Throughout Lexington Poetry Month, we had a few prompts from celebrated poets, such as Nikky Finney, Martha Gehringer, Rebecca Gayle Howell, and Maurice Manning. The best part was watching how you all used the prompts for inspiration, crafting new poems you otherwise might never have written.
With that in mind, and to celebrate the release of our newest chapbook, we have invited Nettie Farris, author of Communion, to provide today’s prompt:
“What’s your favorite letter of the alphabet?”
Think for a moment, write down a poem, and then post it in the comments section below. And best of all, whoever’s (whomever’s?) poem Nettie likes most gets a free copy of Communion courtesy of Accents Publishing.
So bust out the pens and get to it!
(The deadline for this contest is 11:59PM on this upcoming Saturday, July 13th. The winner will be announced early next week.)
Note: We moderate comments to avoid spambots, so if you’ve never left a comment here before, it might take a few hours for the comment to appear on the blog.
“E”
In some states elocution is one step short of electrocution.
E remains the fast friend of frequency analysis
defying attempts to encipher
expressions that should be shouted
loud enough to loose the leaves.
-Bernie Deville
“K” stands for Kats,
The wild ones, you know.
You’ll hear about them
Wherever you go.
And when they make 3’s
Then K’s will go up
Alongside the rail
In the venue of Rupp.
That Letter Most He Lived with as Love
By Steven Lindbergh
His favorite letter of the alphabet was
That silent one not visible, unheard but there
Pacing his breath to his heart’s word
The leaps it helped him make across
Cacophonies pointing dissent,
Whispering rumors deadly unconfirmed
And that glottal gap suggesting he be ignored
For all his differences, his casual solitude
Yet, ford these did his language to communicate
His humanness he no other way could touch
Others with his love and gentle way
The peace and hope beyond knowing
Those other 26 letters limited themselves and
Him, so he kept that 27th living
In every kind and considerate act, every
Spoken or thought word moving
The idea that with or without
The foundation of letters we are all
Together comprising our commonality.
And that is why that unheard, that unseen letter
Was special to him, it was his favorite because
It reminded him of his human factuality
forgiving reason, faithful to cause.
Steven Lindbergh
writinglife@msn.com
On Fridays the old men order fish sandwiches.
I hear them talking in their secretive trios
About what’s going on in the world,
Or the cost of things.
Today, the oldest among them told a story
From the 40’s, when he was building planes.
As he spoke, a lump of coleslaw
Fell from his mouth and onto his shirt.
And suddenly there was a boy
Sitting at the kitchen table
Telling his brothers about a great adventure,
And trying to eat alphabet soup at the same time.
For B
to be or
not to be
my favorite letter
in a system
of symbols
that form
the foundation
for rational
interchange
—That
is the existential
question—
Whether it is better
for my mind
to let
all consonants
be equal
brothers to each
other or
to honor
the obvious
ontological
priority
of the second
character
of the letterhead?
Nonsense (Letter Prompt or Alphabet in this case)
amoral bastards cajole
decisions entwining fate
guaranteeing hell illegitimate
joviality kills lepers
manifesting nuclear operations
preserving queer regimes
sadistically teasing undeserving
virtuosos wanting Xeroxed zealots
D. Self
Alphabet Favorite
Alphabet favorite
has to be
B
not like the
honey-makers
sweet and free
but
like the
extant
Me
to
be.
“B”
as is
now
present
just
“B”
elane moore-turenne
q is the letter
i want to scrabble
in thought cause
u will almost
always follow
Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds
Ego Waffles give me the willies
even more than crepes. I can handle
eggs if they’re not devilled, scrambled, or
especially sunny-side up, which always reminds me that
eventually the sun will burn out or
else an asteroid will collide with our sweet
earth. Breakfast always takes me to the
edge of the tallest, darkest cliff, from which only
espresso can ever pull me back with its
eerie gravity, its strange scent –
extra strong, like my wife’s perfume, which I searched for
everywhere before we finally met, which I
experience,
every night, as a magic
elixir that makes the day’s troubles
evaporate.
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