NaPoWriMo (Day 28): The glass

 

For the month of April, I’m writing a poem a day from prompts on https://www.napowrimo.net. You can click on the headlines (Day One, etc) to view/add comments. There’s also a list of participants’ sites below the site header.

28

Today’s (optional) prompt is to write a concrete poem. Like acrostic poems, concrete poems are a favorite for grade-school writing assignments, so this may not be your first time at the concrete-poem rodeo. In brief, a concrete poem is one in which the lines are shaped in a way that mimics the topic of the poem. For example, May Swenson’s poem “Women” mimics curves, reinforcing the poem’s references to motion, rocking horses, and even the shape of a woman’s body. George Starbuck’s “Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree” is – you guessed it – a sonnet in the shape of a potted Christmas tree. Your concrete poem could be complexly-shaped, but relatively simple strategies can also be “concrete” —  like a poem involving a staircase where the length of the lines grows or shrinks over time, like an ascending (or descending) set of stairs.

 

The glass

 

I’ll just pour myself a small glass, she tells herself,

but she’s finding she needs this escape, this step outside,

like the daily wrap of a warm blanket, extinguishing the cold,

a feeling she can rely on when nothing else is making sense.

She doesn’t mind if she drinks alone or in a heaving crowd.

In public or at home, this solace always tastes the same.

This blood-red liquid she has known since she was 12,

introduced by an old friend she’d rather not name.

He slowly vanished part by part, like smoke.

The truth lies at the bottom of the glass,

the wine, it never lies to her.

She doesn’t think,

never needs to,

polishes it all off

until there’s nothing

left at all. Staring

at the tired dregs

you’d think they held

all the answers, but she’s forgotten

the only question she really desired to ask.

 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 28, 2022