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Things Invisible Poetry Prompt: Our Ghosts

By Heather Eure 7 Comments

our ghosts poetry promptAt times, we’re visited by things whose paths were once invisible to us. Soft, hazy ghosts we tend to dismiss or ignore. Yet, there are days when these ghosts demand our attention with keen edges, the kind that scratch and nick. In Rae Armantrout’s poem, Unbidden, she hearkens to the unspoken and the things invisible.

The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one
person. Each
loves you. Each
has left something
undone.

•

Did the palo verde
blush yellow
all at once?

Today’s edges
are so sharp

they might cut
anything that moved.

•

The way a lost
word

will come back
unbidden.

You’re not interested
in it now,

only
in knowing
where it’s been.

— by Rae Armantrout

Try It: Invisible Ghosts Poetry

Listen to the ghosts’ stories. It is time. Let them tell you where they’ve been—in the glimmer and in the shadow. Write a poem in which the ghosts of your past (or a single ghost unrelated to you) tells you their, or its story.

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Featured Poem

Thanks to everyone who participated in our recent poetry prompt. Here is a poem from Monica we enjoyed:

Invisible from the shore of the lake
Under the ripples, always awake
A twist, a whirl, a vortex churning
Below the surface, fire burning
Rumbling, almost too much to take

The water is still, the surface opaque
Yet veiled beneath, submerged, the ache
Remains—a stirring, turbulent yearning
Invisible from the shore

At this depth, something has to break
Opposing currents clash and make
A maelstrom moving, overturning
Never stagnant, always learning—
A push, a weight I cannot shake
Invisible from the shore

—by Monica Sharman

Photo by Donnie Ray Jones. Creative Commons via Flickr.

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How to Write a Poem 283 high How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.

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  • Author
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Heather Eure
Heather Eure
Heather Eure has served as the Poetry Editor for the late Burnside Collective and Special Projects Editor for us at Tweetspeak Poetry. Her poems have appeared at Every Day Poems. Her wit has appeared just about everywhere she's ever showed up, and if you're lucky you were there to hear it.
Heather Eure
Latest posts by Heather Eure (see all)
  • Poetry Prompt: Misunderstood Lion - March 19, 2018
  • Animate: Lions & Lambs Poetry Prompt - March 12, 2018
  • Poetry Prompt: Behind the Velvet Rope - February 26, 2018

Filed Under: Blog, poetry prompt, poetry teaching resources, Things Invisible, writer's group resources, writing prompt

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Comments

  1. Prasanta says

    March 28, 2017 at 3:16 pm

    invisible
    (I am never alone)

    close enough to taunt
    remind me it is proximal

    leaves signs of its presence
    hovers in shadows
    listening, watching, waiting

    unseen, yet ironically
    my constant companion
    always crouching by my side
    never letting me forget

    Reply
    • Heather Eure says

      March 28, 2017 at 9:41 pm

      Very nice, Prasanta. The line “my constant companion” is, for lack of a better word, haunting. Thanks for sharing.

      Reply
    • Rick Maxson says

      March 28, 2017 at 10:22 pm

      Mysterious, Prasanta, the way a ghost should be. I agree with Heather—haunting.

      Reply
  2. Rick Maxson says

    March 28, 2017 at 10:09 pm

    Ghost

    We sit and talk.
    You, the father’s ghost,
    somewhere in the dust
    that falls constantly to earth.

    I have a face for you now,
    a mosaic in glass. In my dreams
    your hands created it,
    like the pieces of the angels
    formed for the Sunday sunshine.

    But there are the houses of memory,
    the chairs moved in the night. You
    can see the scars on the floors.
    I can hear the tolling bells of my crying
    from the blue mouths on my skin,
    ringing in my aging ears.

    In the snowfall of a winter mind,
    your prints are lighter, after all,
    you are a ghost now, your weight
    is really only mine
    until I am weightless too.

    Reply
  3. Rick Maxson says

    March 28, 2017 at 10:19 pm

    Ghost Story

    Ours is a real ghost story. The living,
    are the ones who wander,
    searching for something forgotten
    that would make different the past.

    This is the poltergeist—the cherished spaces
    between pain, where the artist’s
    hands moved to stain and seal the glass—

    darkness broken

    by restrained light—

    a voice from a nightmare, your face
    changed through the mercy of a door’s
    edge; the faint deception
    of a lullaby sounding
    and abating through the years.

    In a real ghost story, no one screams;
    you cannot, and I do not
    know how; there is nothing
    to be done
    about what was right or wrong,
    that door has closed.

    This is a silent movie
    that stops
    and starts without annotation.

    Reply
    • Prasanta says

      March 29, 2017 at 11:19 pm

      These are both wonderful, Rick.

      I liked the “scars on the floors” in the first one.

      In the second one, I especially liked the beginning and ending:

      “The living,
      are the ones who wander”

      and

      “This is a silent movie
      that stops
      and starts without annotation.”

      I could see the scenes and the reels turning. 🙂

      Reply

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