I'm trying something new, taking a risk this month - participating in#VerseLove with Sarah Donovan,
hoping to write poetry every day this April.
Today's challenge is called "The Golden Shovel," a poetic structure created by Terrance Hayes, who wrote one from Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool." The challenge is to take a line or two of a favorite poem and use those words 'acrostic-style,' one by one, in order, as the first or last word of each line in your own poetry. I have used my favorite poem from this website, "I am not I" by Juan Ramon Jimenez, using the words from these two lines:
I am this one,
walking beside me whom I do not see
Each word, one by one, is the last word of my poem, which follows...and, poetically, I think it should be entitled "Writing Beside Me," the title of my blog.
Writing Beside Me
Isolated, together, Mom, Dad, four boys, and I
So long ago, yet all that I am,
Mental illness, oh no, don't talk about this
Shame on you, these are our secrets, every one
Don't like it here? Then get out, get walking.
Even in distance, they stayed right beside.
Through so many years, memories choked me.
I was able to share with my husband, whom
I love so deeply, but still crumbled from the pain that I
had not dealt with, didn't know what to do,
finally, exasperated with the silence that I loved not
I have tried to remember and see.
