That Question in Your Throat

I am thinking about the future
you invented
at the bottom of your coffee cup.

I am thinking about the dreams
given to you
by the mountain slavs.

I am thinking about the language
you created
to speak your secrets.

I am thinking about the dark stone
on the ocean floor
burrowing towards the light.

Don’t die with that question in your throat.

* * *

Today I used the same technique as I did for The Goose Girl. It was taught to me by Barbara Marsh on Writing Poetry: Experiments in Choice and Chance. The technique: choose a poem that you do not know well, preferably one that you have never read before. After each line of the poem, write your own in response. Then lift out your own lines and use them as the basis for a new poem.

The poem I used as my starting point was Why Are Your Poems so Dark? by Linda Pastan.

Fortune Cookie

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

The number 13 is often considered unlucky, so today I’d like to challenge you to beat the bad luck away with a poem inspired by fortune cookies.

In honour of the fortune cookie theme, I broke out a bottle of Chinese Ink. This was my first time using this ink in a comic. And I loved it. I’ve got a thing for using areas of solid black in my comics. But with the Chinese ink, there is quite a different sense of depth to the shaded areas. I have a feeling I will be using it a whole lot more from now on!

Bananas

Are they berries?

Are they herbs?

Are they good for you?

Can they kill you?

Yellow is the colour of sun rays.

Yellow is the colour of my true love’s hair.

Yellow is the colour of my energy.

Yellow is the new black.

How many in a pound?

How many in a bunch?

How many a day?

How many can you eat?

We don’t have enough time.

We don’t have enough money.

We don’t have enough house.

We don’t have enough tumblr.

Can they can polish silverware?

Can they can deter aphids?

Can they can attract butterflies and birds?

Can they make you happy?

We all want to help one another.

We all want to change the world.

We all want to be somebody.

We all want to be rock stars.

Will they last longer in the fridge?

Will they make you fat?

Will they help you sleep?

Will they become extinct?

The answers are within you.

The answers are blowing in the wind.

The answers are out there.

The answers are as follows.

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt: I challenge you to write a poem about food. This could be a poem about a particular food, or about your relationship to food in general. Or it could simply be a poem relating an incident that involves food, like David Ignatow’s “The Bagel”. Still not convinced? Perhaps these thirteen food poems will give you some inspiration. 

While I was making my banana smoothie this morning, a question popped into my mind: Can you eat too many bananas? My first thought was, ‘I’ll google it.’ My second thought was, ‘Today’s poem is going to be about bananas.’

As I was googling on the subject of bananas, I felt like I was in dialogue with the great brain of the world, knower of our desires, fears, and strange factoids. I found myself wanting to ask all sorts of questions, not just about bananas, but about life itself, what we want, what we are searching for.

Inspired by Google Poetics, I typed the first part of a question or statement and let Google complete it, usually offering several options. Apart from a little tweak here and there, this poem was written almost exclusive by google. The biggest editing choice I made was to remove the word ‘banana’ from the body of the poem.

Google is vast. Vast enough to contain the search for information about bananas and the search for the meaning of life, all at the same time.