Tag Archives: Inklings

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PF: My Skin–no longer unappreciated

This month’s Inkling challenge was posed by Heidi Mordhorst. She invited us to revisit her multi-prompt Yuletide challenge from last year. After some waffling and general indecisiveness, I returned to the prompt “Appreciate a taken-for-granted part of your body.” As always, I wish I had more time to tinker, especially with the pacing (and the title…sigh! lol), but here it is in its current iteration:

My Skin

Back when it was young and taut
and no hairs grew where they ought not,
I wish I’d known to note skin’s glow
its suppleness, its easy flow
how it encompassed all of me,
was neither creped nor wiggly.

Once long ago it held so firm,
protecting me from sun and germ.
Yet now it’s wrinkled on my hands
a relief map of life’s demands,
with rough terrain and darkened patches,
gullies, gulches, deep crevasses.
It waterfalls above my knees
and dimples up beneath my sleeves.
My skin, long unappreciated,
evolved from smooth to corrugated.

Still finally I’ve seen the worth
of this companion, mine since birth.
This skin, a silent troubadour,
with tales to tell of times before.
Blue-hued scar above my knee
reminds of past catastrophe.
Age spots whisper sunny tales
and eyes are framed by laughter’s gales.
For fast as youth faded away
skin journalled every passing day.

©Molly Hogan, draft

If you want to check out what the other Inklings have done with this challenge, click on the links below.

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Catherine @ Reading to the Core (She’s opting out this week, but her blog is always worth a visit!)

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Mary Lee, so you can both enjoy her response and simultaneously find your way to more poetry. Win! Win!

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November Challenge

Poorly Chosen Craft Move

Conferences plus Covid
alliterative perhaps
but assuredly not poetic

Ugh! So, there’s some context for you. I’ve been swimming in conferences, fever, unplanned absences, cancelled conferences, sub plans, election angst, rescheduled conferences, cancelled rescheduled conferences, etc. And although I can now smell, I still have a very limited range of taste. Somehow, that just seems to be the sour icing on this unpleasant cake I’ve been consuming. But, on the bright side, I’m getting better (yay!), I only have two more conferences to make up, and Linda set us a lovely challenge for the month. Thank goodness for writing friends and challenges!

For our Inklings challenge, Linda shared Joy Harjo’s poem, “Fall” and asked us to respond to it in any way we chose. For some reason (in the midst of fever perhaps?), it seemed like a good idea to print out the entire poem, cut apart the words and then use every single one, some still in phrases, to write a new poem. So, that’s what I tried to do. It was a mixed success.

Ultimately, I took that poem and removed some words and phrases away to come up with this. Every word in this poem is in Harjo’s poem (unless I’ve lost track!), but I’ve chopped out quite a few. Mostly it still feels a bit fever-dreamy to me.

In the Aftermath of Lament

With you on my mind
I cry a forever blue song,
another hanging perfectly
in a necklace of days.

Sky is slightly overcast.
A jay is there again.
The divine yellow leaves
now dark, damp,
a jacket for the earth,
might open the hallway
into this day.

If I need forward,
if I hear the rain,
will your story keep in mine?

©Molly Hogan

To see what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on their names:

Catherine Flynn
Mary Lee Hahn
Heidi Mordhorst
Margaret Simon
Linda Mitchell

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Patricia J. Franz at her blog.

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Poetry Friday: Secrets

For the past several years I’ve enjoyed the creative prompts for the New Year Poetry Challenge (NYPC) from the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center. Each day from mid-December to mid-January, they offer up an original and rich prompt, encouraging you to take it in any direction you’d like. You even have the option to send in one poem to be considered for entry in their annual NYPC chapbook. This year I shared the first ten prompts with my writing group, and Catherine Flynn liked one so much that she chose it for our Inklings challenge. The theme: Secrets. The task: “Write a poem about secrets——family, community/societal, governmental, personal, etc.”

Way back in December, when I first responded to this prompt in my notebook, I was also working on Heidi Mordhorst’s fabulous Yuletide prompts, one of which was to “try to write about effort”. These two prompts combined into this poem:

This pen holds secrets

You can tell by the way
it resists the pull of paper
how you have to exert force
to mark the page
how the ink bleeds and blots
and each letter requires
just a bit more effort
so that your hand aches
as the weight of those secrets
coagulates
until you
and the pen
come to
a stuttering
silent
stop.

©Molly Hogan

This week Mary Lee Hahn hosts the Poetry Friday Roundup at her blog, A(nother) Year of Reading. She shares her response to this prompt there. To check out what the other Inklings did with this prompt, go to the links below:

Catherine Flynn
Linda Mitchell
Heidi Mordhorst
Margaret Simon

And then, just because everyone should listen to this song more frequently…