“It said it was from IKEA…” (And this picture is from there).
Day two for NaPoWriMo, and something I started yesterday. I looked through some lists of prompts and decided to write a poem which tells a story, in 18 lines or fewer, and which mentions at least four proper nouns.
This was inspired by a detail I noticed, a couple of weeks ago – and wrote down in the back of my notebook (as part of an ongoing list of details), as advised by Natalie Goldberg in the exellent Writing Down the Bones. Here’s my day two poem (day three to follow):
Anything You Do Say
He couldn’t decide what to charge it for, but still picked it up from the corner of Horsefair and Union, pot and all (it said it was from IKEA). Just loitering there, nobody paying it much heed, but he could see
it might be up to something. Yet not knowing what he should or could put on the paperwork, whether it would fall under Solicitation for Immoral Purposes (for who did it solicit but the Sun?), or Causing Affray (because was it really in anyone’s way?). So he pressed its head down as he took it, strapped it in.
Nobody stopped to watch. Now it lies
in the corner, (variegated leaves waving
suspiciously) reflecting in the black
of his widescreen TV. He offers it water
once a day. He feeds it with caution.
He wonders still what it’s in for.