April 27,2022
Prompt: a duplex, per Jericho Brown The air so still it makes my heart thrum. I can hear the strumming robins’ wings as they dart and dip...
top of page
Sarah Van Arsdale
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 27, 20221 min read
April 26, 2022
On Writing a Novel If I knew how to write a novel, it would be about two sisters in a big, fractured family. They’re in the middle. One...
10 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 27, 20221 min read
April 25, 2022
On Learning to Paint More often than not, I’ve simply stood in dumb awe at the world, unmoving, unable to speak, a gasp held tight in my...
3 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 24, 20221 min read
April 24, 2022
prompt: (created by myself): one line poem Waterproof Hiking Boots I wish mine were.
3 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 24, 20221 min read
April 23, 2022
The bees seemed not to notice me but I could hear their thrumming from the high branches of the willow tree ---or from the switches...
4 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 24, 20221 min read
April 22, 2022
prompt: use repetition It was a lost day it was bright and bare a flood of white tulips flooding toward us the grass so green it hurt my...
2 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 21, 20221 min read
April 21,2022
And then there’s my other sister, my father’s first daughter, drifting, a sea-tossed medusa, tendrils trailing beneath the waves. Or I...
5 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 21, 20221 min read
April 20, 2022
Death Cleaning I always wished I were tidy as my sister, taking her books straight up the stairs to her room, never dropping her coat...
3 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 19, 20221 min read
April 19, 2022
Prompt: Start a poem with a command Look out, little stranger, little ick. There’s nothing for you here, just a ragged edge, a paper cut...
4 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 18, 20221 min read
April 18
Another attempt at the WNYC prompt, on Normalcy Normalcy O the shrill of daffodils beneath April’s cloud-clotted skies. But is the...
0 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 18, 20221 min read
April 17, 2022
Prompt: dogs. Apart from that Weimerauner, trained to kill who trapped me in the coat closet when I was eight years old. I'm sick of that...
3 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 16, 20221 min read
April 16, 2022
Prompt: from yesterday, write about something you’re disinterested in. She peppers me with questions, salts me down like a thick-cut...
1 view0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 15, 20221 min read
April 15, 2022
Everything Is Going to Be Amazing (take two) My sister, the night before she left for California, eighteen, unable to sleep for the...
1 view0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 15, 20221 min read
April 14, 2022
Everything Is Going to Be Amazing (prompt) Already, the bluebirds are back daffodils exerting themselves skyward the great glorious...
2 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 14, 20221 min read
April 13,2022
On Coming Back to the Country House Everything’s the same---last year’s dry weeds in a tangled spill, willow branches down again, leaves...
2 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 14, 20221 min read
April 12, 2022
Prompt, from WYNC’s National Poetry Month: write about normalcy. Alchemy Not often, every couple of months, there’d be a last-minute...
0 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 14, 20221 min read
April 11, 2022
Prompt at Peter’s suggestion. On Organizing the Kitchen Cupboards They weren’t as sticky as I’d feared except that swath under the honey....
0 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 12, 20221 min read
April 10, 2022
Prompt: write a love poem. My addition: after Miklos Radnoti And still I cannot write about you. How can I write you a love poem, while...
3 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 9, 20221 min read
April 9, 2022
Prompt: write a nonet, in which the first line has nine syllables, the next eight, decreasing by one syllable each line. The sky,...
2 views0 comments
Sarah Van Arsdale
Apr 9, 20221 min read
April 8, 2022
Prompt: write about your alternate self. She’s always first overboard, diving joyously into the deep, not saddled but buoyed by the tank...
3 views0 comments
bottom of page