“Broken” poem for Friday, April 12

For today’s selection, I’m back to my source at Writer’s Digest. Robert Lee Brewer suggests writing a poem about something that’s broken. I’m finding that I like the compactness and natural cadence of haiku, so I’ll use that form again.

Melancholy

Tears that once flowed free

Fall back on my aching heart

And lie there, burning.

 

 

 

 

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Poem for April 10

For today’s prompt, Robert Lee Brewer at Writer’s Digest challenges readers to write a suffering poem. “A person or animal in the poem could be suffering,” Brewer writes. Or, he adds, “The poem itself could be suffering.”

Here’s my response:

Homework assignment

 

She came to class today, hat pulled low over her ears.

 

He pulled her hair out in clumps, she says.

She should never have gone out with him, she says,

When she had a paper due about global food injustice.

She should have known better.

 

This is not the first time it’s happened.

It’s been a pattern since her earliest days;

Men coming in and out of her life like so many jackals stalking their prey,

Waiting for some small unguarded moment that will allow them

To seize the opportunity.

 

She doesn’t say it, perhaps doesn’t see it,

Perhaps is hoping against hope that someone else, finally, will see it.

There is another kind of injustice playing out here;

Something else she could write a paper on,

That is much more pressing than the human-rights abuses

Committed by faceless corporations against nameless multitudes.

 

This is a tyranny that is hers alone to explore,

And I will be asking her to walk across a field of broken glass

That lies deep within her own soul,

To embark on a treacherous journey

That no one ever volunteers to undertake,

And whose destination is far from certain.

 

Write me a paper, I tell her,

In which you tell me what you already know,

But no one has been willing to hear you say.

Tell me, I say,

Because so many have said everything is all your fault,

And you know and I know that it’s not,

Tell me all the reasons why not.

I’m listening. I believe you.

 

And in her eyes, terror and hope.

Her journey begins.