This month we are doing Word Play poems.
Laura shared this form with us after she enjoyed it on Today's Little Ditty last spring.
Check out Nikki Grimes' description here.
The idea is to explore a word: what it sounds like, what it means to you, what it implies.
This was a fun one for me once I started thinking about my kitchen.
Kitchen is a Choppy Word
Kitchen is a choppy word.
Hard “K” to start us off eager and excited,
a voiceless stop consonant middle, then
no nonsense end, a closed syllable schwa blend.
My kitchen is all that -
a room enclosed in warmth,
bright with humming and dancing,
or hungry childish crying.
When the only phone hung
by the kitchen door
we scribbled phone numbers
in pencil on cheerful yellow walls.
My kitchen is full of ghosts I love.
It has wrung with curses, been
bright red with blood splatter, and often
smelt of burning bacon.
My kitchen is a small square space;
a triangle of hot, cold, and sharp.
Gushing water, cracking ice, boiling pots,
flowing or frozen or forgotten.
Favorite coffee mugs mix and match with
tea cups bought in tourist shops.
Hope chest flatware shuffle with discount spoons;
mom’s china and thrift store plates.
There are rainbow prisms in the window,
dog dishes by the door,
tripping hazard cats curled up on the rag rug,
and a light left on all night.
- Andromeda Jazmon
Visit my Poetry Sisters' blogs to read their poems:
And make sure to find time to visit the Friday Poetry Round up by Linda at TeacherDance. Enjoy!
Poetry Peeps! You're invited to join our challenge for the month of November! Here's the scoop: We're writing an Ode to Autumn. An ode is a lyrical poem, and like the ancient Greeks, modern humans also enjoy marking an occasion with a song. Whether you choose an irregular ode with no set pattern or rhyme, or the ten-line, three-to-five stanza famed by Homer himself, we hope you'll join us in singing in the season of leaf-fall and pie. Are you in? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on November 26th (the Friday after Thanksgiving, so plan ahead) in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.
13 comments:
I love how you started off all choppy and factual, but then got to the heart of a kitchen, with the sounds, sights, memories. I snorted a bit at the smell of burned bacon -- my mom was notorious for burning lima beans set to simmer and forgotten. Along with all the other memories of delicious smells from my childhood kitchen, burnt lima beans also lingers! What an ending, too -- that light left on all night. **Sigh**
SO MANY MEMORIES of another time, kitchen-centered, that phone on the wall. I loved this, Andi.
Andi, I love this. I feel like I know your kitchen AND my kitchen better after reading it, which is no small feat. I extra love the two stanzas beginning My kitchen is full of ghosts I love and My kitchen is a small square space. But then the final line is the best of all. You always leave a light on for others, Andi <3
"And a light left on all night."
The perfect ending, reminding me of Where the Wild Things Are ("and it was still hot.")
I love how you've used all the senses, and put us exactly THERE in your kitchen. And I'm with Kelly---that ending is wonderfully perfect.
Oh, I LOVE that night-light. "We'll leave the light on for ya." It's so homey, so safe - even with the blood spatter and burning bacon... we start from a hard 'k' and move into the heart of things. I really like this.
Although your word "kitchen" does not start quite the same, the loving poem seems to have "kitsch" in it instead of "kitch". I liked that beginning 'choppy' & the analysis of the word, sneaking in the 'no nonsense' with all the details of 'warmth'. I love the ending, a small thing many might think, but I remember one light in a kitchen, too. This is lovely!
Thank you for all these kinds comments! My kitchen really is all of this; such a mixture of memories, emotions, and scents. And we really do leave the light above the stove on all night for the night-wandering teenages. :)
Give me this kitchen cluttered with real life any day over the ones in the magazines, on YouTube, with everything in its place. This stanza especially...
My kitchen is a small square space;
a triangle of hot, cold, and sharp.
Gushing water, cracking ice, boiling pots,
flowing or frozen or forgotten.
You've shared such wonderful memories of your kitchen and the life in it. I really love this part:
My kitchen is a small square space;
a triangle of hot, cold, and sharp.
I love thinking about it in these terms.
I'm now thinking about my kitchen in a different way.
What a lovely wordplay poem. A kitchen is such a familiar spot, a functional place of gathering, and a memory keeper. You brought it all together. Leaving a light on is always a way to keep a kitchen safe for wandering souls.
Marvelous, so much happening in that small space–I could reach out and touch your
"phone numbers
in pencil on cheerful yellow walls."
And your "rainbow prisms" are lovely
Thanks for inviting us in Andi!
This poem about the kitchen brought me back to my kitchen, the sights, the smells, and the memories.
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