Category: 8th Day Challenge

Happy Hour #8thDayChallenge

Happy Hour

the tumbler lowers
your smirk refracts
in the swirl between ice cubes
i, with darts in my fabrics
and hands without stone,
am creating a new happy
despite your confusion.

© 2016 Melissa Currence

Happy New Year! I took a small break for writing on the blog in December. But I’m happy to be back and ready to take on 2016.

My prompt for this poem was the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

What are your writing goals for this year? Let me know!  I am going to work on mine and share them with you soon.

The #8thDayChallenge

I hope you will join me in the 8th Day Challenge!

Let’s Stay in Touch!

Here lies Octavia #8th Day Challenge

Here lies Octavia (1875-1888)

Gravestone, Octavia Carter, 1875-1888

Gravestone of Octavia Carter, 1875-1888.

I breathe out the dandelion seeds
and roll in the hay bales
I push up the ryegrass
to grip their roots.

I run my scarred hands
in the thistle nests
and pat the ruts to keep them worn.
Dust rouges my cheeks
as I swing around the peeling tree trunks.

I’ve watched you
since the devil gripped my foot in the stirrup.
You have also absorbed death
between each sunset for a century.

I wish you could hear my song
and your laughter could
echo with mine,
that we still had a life
among these slaty hills.

Come now,
this is nowhere for the living.

© Melissa Currence 2015

This poem came together because of Halloween and listening to my mother’s stories about our family. She retold me the story of Octavia, who died when she was 13 years old after a horse riding accident. This picture is of her gravestone from 2013, 125 years after she died.

While the idea of the poem came together quickly, I worked on it for days. Since each word choice is so important in a poem, I can drive me crazy trying to search for the right one. I find if I am editing a poem a lot, I often have to look at the first draft to remember what I was trying to say.

What is your editing process? Let me know in the comments.

The #8thDayChallenge

I hope you will join me in the 8th Day Challenge!

Let’s Stay in Touch!

Nora On Holiday #8thDayChallenge

sanka_coffee

This orange jar is seared in my memory.

Nora on Holiday

Her kitchen produced a thousand
tubs of mustard potato salad
and gallons of country gravy with
coffee splashed in for color.
She knew Elvis was the
best-looking man to ever
have lived and kept
an army of whatnots in arm’s reach.
The Sanka jar sat in the center
of the table for any
who happened to visit,
holding their mugs for tales
of Avon ladies, icy commutes
on inherited mountain roads,
Teamster meetings and the procedures
that cut things out of the family.
Curlers were rolled in
for Monday morning
but the house coat
set her free until

© Melissa Currence 2015

I’m still inspired by the “I am from…” poem prompt from George Ella Lyons. So I went in search of family poetry prompts and found a helpful post from Melissa Donovan on WritingForward.com. I saw the column for Grandparents and got inspired to write about my Grandma Nora, who passed away in 2011.

The #8thDayChallenge

I hope you will join me in the 8th Day Challenge!

Let’s Stay in Touch!

 

Write a poem or story by the 8th Day of the Month – #8thDayChallenge

The #8thDayChallenge

The #8thDayChallenge

I have a wonderful writing group. We formed organically out of a poetry community education class (taught by the poet Mick Parsons), and we met monthly for 5 years until one of us moved a few states away. We still get together a few times a year to catch up, talk poetry and share what we wrote.

But I miss our monthly meeting schedule when I was sure to complete at least one poem a month. And since I love to journal, it is easy for me to write only for myself.

I need THE DEADLINE!

To help me, I came up with the idea that I would write at least one poem and publish it here by the 8th day of every month. I hope you will write with me!  This Challenge can be for any creative writing.

Why the 8th Day?

Besides the number 8 being the infinity symbol (I’ll write forevah!), I chose this date because being early in the month just makes it feel less lazy. And I can make a reoccurring appointment in my calendar, FTW.

The #8thDayChallenge

Here is my poem I wrote from my journal writing prompt from last week.

Pacify

I saw you on the TV news once
during a story about teens chewing on pacifiers –
the plaids and chokers and your laughing eyes
filled the screen

You read my diary before you transferred,
letting out my secrets into the junior high air
revealing I was a simple formula
– a sketch of a real human, the pencil outlines of a life –
I didn’t even know how to crush until I met you

The church girl in me worried
you wouldn’t leave teenage-hood unscathed.
But now I know we were all meant to stand there
and let it crash into us
as the scars become the beauty
the pain fills us in

© Melissa Currence, 2015

Let me know if you try the #8thDayChallenge for yourself!

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