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...

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...

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...

prompt: (created by myself): one line poem Waterproof Hiking Boots I wish mine were.

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...

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...

And then there’s my other sister, my father’s first daughter, drifting, a sea-tossed medusa, tendrils trailing beneath the waves. Or I...

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...

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...

Another attempt at the WNYC prompt, on Normalcy Normalcy O the shrill of daffodils beneath April’s cloud-clotted skies. But is the...

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...

Prompt: from yesterday, write about something you’re disinterested in. She peppers me with questions, salts me down like a thick-cut...

Everything Is Going to Be Amazing (take two) My sister, the night before she left for California, eighteen, unable to sleep for the...

Everything Is Going to Be Amazing (prompt) Already, the bluebirds are back daffodils exerting themselves skyward the great glorious...

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...

Prompt, from WYNC’s National Poetry Month: write about normalcy. Alchemy Not often, every couple of months, there’d be a last-minute...

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....

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...

Prompt: write a nonet, in which the first line has nine syllables, the next eight, decreasing by one syllable each line. The sky,...

Prompt: write about your alternate self. She’s always first overboard, diving joyously into the deep, not saddled but buoyed by the tank...