Quick note: Four of my poems were recently posted in the most recent issue of Otoliths. One poem in particular from that bunch I had been trying to get published for more than a year. So, it just goes to show that persistence pays off in the end. Click here to read them.

*****

For today's prompt, I want you to write a backwards poem. I'll be interested to see what everyone writes (including myself here in a few minutes). Some ideas for writing backwards poems: Write your poem in reverse chronological order OR instead of writing from most important details to least, go least to most important OR flip the point of view of a poem (instead of writing about the good guys' perspective, write from the bad guys--or vice versa) OR take it in some other completely different direction (as long as that direction is somewhat backwards).

Here's my attempt:

"Ohio Geography"

Zanesville-place to stay the night when lost
Youngstown-pot holes big enough to swallow a car
Xenia-always worried a tornado will hit
Waynesville-antique capital of the midwest
Vandalia-place to visit as a child, forget as an adult
Upper Sandusky-actually south of actual Sandusky
Troy-eat strawberries along the river levee
Sharonville-has a nice park for running hills
Reynoldsburg-wrong side of Columbus
Quaker City-pretty much self-explanatory
Perrysburg-has a water tower south of Toledo
Oxford-attractive college campus and students
New Lebanon-nice town to drive through without stopping
Mansfield-largest all boys track relay meet in midwest
Lebanon-has a horse track and other stuff
Kettering-great place to raise a family
Jeffersonville-outlet shopping madness
Ireland-tucked away in corner no one ever visits
Hillsboro-place to escape after graduation
Greenville-weird circle in middle of town
Fairfield-caught between Cincinnati and Hamilton
Eaton-home of the Preble County Pork Festival
Dayton-birthplace of aviation and Paul Laurence Dunbar
Columbus-the heart of the heart of it all
Bowling Green-flat land with one big manmade hill
Ashtabula-Lake Effect Snow

*****

Follow me on Twitter @robertleebrewer

*****

Looking for poetry markets? Test drive WritersMarket.com.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010 2:57:30 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [139] 

Congratulations go out to the 2009 November PAD Chapbook Challenge winner, Nancy Posey, for her collection Let the Lady Speak.

I enjoyed reading Nancy's entire collection, which includes poems referencing Gone With the Wind, Amelia Earhart, William Shakespeare, and more. As you may be able to guess from the title, this chapbook collects the voices of various women and shares them with the reader. It was a nice idea around which to build a collection.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Or Maybe the Day After That

I'm tired of thinking about Tara,
trying to save her for God knows what.
I'm tired of plenty
after all those months
of making do.
Sometimes I miss boiled turnips
and dirt under my nails.
I'm tired of dresses
made to order, petticoats
and ball gowns,
so tired I could rip these curtains
from the windows too.
I'm too tired to bear anyone's grief
but my own,
tired of apologizing
for misplaced jealousy.
I don't care if I have to loosen
my corsets after a hearty meal,
one I cooked myself.
Right now I have no plans
to make plans. Instead,
I'm going to sit right here
at the foot of the stairs
and have a good cry,
and I don't care if anyone
gives a damn or not.
Maybe tomorrow, my thoughts
will come clearer--or
maybe the day after that.

Attachment

"It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." -James Baldwin

I was no good at being a child,
she said:
No tree-climbing or bike-riding
captured my attention.
I lived for books.

I formed my first attachments
to the people I met
between the pages
of books. Jo March
breathed air to me more
tangible than that of students
I met in my fourth grade
classroom. I knew her;
I wanted to be her.

Never having seen a farm,
I knew nonetheless the
feel of Black Beauty
beneath my saddle.

Like Pippi Longstocking,
I slept for weeks
with my feet on the pillow,
my head at the foot of the bed,
despite warnings
of the danger to my eyes,
encountering by flashlight
the lives of my other friends:
Charlotte, Wilbur,
Nancy, Bess, and George,
Freddy and Flossie,
the Count of Monte Cristo.
I too plotted my escape.

Feet

"I grant I never saw a goddess go;
my mistress when she walks treads on the ground."
                                 -William Shakespeare

Heavy footed, even back when I didn't
weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet,
I could never slip up on anyone. I clomped
when barefoot, and in high heels, I clicked.

No one could accuse me of not trying,
though. Aware of more graceful girls,
I aspired--to no avail--to steal, unnoticed,
into their ranks but lived and breathed--

and walked--the personification of
two left feet. Dances were no different:
I trampled on the toes of luckless boys,
even tripping over my own two feet.

What vast relief, when I discovered poetry,
to find there feet content to trip along
as I directed; dactyls, iambs, trochees
all do my bidding, with unmatched grace.

*****

I asked Nancy to share a little of her thoughts on the collection, and here's what she had to say:

Tuesday, February 02, 2010 4:18:48 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [42] 

On Groundhog Day, I will be announcing the winner of the 2009 November PAD Chapbook Challenge. From more than 150 submissions, I have narrowed the field down to 21 finalists.

Each person who completed the challenge put in more work than the typical poet. First, they wrote poems regularly throughout the month of November. Second, they revised and compiled 10-20 pages worth of poems during the month of December. Third, they followed the submission rules to make sure their manuscripts were in by the deadline. Accomplishing all these goals is a task within itself and should give you an idea of the quality of the manuscripts I received. It is obvious to me that each poet who entered is dedicated to their craft. To those who entered: Thank you so much!

However, my goal after the deadline is to narrow the many great submissions down to one winner.

Here are the 21 finalists (in no particular order):

1. Ghost Flower, by Ruth Nolan
2. Wild Grace, by Jeanne Rogers
3. Endless, by Anne Baber
4. Blood and Bones and Water, by Christina Hile
5. Perpetual, by J R Turek
6. River-Hearted City, by Karen H. Phillips
7. Grateful, by Mike Barzacchini
8. The Real Bionic Woman, by A.C. Leming
9. Something Borrowed, by Tish Lester
10. Against the Sky, by Deborah Hauser
11. Let the Lady Speak, by Nancy Posey
12. Sampled Between Teeth, by Jennifer Miller McIntyre
13. French Lessons, by Ken Kibler
14. After a Decade, by Faye Williams Jones
15. Life Stories, by Jenny Doughty
16. Greeks Bearing Gifts, by Joseph Harker
17. Something Beautiful in the Desert, by Jane Beal
18. The Making of a Common Man, by Taylor Graham
19. no small thing, by Khara Elizabeth House
20. Women in Eden, by Alana I. Capria
21. Through This Rain, by J. Hugh MacDonald

The overall winner will be drawn from this list. If you don't see your name in this list (and expected to see it), I would like to remind you that the quality level was high and that I had to cut manuscripts with good poems in them. Plus, writing competitions are subjective. Another judge probably would've looked at the same 150 manuscripts and came up with a slightly different pool of finalists. But I don't want to take away from these 21 highly deserving poets who are now one step closer to joining Shann Palmer (the 2008 winner) as November PAD Chapbook Challenge Champions.

Have a great weekend, and I'll announce the overall winner on Tuesday.

*****

If you don't already, you can follow me on Twitter @robertleebrewer.

*****

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Friday, January 29, 2010 8:00:21 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [58] 

Today (from 1-2 p.m. Cincinnati time) will be my last "live" session on the poets.org/forum. Be sure to visit, read the thread (which just happens to be the most active guest poet thread ever), and leave a question or two. Today, I'm going to be focusing on self-promotion/marketing tactics, but I'm up for talking about anything related to poetry. Click here to view my specific thread.

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Later this evening, President Obama will be making his first annual State of the Union address. I'm not going to get political one way or the other on this blog, but the event did inspire today's prompt, which is...

For this week's prompt, I want you to take the phrase "State of (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make that the title of your poem, and then, write a poem. Sure, you could title your poem "State of the Union" or "State of blank," but you could also come up with interesting titles like "State of the butterflies in Argentina," "State of my credit report," or even "State of Ohio" (what could be more interesting than credit reports and Ohio, right?).

Here's my attempt:

"State of the ampersand"

No skin in January. Fingers forced
into pockets and gloves. Some mittens

even. We avoid eye contact
as our breath makes like smoke.

February will only get worse. More
gray skies & hands held apart

even as we pray for March
& everything that follows after.

*****

Want to publish your poetry? Click here to learn more about the 2010 Poet's Market (edited by moi).

& don't forget: You can follow me at Twitter by searching for @robertleebrewer

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 1:48:22 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [120] 

Okay, as anyone who's been reading this blog knows, it's been a while since I've posted anything other than prompts here. Most of that is just me trying to keep up with my (ab)normal workload. Part of that is just me trying to get my own poetry together. But I can't sit on this great interview any longer!

Helen Losse is the Poetry Editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. She has two chapbooks, Gathering the Broken Pieces (FootHills Publishing) and Paper Snowflakes (Southern Hum Press). In 2009, Rank Stranger Press published Losse's collection Better With Friends.

Here's one of my faves from Better With Friends:

Starting Over

Pretend your first letter is A,
your first number is 1. Pretend you
recognize the word is--nothing more:

(You are 6.) And "Is is is" is
a sentence you can read. But forget
that. Forget is. We're starting over.

Pretend your mind is clean.
As clean as your feet before bed.
There is a tree in the garden,

and the fruit looks good. There is
a voice and a man. There is a snake.
A voice and a man and a snake and a tree.

(Forget what you think you know.) Listen.
The teacher's voice is saying, "The snake is like
the caterpillar we read about last week.

Do you think the snake is very, very hungry?"

*****

What are you currently up to?

I'm promoting Better With Friends through readings and book signings and writing book reviews for books by other poets.  I've started a new poetry manuscript, with the working title Seriously Dangerous, that I hope will become a second book or at least another chapbook.  I'm submitting poems to various magazines.  I'm also enjoying other aspects of my life—like watching sports (NASCAR, football, and basketball), networking, and decorating the house and sometimes cooking for various holidays throughout the year.  I've learned that promoting a book takes quite a bit of time and energy and that "down time" is good. Mostly, my husband and I enjoy a quiet life. 

Your collection Better With Friends has quite a few poems about trains, and you've let me know that you and your husband both enjoy rail fanning. Could you explain what rail fanning is and how it relates to your writing?

Rail fanning is seeking trains to watch (and often photograph). I leave the photography to my husband. Rail fanning differs from chasing trains in that rail fans often remain in one place and wait for trains to come to them. It's a slow hobby that my husband compares to fishing. You sit—rail fans sometimes bring chairs—or stand around talking until a train comes. When it does come, you watch hard. You smell and feel the wind off the train, note the kind of cars and how many, wave at the engineer or conductor and know which is which. Serious rail fans often have radios that pick up the frequencies used by the railroads so they have a better idea of when the next train should arrive and which direction it will come from. I love the sights, sounds and smells of the engines, but I also notice that wild flowers—maybe called "weeds" by some—grow beside the tracks.  We created a ritual in which every day I choose one flower as the "official railroad flower." This flower always gets photographed. The next day there will be a new one. Just part of the fun.

My husband and I have taken vacations that involved mostly rail fanning.  (It's good to have a back-up plan in case of rain.) We've been to North Platte, NE, where the largest switch yard is located and through the Powder River Valley in Wyoming, watching coal trains that supply most of the low sulphur coal to the nation. This year we followed the rails through Kansas from Arkansas City north toward Kansas City.  The best place we found for rail fanning was at the back of a cemetery in Paola, KS, where BNSF and UP lines intersect. 

The title of my book Better With Friends was taken from a railroad trip my husband and I took to the "loops" near Black Mountain, NC—a section where the rails loop back on themselves as they wind up the Blue Ridge Mountains—with a dear friend Paul Cherenzia in which he said, rail fanning is "better with friends." I wrote what became the title poem for him. Sadly, he died before the book was published. Another poem is about a hobo we met in Hamlet, NC. Travel is always a source of material for a writer, and rail fanning is no exception.

Rank Stranger Press published your collection Better With Friends. Could you explain the responsibilities and expectations from both the publisher and the writer?

I didn't want to self-publish Better With Friends, and I didn't.  Charlie Whitley, the editor of  Rank Stranger Press, served as a "go-between"—between me and the printer—to make sure everything about the book turned out the way I had envisioned. He insisted things be done a certain way. He did his job well. I have a beautiful book. I knew from the start that the book would be high quality because it was being printed in Charlotte by Main Street Rag. I had shopped this book to various publishers for over two years, when I asked Charlie for help. Charlie Whitley did for me what no one else seemed willing to do: He published my book. 

The division of labor was clear from the start. Whitley was upfront about his involvement. I knew that I was responsible for selling books. That said, if I had known then what I know now, there are steps I would have taken earlier. For example, I would have put my book on Amazon months ago. I would have sent out more review copies. I would have done what it seems distributors and publishers do for writers on larger presses. The problem was, I didn't know what they did. I didn't know how to accomplish even small tasks. In some ways, I feel as though I am playing catch-up to people whose books have come out months after mine. I still hope this book will get noticed on a wider scale. But, at least for me, life isn't a contest and selling books shouldn't be either. I have a book I wish more people would buy and read. I think I have something important to say.

How important do you feel community is for a poet?

I think community is important to life in general not just for poets, but it is essential to promoting (read; publishing and selling)  one's work. Writing is a solo experience, but, once written, poems are usually made to be shared. Writing and marketing are two entirely separate aspects of the writing life. It is fine to write poems and put them in a drawer, but it is better to share them with others. My goal—or, at least, one of my goals—is to write so that others see themselves in my poems. I want to be the kind of poet whose images make a reader feel and think. I want to find truth and point other people toward it.

I know it probably changes from poem to poem, but are there certain things you check for when you revise your poems?

I try to make sure I don't have unnecessary words in a poem. That's what makes revision challenging. Poetry differs from prose in its exaggeration of image and the musical element of language, so words that would be unnecessary in prose may be needed in poetry. This is especially true of repeated words or phrases. The very nature of poetry sometimes makes it necessary to say something in a roundabout rather than a straightforward manner, but if I do use repetition, I want to make sure it adds to the overall effect not just the length of the poem. I want to get the pacing and emphasis right and be sure the stanzas occur in the right order not just the order in which they were written. 

In serious revision, I often break the poem into sentences—a big "Thank You" to poet Dennis Sampson for telling me to write clear sentences—then rearrange the order of sentences, experiment with line breaks and stanza breaks, using couplets, triplets, quatrains, and stanzas of varying lengths on most poems before I'm finished. And finished is—at least, for me—a relative term. I will revise any poem I have written, published or not, if I see a way to improve it. After all, it's my poem, so I have the right—no, the responsibility—to make it the best I can. I love revising poems.

Do you feel poets should have an online presence?

I do. The world is a technical place now, and poets are expected to have a certain degree of technical competency, actually the more skills the better. No longer can a poet write poems out longhand and expect to be taken seriously. All poets—not just self-published poets or those on a small press—must be, to some degree, their own promoters.

This pertains only to poets who seek publication. I have no interest in telling people how to live their lives. Hand-written one-of-a-kind birthday-poems are lovely. And I am sure that somewhere there is a successful poet with no online presence at all. I just think the Internet is a tool that writers in this day and age ought to learn to use.

You're the poetry editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. What do you look for in poetry submissions?

I look for variety. The south is a large, diverse area, and it is untruthful to pretend otherwise. The editors of the Dead Mule do not pride ourselves with how few poems we accept. Instead, we pride ourselves by acting like "the big ole southern family" that we say we are. That said, we want good writing.

The Dead Mule is a good beginner’s market, where many poets have earned their first publication credit, and we do offer advice to beginners from time to time. We also publish a poet laureate of a southern state each April. More and more, established writers are submitting to the Mule. We live in the south and know that the south contains its share of racists. While we don't hesitate to publish them, we will not publish racial or religious slurs. We hope to help break down ignorant stereotypes concerning the south, while publishing quality southern literature. If someone writes about a stereotype, we hope he/she does so in a lighthearted tone.

Who (or what) are you currently reading?

I find myself reading more and more poetry books by poets who are local or who I meet online but that live close enough that meeting them is realistic. I read poetry online a lot. I also try to read poets who are better than I am, so I can learn as I read. I read and enjoy biography and autobiography. This weekend I read Driver #8, the story of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s rookie year in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, by Earnhardt with Jade Gurss. I don't read much fiction except online, but I do read and even review novels by people I know.

I'm not doing much with it now, but I wrote my thesis on Martin Luther King Jr. and remain interested in African American history, especially the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s and how that effects American life today. I continue to update my collection of books toward converting my thesis into a book concerning King.

If you could offer only one piece of advice to other poets, what would it be?

Write for yourself first. I don't mean write cryptically, so that no one knows what you mean; that is silly. I mean, find your own voice and use it.  Writing, reading, and selling poetry will not make you rich, so don't sell out and try to be something you are not. Make sure you like what you write. Be your own worst critic; don't think for a minute you can write without revising. Remember, if you won't like a poem in ten years, you aren't finished with it.

*****

Check out Helen's blog at http://helenl.wordpress.com/

*****

Click here to read other Poetic Asides poet interviews.

*****

Poets and poetry publishers! Interested in a Poetic Asides interview? Click here to learn how to get the process rolling.

*****

DIY! Want to learn about Instant Publishing, including how to get your e-book listed on Amazon? Click here to learn more.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010 6:41:05 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [4] 

Remember: I'll be discussing poetry (specifically publishing poetry) over at the Poets.org forum "live" from 1-2 p.m. this afternoon (Atlanta, GA time). If you can't make it for the "live" session, you can still post questions/comments any time during the month of January, since I'm the guest poet this month. Click here to view the very informational thread.

*****

For this week's prompt, I want you to write a poem that combines the best and worst part of 2010. Since the year is still so new, you should have a limited amount of material, which should make it easier to focus. Also, the details should still be very fresh in your mind.

Here's my attempt:

"Sleeping Over"

Only a house. Only a dirty house
without heat and filled with smoke
from cheap cigarettes. And animals

that use the carpet as a backyard
substitute. Only one or two seizures
on good days after a lifetime not

having any. The house is no longer
a place he has to stay, but her
seizures are something new and

terrifying for the boys. And worries
the boys' father. Only months
earlier, he was the one who quit

breathing. He knows what it is
to not trust his body to do what
it should. The house he no longer

has to visit felt alive when he
did. Maybe all the smoke. Maybe
the absence of any fresh air.

*****

Follow me on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer.

*****

Want to learn the Fundamentals of Poetry writing in a workshop environment? Click here to learn more.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 2:15:35 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [113] 

For anyone interested, I'll be talking about revision "live" over at the Poets.org forum today from 1-2 p.m. (Atlanta, Georgia, time). You can stop by any time this month, though, and leave a question or comment. Click here to check it out.

*****

For this week's prompt, write a poem covering something you think about all the time. Maybe it's the bills or your children or your parents or the dog that keeps barking in your neighbor's yard or the price of eggs in China or the weather. Only you know.

Here's my attempt:

"Not Writing"

He punches a hole in the wall,
which sets off an alarm. He
can't stand the beep and finds
the alarm box. When he enters
a code to disarm, the beeping
grows louder. He wishes he
never punched a hole; but now,
he unscrews the box from the wall
and pulls all the wires out. He
puts the box back on the wall
before fixing the hole he made
with his fist. He lays on his
bed (hands behind his head)
and thinks tomorrow maybe.

*****

If you don't already, you can follow me on Twitter @robertleebrewer

*****

Interested in workshopping your poetry? Click here to start this week.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 1:53:32 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [139] 

First, here's a reminder that you can ask me questions on The Academy of American Poets discussion forum (www.poets.org/forum) "live" from 1 to 2 p.m. (Atlanta, Georgia, time) today.

If you miss that one-hour block, don't worry; you can send me questions throughout the month. Plus, I'll be doing the "live" chat in the forum on the next three Wednesdays as well.

Click here to view my thread as Guest Poet for the month of January.

*****

Second, the final tally on chapbook manuscripts submitted is more than 170. Congratulations to everyone who played along and put together a chapbook manuscript! I hope the process was fun and helpful. I'll announce the winning manuscript and probably a few honorable mentions on February 2. Groundhog Day.

*****

Now, let's get to the first Wednesday Poetry Prompt of 2010!

For this week's prompt, I want you to write a "take no prisoners" poem. You can take this in any creative direction you want, but I'm thinking of a poem that resembles those rallying songs by bands like Muse ("Uprising" or "Knights of Cydonia") and Queen ("We Are the Champions" or "We Will Rock You"). Write a poem of what will be and how no one will stand in your (or whoever's or whatever's) way.

Here's my attempt:

"Surrounded"

They found us where the river cuts mountains
in pieces before finding the ocean.

They asked us what we were doing alone,
but we were too busy to answer. We

cut birds out of branches to fly to our
allies. Their jaws clenched, our enemies asked

us why we wouldn't answer; they lit torches
and gathered around us like trees. They asked

us again and again and again, but
our mouths were granite. We cut more birds loose 

before burning everything standing.

*****

If you don't already, you can follow me on Twitter @robertleebrewer

*****

Want to write for children? Click here to learn more.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010 1:58:44 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [118] 

I've received more than 100 chapbook manuscript submissions for the 2009 November PAD Chapbook Challenge! Wow!

The deadline is still a little more than 30 hours away (January 5 midnight--Atlanta, Georgia, time). So, if you're one of those last minute types, you've still got some time--but not much!

Click here for a refresher on the rules.

*****

As a personal (& poetic) aside, one of my 2010 goals is to write a poem each day of the year. These do not include prompts like the April and November challenges. If you're interested in reading them throughout the year, you can do so at my personal My Name Is Not Bob blog (http://robertleebrewer.blogspot.com).

Click here to check out my first three days of 2010.

*****

Also, don't forget to reserve time to throw questions my way on the poets.org Discussion Forum at http://www.poets.org/forum. I'll be fielding questions "live" each Wednesday in January between 1 and 2 p.m. (Atlanta, Georgia, time).

*****

Missed Writer's Digest in 2009? Don't worry. Click here to find out how you can receive $40+ worth of Writer's Digest for only $15.

Monday, January 04, 2010 9:23:07 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [7] 

This will most likely be the last post of 2009, but it's got a lot of ground to cover.

First, I've received well more than 50 chapbook manuscript submissions so far. Thank you to everyone who has submitted so far. Everyone else has until midnight (Atlanta time) on January 5 to make their submissions. Click here for a refresher on the rules.

*****

Second, I've got some very exciting news to share. I'm going to be the Guest Poet over at The Academy of American Poets' online discussion forum at www.poets.org during the month of January. You can create a free account to participate on the forums, which you can access by:

1. Going to www.poets.org.
2. Scroll over Poets & Poetry in the horizontal navigation bar.
3. Click the Discussion Forums link.
4. Click the Member of the Month & Guest Poet link.

I'm assuming that at some point during the beginning of January, the opening post will be made and should be near the top as a sticky thread. (For instance, the current sticky thread is with Shaindel Beers--October's guest poet.)

Usually, you can throw out commentary or questions throughout the month at any time (or after), and I'll casually check in and respond. But I'm going to make myself available for one hour each week (on Wednesdays from 1-2 p.m. ATL time) for a more intensive Q&A centered around specific topics. They will be:

Week 1 (1/6): Writing

Week 2 (1/13): Revising

Week 3 (1/20): Publishing

Week 4 (1/27): Marketing & Other Topics

It should be a lot of fun and informational for anyone who has questions about poetry.

*****

Third, we need to get to the final Wednesday Poetry Prompt of 2009; number 74 will pick right back up in 2010. Happy New Year, everyone!

For today's prompt, I want you to write a poem inspired by a movie. The poem does not need to give the plot summary or even include the main characters. The poem can be inspired by any movie, any scene, any set, or whatever. It could even be a poem inspired by how a movie was made or rumors surrounding it.

Here's my attempt for the day:

"A middle-aged man seeing his son for the first time"

The last time I saw this man
he cut off my arm and legs--
this was after I killed my wife
(or so I was led to believe).
Years later, here we are again
waving our swords of light and
bantering like old times. Part
of me doesn't even want him
to die, but something draws his
attention. He smiles and lifts
his blade, lets me strike him down.
Then, I hear that voice, a long,
"No," before seeing him, his gun
drawn and aimed at me firing.

*****

Follow me on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer

*****

Check out The Art of War for Writers, by James Scott Bell, by clicking here.

*****

p.s. I'll be interested to see if anyone can guess which movie inspired my poem for the week.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009 11:41:35 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [104]