RoadWriter

Make Visible: September Facebook Poetry Challenge

This September I had the pleasure and privilege to share an original poem-a-day challenge on Facebook with my friends Michelle Hedgecock, Margaret Fieland, Lotus Vele, Becky La Bella, Cai Von Kugler and David Robbins.  Dave is a chat buddy of mine from New York State.  Dave floated the idea of a poetry challenge and I went along with it.  I’m glad I did!  I  managed to write, type and post 30 new poems to Facebook in September.  I also enjoyed reading and commenting everyone else’s poems.  Make visible, indeed!

 

Here is one of the poems I wrote during this challenge:

 

Butcher Shop

 

 

 

Sadness

settles in my bones

like the cold,

stays there.

 

Your words are sharper

than a butcher’s cleaver

reducing me to roasts, chops,

and cold cuts.

 

I don’t know if it’s my own helplessness

I’m wallowing in,

or yours.

 

I can do one thing well,

walk in a circle every day,

stopping only

long enough

just long enough

to be buried

in 6 feet of freshly turned earth.

 

No, I’m not dead yet.

 

A stone cold heifer

just bones left now

munching on grass

dripping blood—

 

pooling at my hooves.

 

 

©  Anne Westlund

 

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”~Robert Bresson, French Film Director