Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use by Ada Limon, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a word you have refused to use.” 

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday April 22nd at 12pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use by Ada Limon

All these great barns out here in the outskirts,
black creosote boards knee-deep in the 
     bluegrass.
They look so beautifully abandoned, even in 
     use.
You say they look like arks after the sea’s
dried up, I say they look like pirate ships,
and I think of that walk in the valley where
J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,
No. I believe in this connection we all have
to nature, to each other, to the universe.
And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood 
     there,
low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish 
     moss,
and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our 
     pockets,
woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.
So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,
its clouds in simple animal shapes we could 
     name
though we knew they were really just clouds—
disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.

Poem copyright ©2012 by Ada Limón


 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from Words are Birds by Francisco X. Alarcóny, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about words without borders.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday April 20th at 12pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Words are Birds by Francisco X. Alarcóny

words
are birds
that arrive
with books
and spring
 
they
love
clouds
the wind
and trees
 
some words
are messengers
that come
from far away
from distant lands
 
for them
there are
no borders
only stars
moon and sun
 
some words
are familiar
like canaries
others are exotic
like the quetzal bird
 
some can stand
the cold
others migrate
with the sun
to the south
 
some words
die
caged—
they're difficult
to translate
 
and others
build nests
have chicks
warm them
feed them
 
teach them
how to fly
and one day
they go away
in flocks
 
the letters
on this page
are the prints
they leave
by the sea

Source: Laughing Tomatoes and Other Spring Poems (Lee & Low Books, 1997)