20 Ways to Start a Poem
Rebecca Danelly
- Wait, as the ribbon does. For the return, for the hammer strike. The letter. The forgetfulness of movement. The wilderness of meaning.
- Sip up amber light on morning leaves.
- Hover on the needle’s head. Bury, then rise. Hover in the thread’s loop.
- There are always grapes in the jade bowl. Look at your calendar. Report the rot.
- See how the ship carries off its containers, like meaning. Like a child in a chrysanthemum dress. Like a blackbird’s cackles. Oops! It’s a grackle.
- Be the adhesive to your mother’s death. No, her birth.
- The white ponies sniff the orchard across the road. Abide there.
- You must call the red admiral when the cock crows. The hens will forgive you.
- You know what’s really in the magic coat. Run!
- Sip amber. Sip the sun’s rays on green leaves.
- Be the worker’s grip on the pipe. Be the worker’s hands. Be the rig.
- A Ferris wheel pauses during a fireworks display. Count the red spirals, the green stars. The amber chrysanthemums.
- A child stands near the lakeshore with a defiant dog. Be the child. Be the mastiff. Smell the lake.
- Sing the song the wildcatter learned from his mother. Match your tune to the ocean’s pulses.
- Let yourself fall back into the arms of the person you trust the least. The volcano’s precipice.
- Children pass a paper weight’s mass of meaning in a game of telephone. Whisper spider. Whisper spider. Spider. Silver. Shout.
- Be the apology that spills out of a shop door as girls clamber on a Jeep’s playground of fenders.
- Melt in the orchard south of Vermilion.
- Like a child, look up at the red admiral.
- The sharks hunt at the end of the sandbar. The waves break there. Find the star.
