Category Archives: free verse

Autumn – Stanza 3

asleep, in graves, silent shuttered
vaults, eroded epitaphs, markers where
lay the bones, worm-stripped bare, no trace
but for their surnames penned on census
rolls, proof that they existed once

~kat

For Jane Dougherty’s Daily StNza Challenge.


Anything

nat-hawthorne


anything

look at you, absentmindedly twirling
a wisp of perfect golden hair ’round
slender fingertips, hint of a smile, lips,
velvet petals, parted, revealing pearlescent
teeth, a laugh, pleasant, lilting, crystalline
blue eyes, sparkling, that quickly look
away from too intense a gaze…you don’t
know how beautiful you are, coyly
denying the adoration of those poor
souls ensnared by your loveliness…
you hardly notice your true devotees
pricked so deeply by love’s poison dart
they would do anything for you, truly
anything…I suppose that’s why
i hate you…i do…i hate you

~kat

For MindLoveMisery’s Menageries’ Sunday Writing Prompt based on the quote above by Nathaniel Hawthorne.


August – Stanza 1

August Gregorius, in 1871, father
of my father’s, father’s father left
Sweden’s shore, Amerika bound, decades
before the harbor maiden raised her beacon
to refugees and immigrants, seeking a dream

~kat

August Stanza a Day Challenge: A short 3,4, or 5 line poem no syllable counts of rhymes, starting with the word ‘August’ on the first day. The last word of the poem will be the first word of day two’s poem, and so on until the end of the month.


The Sweater

The Sweater

Sometimes I wrap myself in thin
green, shetland, stiff with age, smelling
of moth balls and stale dust,
to remember. It’s all I have left
of you…a sweater that’s starting to
unravel along the edges. Like you,
those final years, unraveling,
spiraling into an abyss so deep,
none of us could have saved you.
I know that now. It’s strange.
Your sweater, just an old wooly
rag really, hints of Old Spice
aftershave wafting, when I press my
face into its course, wiry fibers, has
saved me from the edge more
than a few times. I guess that’s why
I can’t part with it.
I suppose I never will.

~kat

For NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 26. Prompt: write a poem that includes images that engage all five senses.


It Could Happen… NaPoWriMo 2018 – Day 22

Day 22 – NaPoWriMo 2018 Prompt: take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens:
The sun can’t rise in the west.
A circle can’t have corners.
Pigs can’t fly.
The clock can’t strike thirteen.
The stars cannot rearrange themselves in the sky.
A mouse can’t eat an elephant.

You know me. when given a list and a choice, I generally choose them all. It’s a running theme.


It Could Happen…

that day when pigs flew, it’s true,
first class, no less, to avoid
all the mice that they’d trapped in
their wheels, churning in circles
producing square profits for
bottom line trawlers, that day
when stars realigned and the
mice jumped their traps, devouring
the elephants in the room
all this, they did, just past noon,
at thirteen zero zero;
mice, in chorus, were heroes
that day we’ll remember,
when news traveled the wires
dawning bright, east to the west
a sweeping blue wave changed
history’s course, what a day
when impossible dreamers
dreamed dreams once again
and tea bagging cups dug graves,
their own, with silvery spoons
that day, the pigs flew the coups

~kat