2022 Poem-A-Day Challenge, Prompts (Days) 23 & 24

I spent the weekend at my parents’ house in Dallas. Snuck in lots of skating, a bike ride to White Rock Lake, and a bunch of poetry writing.

I finished Edge Case by Yz Chin, too. It was worth waiting 5 months for the hardback copy to come into my library!

Prompt (Day) 23: Write a Conspiracy Poem

We return to my college days here. A longstanding rumor amongst East Bank (UMN) dwellers is that Pioneer Hall used to be a mental healthcare facility and that former patients haunt the dorm.

The only aspect about the dorm that’s odd is none of the stairwells go to places you’d expect. There’s also no A/C, which isn’t the worst situation to be in when you only live in the dorm from September through May. (And it is Minnesota.) By the end of September, highs are reliably in the 60s.

For reasons too nuanced to discuss in this blog post, I doubt Pioneer Hall used to be a mental health facility. It doesn’t make sense.

I did mostly-rhyming couplets here.

Ghosts of patients past haunt this dorm
No student immune from spectral harm

Will they come for us in the night?
Play it safe, keep your doors locked tight.

Stairwells like an Escher painting
Even if they hear you screaming

You sleep in a maze, no direct route
Leads your room from the ground

Sepulchre resting beside the Mississippi
Enchanting sights you are forever doomed to see

Prompt (Day) 24: Write a Superhero Poem

Guess it’s time to admit I am not entertained by superhero movies. Edna Mode’s character is the sole reason I enjoyed The Incredibles.

Given that, I chose to write about a different superhero. Apparently the idea that ants open peonies is a myth. I like the myth anyway—it lends a “superhero” status to ants.

For this poem, I returned to a Fibonacci style. Modeled after the Golden Spiral, it contains 6 lines of 1-1-2-3-5-8 syllables.

An
ant
burrows
inside the
peony, opening
flower petals to a fresh breeze.