Today, try writing a poem that follows the same beats: three sentences, six lines: statement, question, conclusion.
There is a grocery list in my mother’s handwriting still asking for coconut milk. How do the dead keep making requests of the living? We call it memory but mean we haven’t learned to say no.
Prompt Inspiration
Via NaPoWriMo
Victoria Chang’s poem, “The Lovers,” is short and somewhat shocking, bringing us quickly from a near-hallucinatory descriptive statement to a strange sort of question, before ending on the very direct statement of a “truth.” Six lines, three sentences, and to top it off, a title that I think works for the poem but is only obliquely related to its text.
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