April 29 #Verselove – Rewrite, Redo

Denise Krebs1 Comment

Rewrite, Redo with Scott McCloskey, April 29, 2024

 

What Francisco Oropeza Could Have Said Last Night Instead of Shooting and Killing His Neighbors

Oh, yes, of course, I’ll stop shooting in my yard!
I guess I didn’t realize it was already 11.
I probably didn’t need that last beer.
Yes, yes, your baby needs to sleep.
How about if we sit outside and visit?
I know we’ve quarreled in the past,
and I’m sorry about that.
But I’ve heard you are a kind bunch—
You have a big family, don’t you?
Can I get you a Coke or a cup of herb tea?
Let’s sit on the porch and visit for a while.

April 28 #Verselove – Come, Join My Reality

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Come Join My Reality with Amber, April 28, 2024

Aging
Barreling through time the steam engine
roars down the track with hope and a
future–the baby, child, teen
never (adult now and
again) thinking
that the track
will soon
end

 

Control

Snap the whip

Grasp the grip

Plug the ear

Do not hear

Break the mood

Feel screwed

Ban the book

Before a look

Don’t lose control

Poetry Friday with April 27 #Verselove

Denise Krebs13 Comments

Not Once
I taught for 22 years after Columbine,
And I have had to witness the gradual horror of
my country becoming
the only nation in the world
that accepts gun violence
as a part of going to school.

In Arizona, not once did we
practice for the inevitable.
We had just two lockdowns–
Once for killer bees in the yard
And again when a VP in a neighboring school
became an urban legend
by talking down an eighth grader with a gun.

In Iowa, there were no lockdowns.
For Austin’s hunting “how-to” speech,
He was asked to bring his rifle
to the principal’s office in the morning
instead of storing it his hall locker.

In Manama, the ancient-by-modern
capital city of Bahrain,
my students worried once
that America was going to bomb Iran,
but they never had to worry about
or practice for gun violence.

But now in this place,
it has become inevitable–
It’s a given:
Some American young people will die in their schools.
But all American young people worry and wonder.

They prepare, they lie quietly,
pretending an active shooter
Is in the hallway trying to kill their teacher
trying to kill their classmates
trying to kill them
with a gun.

Join tens of thousands of others on June 5th.
We are going to Denver to demand action.
We’re #Here4theKids.
Please join us.

Photo by @mrsdkrebs

I’m carrying this poem by Carl Sandburg in my pocket. Click the image to read the poem in text.

Today’s #Verselove prompt is “Place Tells Me to Be” with Chea Parton.

Today Ruth is hosting Poetry Friday at There is No Such Thing as a God-Forsaken Town. It’s her 17th blog anniversary, and she has pulled out a chair for us to sit down and rest awhile. 

April 26 #Verselove – Borrowed Lines

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Borrowed Lines with Donnetta Norris, April 26, 2024

I borrowed the last line of Stacey Joy’s genetic cinquain poem for my title today.

Their Heir
 
How else would I know
Where this work ethic came from
Or the demand to be cute at all costs
Or this wide nose

How else would I know
That this desert is where I would take off
Or that wisdom is here in this time
Or that cheese makes everything taste better

I’m their heir

April 25 #Verselove – Genetic Cinquains

Denise Krebs2 Comments

Genetic Cinquains with Jessica, April 25, 2024

I learned the difference between two kinds of cinquains today, thanks to Jessica. Here are the cinquain types with my genetic examples.

American Cinquain – Unrhymed, five-lines with 22 syllables
Line One- two syllables
Line Two- four syllables
Line Three-six syllables
Line Four-eight syllables
Line Five-two syllables

like her
with spotted hands
thin calves, convex middle
help my sister with sewing tasks
i’m Mom

Didactic Cinquain – Commonly used in elementary classrooms (Yes, this was an easy go-to form for my students)
Line One: One word (a noun, the subject of the poem)
Line Two: Two words (adjectives that describe the subject)
Line Three: Three words (-ing action verbs–participles–that relate to the subject)
Line Four: Four words (a phrase or sentence that relates feelings about the subject)
Line Five: One word (a synonym or a word that sums it up)

Denise
diplomatic, empathetic
intuiting, thinking, judging
always wondering about life
me

Slice of Life – A Berry Sundae and an Arnold Palmer

Denise Krebs16 Comments
April 24, 2023 TwoWritingTeachers.org

We went to Sam’s Club today. It was the first time we had been there because we had a coupon for a $10 membership.  We found quite a few things that were on our grocery list. Then instead of buying sparkling water, which I like to have at home, we bought a Terra Sodastream, which was on sale for $51. It’s pretty slick and makes very bubbly water, and now I won’t buy sparkling water in aluminum cans anymore. Next, at the Sam’s Café, I ate a frozen yogurt berry sundae. Delicious!

Then we went to Starbuck’s for my husband to get a coffee. I wasn’t going to have anything (because of that sundae). While we were there waiting for Keith’s coffee, the barista asked him what his drink was. They seemed to have lost/missed his order. Then before the barista started making his coffee, he asked Keith if he wanted the iced tea that was sitting there. Keith asked him why–it was a venti Arnold Palmer, half lemonade and half black tea. He explained they had accidentally made two. Keith, who knows me and how that is one of my favorite drinks, said yes he would like it. It seemed ordained. Even though I didn’t need it, it was delicious!

 

April 24 #Verselove – Forensic Poetry

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Forensic Poetry with Susie Morice, April 24, 2024

Keepsakes

I gave myself a drawer to store
a lifetime of toys and memories:
· Precious bookmarks–each with a story
· my Covid diary
· a 50-yen bank note from 1940 (I just used Google Lens to identify that)
· other currency—riyals, rupees, dinars
· coins—including three silver dollars with the birthyears of my grandparents
· a tiny worry doll
· a homemade piano solo CD of my daughters’ playing
· my birth year coin set
· early publications of mine
· Fazal, (a little frog a student made for me)
· a Tell-A-Tale Disney book called Beaver Valley (that my mom bought me in the grocery store in first grade when I learned to read. Mrs. Rhodes had one at school too.)
· a letter from my older brother about my upcoming wedding
· the original Life magazine issue with an “unprecedented photographic feat in color” of the “Drama of Life Before Birth”—from 1965–the same year my very first nephew was born with multiple birth defects from first trimester rubella
· a manicure set my brother gave my grandma in 1954
· 28 peace doves from the hearts of sand dollars
· my first passport
· dried flowers and a journal from a trip across the west when I was a junior in high school,
· Fonzie socks my mom and sister got me (randomly for Valentine’s Day one year)
· my baptism certificate
· my husband’s baby book (holding his only keepsakes, safely tucked into the mess of mine)
· my first letter to the editor (when I finally became brave enough to speak up in public),
· a folder of letters from authors to my students (before the Internet and webpages)
· a tiny wool lamb (remnant of an over-the-top sheep collection I once held)

The drawer is accessible,
next to my bed in the bottom drawer of my nightstand.
I look forward to the day when my grandson will sit on the floor,
looking through my riches,
asking “What’s this?”
and I will give him
whatever he wants.

April 23 #Verselove – The Room Where it Happened

Denise Krebs2 Comments

The Room Where it Happened with Alexis Ennis, April 23, 2024

 

My inspiration for this poem is three-fold–A revisionist history prompt from Amy Kay, today’s #Verselove prompt, and the 2-Day Poetry Contest, where we have to use ten words and write a poem in two days. This year’s words, which some of them undoubtedly stick out like sore thumbs in my poem, are:

quiz, squirrels, concatenate, set, phosphenes, clasp,
abyssalpelagic, brisk, syzygy, and gadding.

Here are links to my 2021 and 2022 2-day poems.

George Washington Carver Goes Back to Iowa in 2023

He didn’t learn the grave import of “1619,”
but he knew McGuffey readers and slates
and slavery. Enslavers killed his mama.
Today’s children have a place to learn
the truth about human enslavement.
And those colors on the murals—
so bold, so brisk, so bright!
The artist shows him modern acrylic paints;
and he longs to clasp and squeeze each tube.

Iowa’s premier middle grade STEM
magnet school has his name out front.
Dozens of Black and brown-skinned children
greet him. He closes his eyes and rubs them,
the phosphenes fire-worked behind his eyes,
deep recesses of memory appeared.

“Where there is no vision, there is no hope.”
he reads over the door of a science room at Simpson College,
where he sees his name on a plaque (And on a building.)
Students set about to quiz the professor
on life and learnings of the 19th century.

Differences between then and now
are immeasurable. Cars? Computers? And NO polio?
The contrasts seem as wide as the space between
the abyssalpelagic depths and the intergalactic reaches
of infinity and beyond. Ah, but the squirrels!
The squirrels gadding about on the grounds
at Iowa State make him smile; they are the same.

What brought him here? What science?
What magic had to transpire to concatenate
systems to form this bewitching syzygy?
In any case, maybe tomorrow
he’ll take the bus to Diamond Grove,
where he grew up with Moses and Susan.
He heard about a National Monument there.
Then he’ll go on to Tuskegee, Alabama,
and spend time in the farm classrooms
and catch up on history.