NaPoWriMo Day 5: The stone cow of Surley

I’m doing NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. Today is day 5. Today’s prompt was the hardest so far for me. I don’t like this one much, but here goes. It begins with the sculpture of a cow alone in a field. 

This is the prompt for the April 5 poem:  

It’s called the Twenty Little Poetry Projects and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. The challenge is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course, if you can’t fit all 20 projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!

• Begin the poem with a metaphor.
• Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
• Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
• Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
• Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
• Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
• Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
• Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
• Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
• Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
• Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
• Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
• Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
• Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
• Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
• Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
• Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
• Use a phrase from a language other than English.
• Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
• Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

 I couldn’t fit them all in, so I’ve coloured blue the ones I think I managed. That was hard!

The stone cow of Surley

The lowing cow’s heart is stone, cutting and cold.

A scold snorting her approval for another’s ruin.

Her glass half-empty, she filled it with black bile,

Never to drink, but to watch it darken and bubble.

Three on a heath marvelled at her creations.

Over time, the glass cracked in dislike, piece by

Piece, from edge to edge, until it shattered,

Pouring its poison in currents to pool around her

Feet, and she carried it far, like a dog on a leash,

Seeking any excuse to tease, bitch and bewitch.

The stone cow had nothing else to do.

In her castle she gloried in being her own queen,

Her friends her subjects, eager not to be cast out.

I’ll call her Louise, but that isn’t her name,

I’ll say she lives in Surley, but therein I lie.

Does the mirror reflect the spite in her eye?

The postman rapped today with a letter overdue,

Addressed to a john and smothered in twirls of lilies,

Perfume sneaking over the edges, stems curling

Out and all around, offering a safe handshake.

But I have wandered off the point on to paper,

Where the written word is unclouded by prejudice.

I think it might just be a generational balls-up,

Suffering and loss. Flip them. Dump them. Fuck them.

We taste red, hear hot and cold touch, and feel a fox cry.

The song dances, curling like a cat in peaceful slumber.

Over the hills, the stone cow lows for an audience.

C’est la vie. Peut-être.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 5, 2020