Poetry Exercise #2: Sounds

Self-Warning

Bored housewives and bothered babies—
Weak heads seeking warm cheeks.
Babies coo their sleep; toddler chirps a nursery rhyme.
Toddler tips its cup and body; mother saves like heroic newspaper article.
Waltzing bus drifts like a jellyfish through intersections.

It’s the homecoming bus from an eight-hour day.
It’s the jellyfished vocals repeating from the toddler’s orange-juice-soaked mouth.
It’s the orange juice she tips on my shoes.
It’s the baby that howls waking from the bus’s epileptic path.
It’s the mother who ignores, continues talking to another wooden housewife.
It’s her new shoes they talk about.

It’s that I want people to stop breeding.

Poetry Exercise #1: Describe Something Familiar

Object

Wrapped in blue foil, your eye is drawn
to violet text and painted fish;
those dead, those fish that smiling hook
but argue never with consumers.

Does “Dolphin Safe” mean “Manatee”
or “Pilot Whale” or “Orca” Safe?

Luring lines, angled thoughts of call
this number MON-FRI, let us hear.
The front shows butchered rolls of sea
children and wedges sliced of lime.

Writing 313

Intermediate Poetry.