Independent Projects and Final Portfolio DUE FRIDAY 6/9

Another poetry prompt

The Conditional

Ada Limón, 1976

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.

Project: Poetry Prompt An Alphabetical Letter Poem

Z   Julie Marie Wade

Citadel of our best names—angsty Zooey & chatty Zarathustra,               wee Zaccheus & mighty Zorro. (Zebediah, of course, would                            place among them.)  Experiment in endings (A-Z), as in “where the A ends up,” the crooked        path               an A could take toward some arrival’s gate (zig-zag).    Or Z-pack: superhero strength contained in capsules.  Like the 7, crossed or uncrossed, mustachioed or not,               the Z with its dashing  good looks & flaming androgyny,  its                            cursive tail & tiger purr.  That Z, its maze of contradictions, shape-shifter & fortress of finality:                N’s topsy-turvy cousin, S’s more callous sidekick, The stuff of caped-crusader skirmishes: ZAP! &  ZOOM!  Enabler of interjections (think Wowie Zowie! think Zoinks!)                Symphonic doppelgänger shadowing xylophone & disguise.  The verbage of bees, buzzing all day in a hive.  Zeta or zed, its dialectical relatives, or the numeral 3,                 Z’s bodacious brother on its mother’s side.         Ambiguous, flirtatious, & worth 10 points on the Scrabble board,                 Z turns out to be quite the catch—zany, zesty, & remarkably                            well-read. But despite its zeal, Z can also communicate quietly, eloquent as an             ideogram.                 It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring… How do we know? Just look at the rocket of Zs rising out of his mouth.