Make It Plain

by Divine Styler


A Roethke-Hugo Writing Prompt:

According to Richard Hugo, a student of Theodore Roethke, this exercise is close to what Roethke would put on his final. They had about an hour. The last number is Hugo's addition. Write a poem using five of the nouns, five of the adjectives, and five of the verbs from the list and adhere to the seven following rules.

1. Four beats to the line.
2. Six lines to the stanza.
3. Three stanzas.
4. At least two internal and one external slant rhyme per stanza (full rhymes acceptable but not encouraged).
5. Maximum of two end stops per stanza.
6. Clear English grammatical sentences. All sentences must make sense.
7. The poem must be meaningless.

Nouns: tamarack, throat, belief, rock, frog, dog, slag, eye, cloud, mud
Verbs: kiss, curve, swing, ruin, bite, cut, surprise, bruise, hug, say
Adjectives: blue, hot, soft, tough, important, wavering, sharp, cool, red, leather


(This is my response to the prompt)

Hagiography At Sea
~by Benjamin Weinhold

Leather-esque mud hands, liquid
wraps, swing and sail, slaps
across bodies full of spring rolls
like soft sauce; General Tso's
in hot, wet rock or clay;
A porcelain throat that gargles.

I bit my dog to say, "Hey
you, red, white, and blue
iconography to my
mouth, pucker up!" Chew, chew,
swallow; The ingestion of tasty
Americana, remixed for vegans.

The way she cut, or sawed and plucked
the chickens picked like vegetables
did not so much surprise my eyes
as much as it disturbed, saddened
my sense of ethos. To heal, I'm still
climbing ash trees, crying to robins.