetry Friday: Exquisite Corpse (Clunker Edition)

Dead or not?
Mystery photo taken
 November, 2016

August's challenge was a fun one. As a group, we played a version of the "Exquisite Corpse" game, where one poet passes a set of two lines to the next poet, who adds her own two, and then sends only the new ones on to the next person, and so on, until everyone has added (in secret) two lines to the whole poem. The big reveal of ALL the lines was during our Sunday ZOOM session. And there was a twist: each of us added one original line and one "clunker" taken from Linda Mitchell's clunker exchange and comments here. 

Wow. At first sight, our draft poem actually held together (see it below my poem.) We couldn't believe it! Still, the challenge for the year was transformation (conversion, alteration, metamorphosis, mutation, growth, evolution, revision, modulation, change) so we couldn't stop there.  Each of us took the raw material and created something new. Here's how my transformation ended up:

Cuttings

I’m no longer winsome to the world—

I’m a yesterday shadow of the sun’s rise, 

the one that got away, a nub of flower,

plucked, no snap, no sass to sweeten September

when trees turn so orange the road looks blue;

when words tangle, colors muddy the palette

and thoughts of you sprout. I bury

them, and yet in they creep, weedy-thick,

until the prickly buds of odd logic bloom:

I don't cry anymore, so why do I sing all the words—

each line in a different language as the light shifts,

every scattered petal saying “but you loved me”—

and then I remember

love was exactly what you wrote

about the green beans.

                      ---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved) 

Here's the raw material we all had to work with:

They say the mind is garden-like, with thoughts as sprouting seeds

but I'm left holding cuttings I'm not sure where to plant

Weedy-thick, the prickly buds of odd logic bloom: 

You don't cry anymore, but you sing all the words.

Each line in a different language as the light shifts,

trees turned so orange the road looked blue.

Words tangle, colors muddy in the palette.

I am no longer winsome to the sun.

a whole sun’s rise to share

there goes the one that got away

found a bit of sunflower

and plucked every petal (by the way, he loves me)

and then I remembered

that’s what you wrote about the green beans

Stockpile, then, that snap and sass to sweeten your September.

See what beauties my poetry sisters created here:

Liz

Laura

Tricia

Kelly

Tanita 

Mary Lee

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Linda at TeacherDance.