Yesterday's OctPoWriMo prompt suygested choosing words from a page in the dictionary.
I used a dictionary page from my Writing Playground workshop this weekend. We painted book pages to use in art projects and for “workshop favors”. This page was one I brought and I love the colors so I circled willy nilly and found the parade of P’s did not want to stop with the words I circled.
Sometimes alliterative silliness is exactly what is needed to bring poetry onto the page in unexpected ways.
Some of the words I use may be unfamiliar to you as they were to me:
praeposter: a senior student at an English public school who is given authority over other students
praetor: (in the ancient Roman republic) elected magistrates charged chiefly with the administration of civilian justice
pragmatics: the branch of semiotic dealing with the causal and other relations between words, expressions or symbols
prairie phlox: a flower that grows in the Eastern Midwest of the United States. It has white flowers. Not sure if this is the same phlox that grows here in Bakersfield or not! :-)
Chilly February night before the practicum
her head fell to the feather pillow
the penultimate night before
her fate as praeposter was proposed.
or Not…
“Or Not”
“Or Not”
“Or Not”
a praise choir proclaimed
notes and rhythms causing
the prairie grass to prance
like wild ponies celebrating.
In the center sat a magistrate
apparently of Rome
in an impossibly pizzazzy
pearl coated throne
“Imposter?” she wondered
“Praetor impersonator?”
Her feet pushed her forward
weightlessly on plush grasses
the apparent praetor wore
a prairie phlox crown atop her
Veronica Lake tresses
“A prettier version of me?”
she whispered aloud….
“Nothing in prepared me to
pleaded this case.
There is nothing practical about
posing imperially in the middle
of the prairie when my present
academy is in the outskirts
of London!”
The Veronica-Lake-Like-Other
Her, scepter raised high
promulgated,
“Pragmatics, not practicalities
need to be explored!”
with a matching thunderclap
Her sleeping eyes opened to find
her patterned quilt may as well
have been floating over Prague
“No more pragmatism!”
She shouted, rolling
over in her weariness
“It makes dreamy sleep
Images too preposterous!”
-- Julie Jordan Scott