30 Poems in 30 Days

30 Poems in 30 Days
NaPoWriMo
A Project for National Poetry Writing Month

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Day 30 Backwards Poem




Wallace Stevens in a Dream with Snakes

Like any dream in Tennessee
they did not have another place
the jar and quiet snakes.
They took dominion. Everywhere --

so blue, and courting light and air.
The jar was bright against the dirt.
They slept awhile and dreamt of mice,
theses snakes it summoned, curled inside

they writhed and moaned.
We tasted whistling, grizzling air,
then filled it there with hair and clay,
that jar I placed in Tennessee.




* This poem is a backwards reshaping of a poem I wrote on the first day of NaPoWriMo in 2013, in response to a prompt which asked us to begin with the first line of another poem. The original poem can be found here: Firsts.

And so...thus endeth the poetry-finger-painting exercises for 2015, stumbling across the finish line once again.