The lightest note breaks

with lips of frozen berries,
those first kisses beneath wood smoke and stars.
I didn’t realise we had so much in common:
the pen was the key.
It’s a quarter past three on a Sunday morning,
I am an unripe field with scarlet seeping,
everything’s turning,
deceived by a cancerous two-faced moon
at the tipping point of summer.
Once it was the colour of dreaming
without a grave where, lonely, I can weep,

Kim M. Russell, 11th January 2024

Image by Laura Adai on Unsplash

On the eleventh day of 2024, Laura is our host for Meeting the Bar at the dVerse Poets Pub, with a question that occurred to her on first reading Chad Bennet’s ‘Tonight’: When is a poem not a poem?

Laura says that she wondered if the boundaries of poetry have been stretched too far sometimes, but re-reading Bennet’s poem, she began to appreciate the poetry within each statement line, with its pauses for thought, in a catalogue verse of eleven incidental happenings subsumed under the title of one night.

Another example she has given us is an eleven-line extract from Lyn Hejinian’s ‘Final selection from ‘Eleven eyes’.

For today’s MTB Critique and Craft prompt, Laura would like us to write a found poem from our own January – November 2023 poems as an eleven-line list/catalogue poem or an eleven-line verse poem (with or without stanzas).

We should choose from one poem per month, selecting only the first line of the very first verse of our chosen poems. The title should be selected from the twelfth month or any of the previous months’ first line. If we’ve posted fewer than one poem per month for January – November 2023, then we should choose a month where there is more than one to make up the eleven.

Our eleven lines can be written in any date order, but we must keep the original word order. We may only change the tense or personal pronouns, add a conjunction or a preposition for continuity if need be, and make minor erasure adjustments at beginning or end of the original line. Enjambment is allowed. Laura suggests that we include links to our original 2023 poems in a separate column or paragraph.

Links to my poems in order of title and lines:

https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/12/05/clair-de-lune/
https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/01/17/just-a-little-longer/
https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/02/21/kissing-beneath-wood-smoke-and-stars/
https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/04/28/i-followed-emilys-steps-in-haworth/
https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/05/16/writing-freedoms-wings/
https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/06/13/strains-of-billie/
https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/07/11/limerence/
https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/07/10/lunation/
https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/08/29/fragile-bonds-and-lipstick-smears/
https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/09/05/the-old-vicarage-gardens/
https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/10/03/once-it-was-the-colour-of-dreaming/ https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2023/11/02/elegy-for-a-gentle-soul/

42 thoughts on “The lightest note breaks”

  3. Oh this is absolutely stunning, Kim! 😍 I love how the lines flow into one another and create new dimensions especially; “It’s a quarter past three on a Sunday morning, I am an unripe field with scarlet seeping, everything’s turning.” ❤️❤️

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    1. Thank you so much. One of the things about WordPress is the monthly archive, which was very helpful for this prompt. I just took a line from each month in the order they came in.

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  16. Well, you had me as a reader with the first 5 lines! This flows so well. “scarlet seeping” and the “cancerous two faced moon” truly turn the mood of the poem. So very well done and lines so very well chosen!

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  17. Kim,

    Your inclusion of phrases like “frozen berries,” “wood smoke and stars,” and “cancerous two-faced moon” adds such poetic depth to this composition. This amalgamation of verses seems to capture the essence of your poetic voice.

    ~David

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