This was the most tasteful dead dog I could find. Or maybe it’s asleep – let’s just say it’s asleep.
Catching up 33% complete: here’s my first NaPoWriMo effort. High-speed poetry!
The prompt was to write a poem using the first line of another poem.
I used the Poetry Foundation app to find a random poem – which turned out to be ‘Time of Need’ by Allison Seay – which you can read here.
The first line is ‘In the road, a dog. Days dead…’ (As a dog lover, this was a sad one to get).
I only read the rest once I’d written my own (vastly inferior) effort – read the original after, it’s a wonderful short poem. Seay’s has much more redemption than mine!
And so on to April 2nd’s prompt…
Mail Order
In the road, a dog. Days dead,
halo’d in flies, its lolling head
still points towards a door
across the street: number 13.
In that house, a man. Weeks lost,
tangled in light, his right hand
still clutches the dusty remote,
a finger hovering toward the screen.
On that screen, a face. Months mute,
gasping for air, its orange jaw
still selling in goldfish memory-loop
this fabulous product, that mail-order dream.