Prosopopeia

Listen to me!

They have no idea how wonderful you are.  You are the most incredible person.  You deserve love letters and poetry and slow dances in the rain.  Every minute that goes by is carrying us away with it.

Like a snapshot with lemon yellow light flooding exposure, I am frozen in time and space.

I have. I am. I thought I’d die. But I didn’t.

Two radiating		bodies
posed, fac		ing each-
other, in		the open
air. The spa		ce sur-
rounding		them clear-
ed of		things. Fig-
ure 1 see		ks the orb-
it of		Figure 2—
not ful		ly grown.
Both ex		posed,
wear		ing the
same cloth		es looking
indistinguish		able from one
another, like lit		tle bits of viv-
fied matter try		ing to stand
their ground.		Figure 1 gent-
ly touches		the slope of
shoulder		with affect-
tion		and says,
“That is what you are to me.”

                                                Joanne Leva

How to prepare & give a poetry reading (part 3)

Write it out

When you write - hand-write - your poems on a sheet of paper with an ink pen or a sharp pencil.  Words and their truest intrinsic meanings become known through the simple act of writing it out.  Sometimes the shape of your poem will reveal itself or an area that needs definition will come to light.

Writing your poem on the page as you would say it out loud helps to organize and define its story line and structure. These elements surface when you think of the page as your medium.  A clean page is more than a piece of stationary.  It is the vehicle for the telling.  It is the surface that refines the art of the poem.


                                           [   UNTITLED  ]
                  

Meg McFarland was one

year older than me

and when you’re

in kindergarten

that’s huge.

Meg would talk

back to her mother

so much that her mom

would routinely straddle her

on the floor in front of me and shove

    

a bar of ivory soap

in her mouth

as I look-

ed on.

Meg                                                                                             

had no fear.  I

remember the day

she and I decided it would

be good to lay in the street and

wait for a car to come along, just to see

if it would stop.

Meg really got it for

that one.  I don’t remember

too much about Meg’s mom except

for how she used to yell in her crackly voice, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"

                   
                    Joanne Leva