A daily poetry practice to generate and sustain the Life/Lines among us, for published and novice poets alike
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Prompt
Write a short poem (rhyming not necessary) that includes each of the following 5 words (anywhere and in any order). Poems should not exceed 7 or 8 lines.
raccoon
skyscraper
tablet
dining
record
Send us your poem via our Submissions page or post on Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #lifelines.
Today’s words were contributed by guest curator Jo Schaper, who has been writing poems on her own since she was 10 years old. She earned a BA in writing from Missouri State University. After a lifetime in printing, publishing and nonfiction writing, she currently runs Geo Communications Services and Paw Paw Poets Publishing, LP, and is an associate of St. Louis Poetry Center and the St. Louis Publishers Association. Her published work includes WAM&T: Tracks Back to Tranquility, Texas; Riding the Twister; The Kansas Cowboy Blueberry Angel; and most recently The Paw Paw Almanac and Reader (2019), with another collection, River Songs and Wayfaring Sagas currently in process.
Poems submitted for April 28
Empire State of Mind
Raccoon eyes
Smudged lipstick
Torn stockings
In shock, sitting
In the dining
Area of the revolving
Restaurant
At the top of a skyscraper.
She never thought he'd rape her.
Feeling her rock bottom
Adding tonight to her record of bad dates
As the worst
While a sad love song that she hates
Plays on her tablet
Cracked screen and all.
— J. Thomas 4/28/21
***
Skyscraper translates exactly, as so little does.
Grattacielo; scratch, sky. In the dining room he directs traffic
while everyone revolves in their purple moods. For the record,
I didn't mean to, I didn't forget, I don't regret it. For the record, yes,
I would again. From the window I saw a raccoon crawl onto the neighbor's roof
and disappear. Later, I squint at the blurry photograph,
the flash of silvery grey on a tablet's luminescent screen.
It was right there, I imagine saying. It might still be up there, even now.
Watching the sky, he would say, and I'd agree.
Gwyneth Henke
***
Nearby skyscrapers cast
darkness over darkness.
The church’s bells obligingly record
a present passing.
A few hush spoken words
unheard from afar.
Although slumber evades,
I have since long quitted
the illuminated dining table
where now alone a tablet lies.
Lisette Dennis
***
Atten-hut!
Our pride and her self-esteem, skyscraper-high.
Tallying her record of military brags on my tablet.
From parachuting to sleuthing, she’s going places!
Night hawk hunting. Undercover masked raccoon
dining on details of working cyber security
for the Justice Department. That’s our girl!
Linda O’Connell 4/29/21
***
Similes for the Deed
To do this thing
He had to forget the past
Like Hamlet wiping his tablet clean
Conduct himself as meticulously
As a raccoon dousing his food
Act as freely
As someone speaking off the record
Be as ambitious
As a skyscraper piercing the heavens
And appear as calm
As someone dining with a friend.
Robert Henke
***
High Contrast
Diamond bracelets sparkle on bony wrists
dining in the lush penthouse of a skyscraper
lording it over the city, built of stone tablets
etched with the Commandments of Avarice
and Enterprise. Far below and unnoticed,
a raccoon excavates dinner
from a dented metal can.
Rebecca Carron Wood
***
Away from the skyscrapers, the raccoon and I have more modest domains.
Lately, I have been wearing a mask like him.
Dining on plants and meat, we are both omnivores.
He doesn't record lists, poems or letters on a tablet.
Recently, I have not climbed any trees.
We are distinct, but not entirely different.
Margaret Fourt Goka
***
Menu items
The first hummingbird visited my yard
today dining from flowers that are bright
and heavy with rain. Last night
from the skyscraper bird feeders
along the deck a raccoon helped
herself to handfuls of seed, but left
just enough for this morning’s cardinals
who seem to have a checklist, perhaps
a tablet in the trees, where they record
those who carry on feeding them even
in a time of plenty.
— M.E. Hope
***
Camp
We feast by our fire.
Redwoods
of record setting stature
surround our camp
like skyscrapers
‘round a sidewalk café.
Our stream, like the street,
flat rocky shelf, like a table
where sits
a raccoon,
rinses his hands,
begins dining, too.
Tom Stringer
***
Dumpster Dining
Jo Schaper
Dumpster dining is the treat of the day
In the shadow of the skyscraper. A raccoon
Mines leftover lunches, tuna salad scraps.
A broken tablet makes a fine supper table—
An old bowl filled with rainwater substitutes
For Waterford crystal. Let the record state
In chittering syllables, that when we are gone,
Trash pandas will find some way to carry on.
***
東京
The Skytree claws the thin air
Higher than any skyscraper
Overhead
Tanuki raccoon dog statues
(the tipsy trickster)
Are sprinkled everywhere
I scratch the bottom of the noodle bowl
With chopsticks
And notes on my tablet with pencil lead
To record the events that stir the heart
Around us all
And wonder who is the luckiest
From the tiny bamboo dining terrace
K.J. Boehler
***
A raccoon with a record?
Certainly looks like a thief.
Knocked over a bank?
Skyscraper heist?
Nope.
Infiltrated the Dining Room
Took the food
We caught him on Tablet
— Chad Savage
***
When the raccoon climbs the outside of the skyscraper,
and you are dining with a record producer,
a tablet of calculation on the table,
your latest girlfriend wearing sable, sliding a finder up and down your nose,
the producer throwing offers like confetti while saying "last offer,"
your voice almost breaking out in song but the notes caught in your throat
because you are American, and song is a matter of dollars, cents,
and you hold back until you take a low offer because the amount
is shrinking like a pile of salt in a drip of water.
You imitate Elvis and do a guttural "uh huh", and take a red ink pen,
sign your career away like a soldier enlisting in a Civil War.
— Dan Cuddy
***
Like Moses smashing the tablet of Commandments from atop the mountain,
She sat in the dining room of her apartment, top floor of the skyscraper,
And crumpled the record of species going to extinction:
Himalayan quail
Scarlet Harlequin frog
Pink headed duck
Wondiwoi tree kangaroo,
Wondrous names, and too many to name.
And cried until her eyes were red and rimmed as a raccoon.
Pam Hughes
***
In my brief career
as an architect, I
designed a skyscraper
in the fashion of a raccoon tail.
Banded, with fine dining
on every other level. The
first thousand patrons were
all gonna get a free tablet,
which would've set a record,
had I found anyone to build it.
—John Randall
***
To record
on my tablet
a raccoon dining
on a skyscraper
by Lloyd Klinedinst
***
MASKED SHENANIGANS
While dining at LaPlace d’Boeuf
A penthouse restaurant of note
A fellow diner with her tablet
To record her meal so as to gloat
When a shriek disturbed the diners
Heard across the whole skyscraper
Sous-chef chasing a masked marauder
A raccoon caper? or just trying to escape her.
TED
***
reading the arcane records
on clay tablets...
we should invite a raccoon
who lives amid skyscrapers
to our dining table
John J. Han
***
My Historic Highrise
A raccoon
once scaled the skyscraper
I call my home.
A stone tablet marks the event
at its entrance.
There's a photo of the raccoon
in my dining room.
He even has his own Instagram.
The Guinness Book
says it is the highest climb
of any raccoon ever. A genuine record!
My condo is worth more because of it.
You should buy it.
— Rita Winters
***
TRASH & mundane chores from dining
PANDA vids on tablet interrupted by news push of
SKYSCRAPER fiasco spearheaded by Rocket Racoon
PANDEMONIUM ensues--"I am Groot" says only witness willing to go on record
Kwin
***
I’m a raccoon I can climb anything
Including that skyscraper on Kingshighway
That looks like the earth is blowing its nose
Especially if I pop a tablet
I took out of your garbage
I see you’re dining
I’m going to leave a record of all I see
Yours, Rocky
james goodman
***
Driven from our subdivisions,
the woodland critters scattered
and died.
Thought shalt not kill, said the tablet
(the old kind)
but that was just for us—
we have been dining on our friends
for centuries—and once more for the record,
WE are the ones who build skyscrapers.
What has a raccoon ever done
but live?
—Jeannette Cooperman
***
Rest in Peace
For the record, a tablet was inscribed: Here lies Mrs. Charles Armbruster.
No one could ever explain
how the raccoon got to the 23rd floor of the skyscraper
where it was found dining on her prized daylily
surprising her already weakened heart
and causing her demise,
except perhaps Mr. Armbruster
who has never been found.
Steve Givens
***
First day of class and I came in
with raccoon eyes, having
contended in Hell's Kitchen.
I think I broke the record
for most freak-outs in the dining hall.
And then, much later,
on the topmost floor
of an ancient skyscraper,
a doctor told me,
"This little tablet might help."
— Matthew Freeman
***
News headlines
Good grief!
At the skyscraper dining room
a break in.
The bandit, a raccoon
disturbs patrons' din-din.
One with a tablet
recorded the scene
for Record-It TV.
***
the antique raccoon coat from her grandfather’s college days
was still where she put it.
4 weeks ago,
after the funeral,
hung over the dining room chair,
part of a bygone era.
In contrast, the tablet in her office on the 47th floor of the skyscraper, sleek , shiny , and new, waited for her to begin what she had been putting off,
a heartfelt record memorializing the man who loved her so dearly all his life.
but work demanded
yet another boring product description that had to be done today
d. bates
***
Forest Missive
Along the edges of the stream
that runs between the trunks
of skyscraper trees,
the raccoons have left a record
of their dining:
delicate paw prints,
incised hieroglyphics,
in the muddy tablet.
Coyote reads them.
J. Kiefer
***
Headline image: Robert Katzki via Unsplash