Mother’s Day is a difficult day for many people after losing a parent, the hope of a good relationship with a parent, a child, the possibility of a child, or the judgment for one’s choices. I hope that this day brings you joy or the support you need. If you wish to write, I have prompts inspired by three poets’ poems, each addressing a very different aspect.
The first prompt is inspired by Marie Howe’s “Hurry.” Use the line “Where one day she might stand all grown” as a ghostline and describe the place where you, or another, had to “stand all grown.”
For the second prompt, write a list poem for the errands—the days— you rush through. Where is the end when you can rest?
The next prompt, inspired by Mary Jean Chan’s “Calling Home,” is to write a prose poem that describes how you want to be seen—by your parents, friends, even yourself.
Or describe the versions of yourself that you cropped, donated, or left on the closet floor. Do you still feel some compassion for those smaller selves, frustration at the starched and stiff selves that constricted your lungs, grief for holes and ragged seams?
What shade or time of day is your voice as you spreak through all the walls separating you from those you once knew you and who will never do so again?
The next prompts are inspired by Blas Falconer’s poem “Legacy.” For the first, write a description of the furniture and knickknacks of childhood home that seem to embody your life then. What would their returning to you bring? A wake, a shadow, the chorus of a song?
For the next prompt, answer what a cup or bowl or vase from your mother’s house could hold without ever naming or mentioning that object.
