Daughter of the Ring of Fire » Blog Archive

Oct

2009

Thursday Read Write Poem

Posted on 18:17, October 29th, 2009 by EKSwitaj

A typo in one of my poems in the Winter 2009 issue of SparkBright (warning PDF ahead) has pleased me so much that if I publish said poem in a book, I may well keep it. See if you can spot this portal of discovery.

A Fair

     cotton candy scent & teenaged stale beer
     lights come on when we used to leave the fair
     but our parents aren't here
                      half of them are dead
                    which isn't the point
     the lights

begin to move
              too fast to see your face
in the shapes of wheels & screams
                                  & swings
that frightened my mother enough to ban me

               only the moon is unchanged
we'll take the sky
ride over the roller coaster & gravitron
let the fireworks begin

                                          to blur
                                          & smoke
                                          & we're
                                          too old
to

written in response to read write prompt #98: whee!

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Tags: Amusement park, Attractions, Cotton candy, fireworks, Recreation, Roller coaster, Theme Parks

Posted in poetry, politics | print

7 Responses to “Thursday Read Write Poem”

Paul Oakley on October 29th, 2009 at 6:44 pm

only the moon is unchanged

Yes!

let the fireworks begin

to blur
& smoke
& we’re
too old
to

I love that ending, Elizabeth. The line breaks and use of right justification (how’s that for deliciously ambiguous terminology when talking about poetry?) really work very nicely here.

I enjoyed this, Elizabeth.

Apostrophe

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David Moolten on October 29th, 2009 at 7:45 pm

A great worldly take on a carnival, “teenaged stale beer” “parents aren’t here…half of them are dead”.
Great linebreak with “we’ll take the sky/ ride over…”
which neatly leads to the disintegrating, open-ended ending, with the ambiguous “to” that could also be heard as “too.”
David Moolten’s last blog ..All Hallows

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irene on October 30th, 2009 at 2:18 am

but our parents aren’t here
half of them are dead
which isn’t the point

A trip to a fair that turns into a childhood memory and jerks between past and present and somehow the fireworks blur into the erasure of memory so the incomplete ‘to’…like your technique here, Elizabeth.
irene’s last blog ..you spin me

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Therese Broderick on October 30th, 2009 at 2:25 pm

I appreciate the sentiment of this poem — thank you for a poem that expresses a feeling of loss for deceased parents. You tell us so much about love with the single line about the mother’s concern for her child’s safety. Perhaps the speaker of this poem misses not only the deceased, but also her own childhood which is also gone forever.
Therese Broderick’s last blog ..ReadWritePoem #97 (re-do)

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Barbara on October 30th, 2009 at 9:36 pm

The contradiction makes the point well: which isn’t the point
I’ve about concluded that we’re always either too old or too young
Barbara’s last blog ..Bad, bad b_a_d poem

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