Inspired by a friend from grad school, I decided to make a poem out of my new books from
the Rochester Children's Book Festival, (which was great!). I guess you could say it's a type of found poem.
Using only titles and other words appearing on the covers or book descriptions, I've written a poem that's all about my love for fiction. Titles include:
Evil Librarian, Bunnicula, Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow, The Riverman, I Kill the Mockingbird, Cloaked in Red, Secondhand Charm, The Rumpelstiltskin Problem, Wake Up Missing, Scrawl, and All the Truth That's in Me.
Getting to spread my poetic wings was such a great experience. It feels like it's been forever since I've written a really fun poem, and that's exactly what this exercise was...FUN!
Fiction
Press the candle’s wick
with just the right touch of
twilight and… “Evil,”
Librarian says,
“comes in all sizes and shapes.”
Today’s mystery:
Meet Edgar Allan’s
Crow? “No. You’re silly children,”
she says. But we aren’t.
We made a promise
to books and stories and yes,
the Riverman.
We want to believe in
fiction. We do it for love.
Or at least we went
ahead and said “I
Kill,” when we knew He could see
different. But not our
Librarian. “The
mockingbird,” she says, “cloaked in
red, is the story
of Little Red. And
you think you know fairytales?”
Yes. We do. Because
we believe. She is
only beginning to know,
to understand. “Deep
in the forest,” she
says. The secondhand ticks and
she becomes young. It’s
magic, a charm. She
gets her chance inside
the story. Like us.
Enchanted trinkets
tell time with golden straw, with
stories and…“Have you
ever wondered just
what Rumpelstiltskin wondered?”
Her words confront the
legend better than
ours ever could. That long name
she speaks appeals to
us. We believe. We
wake up, missing the day. The
promises made might
change, never told, nor
real. We scrawl this story here
for you. We know it
might make things worse. “Hide,”
Librarian says.“Hide yourselves.”
Promises can change
just like people. Man
the truth that’s in me.”
xoxo
K.K.