Bridges & Tunnels: Poetry Prompt

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bridges & tunnels poetry promptAnimate is a poetry prompt that focuses on speaking as if we are a particular object or thing. This time, we’re speaking as Bridges & Tunnels.

Prompt Guidelines and Options

1. Speak in the first person.

2. Be specific. Think nouns instead of adjectives.

3. Consider where you—a bridge or a tunnel—are located, or where you came from, or where you are going. Or, speak as if you have a special desire or concern: maybe you are hungry, missing something, afraid of a sight or sound, in love with another bridge or tunnel that is like you or not like you. Be creative. Any type of situation is fair game.

4. Consider doing a little research about the bridge or tunnel you will speak as: folklore, history, associated words, music, art, sculpture, architecture, fashion, science, and so on. Look for unusual details, so you can speak convincingly and intriguingly about yourself.

That’s it! We look forward to hearing you speak poetically, from the viewpoint of bridges & tunnels.

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Featured Poem

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

When 19 at the Fontana Di Trevi

When I was 19
at the Fontana Di Trevi
I tossed in three coins
with the right hand
over the left shoulder

I lost track of where they landed
among hundreds of copper and silver bits
splattered like a random mosaic
on the fountain’s floor

I walked on then
through the long, narrow piazza
past the hungry pigeons
to the rest of the day, the rest of Italy
and the rest of my life

If the bits were underwater, drowning
they’d still catch fire, blaze,
transform, materialize
in a far-off future
or so it goes with magic and wishes

But years later
I’d find out the true charge for dreams
I’d collect a bag of gold and toss it all in
For friendship, love, happiness

Would it cost extra
for a certain pair of eyes
because tears and time
are too high of a price to pay

I’d drop in as many shiny, crisp coins needed
to end poverty, hunger,
cancer, disease

Tell me the cost
to end refugees’ wandering
and to build the homeless a home

What is the price to pay,
Fontana Di Trevi,
to end racial divides
and for men to respect women
as fellow creatures of dignity

I’ve been saving coins and wishes
ever since the day
I heard it on the news
since I saw you fleeing
since I saw you weeping

And I’ve been saving
for my own lonely heart

When 19
you think three coins is enough

At 19
it’s all you’ve got

But when you’re older
you’d gather all the gold of this world
and dump it in the fountain of wishes
if that’s all it took

—by Prasanta Verma

Photo by Alyssa. Creative Commons via Flickr.

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How to Write a Poem 283 highHow 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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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

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Comments

  2. Beneath my rusty steel
    Fires burn-the only warmth
    for outstretched hands
    that have no hope.
    In tattered clothes
    they wonder when
    the next shelter
    will become available.
    For now there is
    no room in the inn
    and they are thankful
    for my strong stable.
    Their manger
    a shredded Sealy
    offering little relief
    from the night’s bitter cold.
    Commuters race home
    to generous meals and
    laughter among their loved ones.
    Never knowing,
    or perhaps ignoring
    the homeless, the hopeless
    beneath my rusty steel.

    Reply

  4. To a Panther

    Here
    kitty,
    kitty,
    kitty.
    This is the way.
    Trot thou through it.

    Note: Florida maintains several overpasses and underpasses that serve as safe crossings for the endangered panther as well as other wildlife that could become roadkill.

    Reply

  6. Goodness, with 446 bridges in the City of Bridges (or 2,000, depending on the criteria) and maybe a dozen tunnels, where does a Pittsburgher start?

    Reply

  8. That bridge you built
    with sweating hands,
    across my heart’s divide,
    while secretly I tunnelled,
    has brought us side to
    side, and in the stretch
    of moment, connected
    as we were, both mind
    and soul directed, that
    we remain entwined.

    Reply

  9. Mighty twig

    We can’t blame the builder
    our ties were vacillant
    from the first step
    you took in my direction

    I ignored the choking lines
    and believed
    as a twig could have confidence
    in being thick and
    well grounded

    It takes two foundations
    and what is in a name?

    Your ties
    too tight
    brought matches
    to set
    out twigs
    on fire

    Let them burn.

    Reply

  11. “Dig” or “Choice to Choice”

    A mess of proteins, loosely termed a person
    interfaced with a silicon-based logic engine,
    entering into a choice-based virtual world
    (commonly known as a text adventure)
    wherein were presented behavioral options
    such as go north, open door, climb stair, & so on…
    whereupon, a flashing cursor appearing, the person signaled
    “dig”
    as the result of which command, I came into existence,
    for I am a tunnel, with you as my witness
    leading at once down and away
    from the starting point of a simple game.
    As to where I go, well, there’s a catch to that
    which is that in bare point of fact
    the game exists only in the mind
    of the poet whose patchy some-what rhymes
    you (if you do) now deign to read –
    do you see? –
    the poet who, in the spirit of reader satisfaction
    even this moment is undertaking the action
    of writing that I lead to an underground grotto
    through the hollows of which a subterranean river flows
    with on its banks a small flat watercraft,
    by which I suppose daft poet means a raft…
    At any rate, we’re left at the cursor, the logic engine, the person –
    in other words, in some sense, I lead to where we began,
    which, come to think of it, between me and you
    all tunnels do.

    Reply

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