Happy Sunday—or what is left of it. I hope your weekend was good and you are ready for the work week. I am not and should be in bed, but there is poetry to push me onward.
Megan McDermott’s “Not Me” beautifully questions the borders and definitions of identity. I hope you find it as compelling as I did.
For the first prompt, try to delineate the borders of yourself and those around you. How much of your father is smiling behind your mouth; was your sense of humor built upon his and the movies and TV shows you watched together? How much of your mannerisms are copies of your mother’s? How many of your favorite in-jokes with your partner or an ex came from someone they never met, that they assumed were yours and now shared between only the two of you. How much of your writing is a reflection or a rejection of the writers who came before you began making your own poems, stories and worlds?n
The second prompt is to imagine yourself as a stained glass window in a cathedral. Describe the scene depicted, if any. What or who is the light shining through you?
For the third, write a poem, story or essay that attempts to answer one of the three questions McDermott asks in the poem.
The next prompt is to fill in the last word of the line “Maybe every identify needs to stay a” with your own noun instead of the poem’s “paradox” and use it for a ghostline.
The last prompt is to write a poem or story using the following word list: “asserts,” “humility,” “cracks,” “impulse,” “grace,” “needs,” “blinkering,” “bulbs,” “unfastened“ and “hands.”
Bonus prompt: write about the differing sources of light and interplay of colors onto this castle’s shapes and textures as a metaphor for the soul/intellect and the body.
Good luck writing!