10 steps to writing a good poem
or 10 steps my fiction writing professor said would lead to a good story 1. no screaming. no crying. no dying. 2. chekhov was right when he said, to move your reader, be colder. this should be easy for you since she left a couple of blank spaces behind in your room that you haven't gotten around to returning yet and don't know how to disguise so you sleep in the library most nights. after all, cold is only the absence of heat 3. details are not embellishment for your story; they are your story. 4. don't write victims for characters make them active in their own undoing the audience should understand the methods by which the protagonist will destroy herself and identify her murder weapon in the first scene. the audience should understand that she never saw it coming. 5. no one has a monopoly on truth; that is, even you can write poetry 6a. the only way to fail is to not write 6b. so you write and still wonder if you haven't succeeded 6c. and you forget what you were trying to do in the first place 7. establish stakes: the protagonist must be motivated by either her greatest dread or greatest desire you can get away with doing both if you write about being surrounded by the people you love the people you love are explaining why they could never possibly love you back the people you love are stripping you down to your bones your skull can't stop smiling 8. sometimes, the curtains are blue most of the time, this doesn't symbolize anything 9. demonstrate causality; even if the protagonist has cancer and manic pixie dream girl disorder and stockholm syndrome this does not explain why she is the chosen one and will only succeed in making her stuck-up 10. avoid neatness everyone wants a happily ever after but stories are the questions you ask after you turn the last page and say, huh.
0 Comments
they saw me out there bathing in the rain
& asked if i was washing away my sins i said no just praying to the thunder just daring the lightning to strike twice We'll laugh about this one day Find humor not in the ways my whole frame shakes and crumbles but in the way it doesn't anymore; not in the ways your hands smooth the knots in my back as I'm attacked by the specters of times past We'll laugh because we have finally beaten it Written Fall 2016.
i like cappuccinos
for the way they sound when ordered out loud, never mind how they twist my stomach and spitefully jumpstart my poor heart (already pounding my ribs into toothpicks) after drinking it because i sometimes need to be reminded that at least one part of my body—my colon—still knows how to say no ADHD
is the "no ragrets" on my chest the ill-timed joke that sounded better in my head the reason why i can't break into my own locker, though i knew the combo yesterday it's the mistake i will make but won't learn from the shitty first draft that you read and the revision i swore i'd rewrite and then forgot to turn in again it's like all those promises i left unkept and things i wished i'd said that i only thought of later alone in the dark hiding curled up in my bed it's all those times i added instead of multiplied since i didn't read the directions the high after getting four wisdom teeth pulled the unmedicated laugh on my lips it's why Allie Brosh stopped blogging when the sun stopped waking up why the clown house houses all the mirrors that still knows me when i come it drags me along to its music and when i start to dance it's only then that i realize that i can turn my demons into my friends A Shopping List for Rainy Days
a slightly cracked mug cider mix, apple loose and beaten sweatpants, alma mater variety a blue English sofa, 1-3 loose springs muffled under a mended quilt blanket the quiet after a song (an oldie, but a goodie) wool sweater, two holes for hands to peek out of and cradle cider mug, optional turtle neck melted butter, perfuming the kitchen nearby the scruff of his neck, and the soft hairs that live there cold hands, 2 pairs partially-watched comedy, left forgotten—still-playing—on the coffee table you
you feminist you breaker of things you Mother Teresa pray for us you you fire you boss bitch you moxie Queen Bee speak for us you you freedom fighter you blind to color and your own privilege you misunderstood woman, modern n-word march for us you you femme fatale you better-her-than-me you martyr for mediocre white men forget about us you forget about us the flies buzz all around.
the city, a giant carcass, is covered in a thick, black-blue cloud of them bruising the sky like an accident. my mother saw the twin towers fall from the front porch where she Cassandra-ed my first love into ruin not knowing that from that day forward i'd chase Trojan horses in search of someone like you there is a breadcrumb trail of trash tracking my footprints back where we planted a white flag i try to be neat with the mouths that i feed but the flies still manage to find me and when i dream, it's like years never passed like these small towns were all snacks to the taste of our laughter when in fact i'm much wiser than i was — yet, i don't like to think we were an accident and after all why would the flies hover over something that didn't use to breathe? one year older,
two inches over the height of his nose, three times more charm than four-leafed clovers, you raised five fingers outstretched to meet six palms holding seven mounts showing that only the best kind of people eight nine or so desserts in a single sitting. ten seconds to midnight: eleventh hour mourning of all the ways you fucked up and still got twelve glowing eyes warmly convincing you that black cats, Fridays and thirteenth days can't be that unlucky — you've survived more than a few. And fourteen-agers, your friends were pretty cool to look at you so brightly; fifteen year-old you would've looked forward to her sweet sixteen more if she had friends like these, but back then, not even seventeen birthdays could convince them to treat you with kindness. But when you turned eighteen and realized that creatures with wings fly both by rising and falling, nineteen years seemed more like a gift than a given, and twenty became your present. |
Kat TanHeartbroken & hungry poet. Feed at your own risk. ArchivesCategories |