The Daily, Prompted Poet Writes!

I received a great literary Christmas gift among many this year. This one was an offer to include in my daily writing practice an idea suggested by someone else, a launching pass (appropriate for a rocket kid). So today, having a minor stomach bug and needing to rest, I decided to try one and challenge a friend to join me.

This is the prompt for December 26:
You can see everything in the universe in one tangerine (Thich Nhat HanH). Choose a type of fruit and write a poem about how the universe does and doesn't resemble the cosmos.

The Universe, Like Tangerines

Every year they sell cuties in  mesh bags
and I think of the fishnet stockinged leg
that formed a lamp set in the window
in A Christmas Story, which always occupies
two hours of my every Christmas.
The universe is a lot like a fishnet calf
made into a lamp that illuminates
your bad taste to the neighborhood,
in that the universe too is full of bad taste,
bitter with sweet, olives with double pits,
and the fact that butterflies only live for a day.
Fishnet because, as we know, matter is mostly porous,
and we are mostly air, and there is no air in space.
So there. And because some butterflies
are the color of tangerines, this universe seems less fair
than a universe of concentric circles
where love radiates outward from every act
in perfect echoes like rings from a dropped stone
and water would, ideally, be the color orange.
Oh wait—maybe the universe is like that.
But not like tangerines.


Rachel Dacus
12-26-13

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