I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?
In January I wrote about: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.
In February: chair, chlorine, church, concert, cookbook, couch, dancing, desk, dessert, dining room table, diploma.
In February: chair, chlorine, church, concert, cookbook, couch, dancing, desk, dessert, dining room table, diploma.
March: divorce, door, dream, emergency room, envelope, eyebrows, first apartment, first job, food, game, garden.
April: I took a break to focus on ARTSPEAK: Happy!
Here are the prompts for May: gloves, great-grandparent, guidebook, gun, gym class, hair, hands, hat, high heels, honeymoon, hood.
April: I took a break to focus on ARTSPEAK: Happy!
Here are the prompts for May: gloves, great-grandparent, guidebook, gun, gym class, hair, hands, hat, high heels, honeymoon, hood.
GLOVES
So... I wasn't
a debutant, wasn't into baseball.We moved a lot, but seemed to park only in hot climes (Saudi Arabia or the
southeastern US) so I may have had mittens at one time or another, but I don't recall any cold-weather gloves. I maybe could write about work/garden gloves... medical gloves? No... the only gloves
I really remember are Grandma's gloves.
Grandma's
Gloves
a set
of gull's wings
tucked
inside a nest
of
tissue paper
smooth
and fragile
as
seashells,
so soft
we must only
stroke
them
with
our fingertips
and
dream of the day
still
oceans away
when
we'll be graceful enough
to slip
them on
- Irene Latham
.... just wanted to add that I've been looking at this project from the eyes of my child-self. Had I written this poem from my adult perspective, I might have included the fact that once I was "graceful enough/ to slip them on," they wouldn't fit my hands! I inherited my mother's wide, capable hands, and Grandma's hands were much thinner. What a disappointment to finally be allowed to try on the gloves only to find... I couldn't get them on after all. Sigh.
And here's a link to a 2016 ARTSPEAK! poem featuring blue gloves from art by van Gogh.
"smooth and fragile/as seashells," a lovely truth! I remember gloves like those, may still have one pair, deep in a dresser drawer. As a child, we did wear gloves when we dressed up for special outings. Love hearing that 'after' memory, too, Irene. What we look forward to may not always be fulfilled.
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