Day Twenty-Four

Welcome back, everyone, for the final Sunday of Na/GloPoWriMo 2022.

Our featured participant for the day is another two-fer. First up, we have Rhyme and Reason‘s philosophical response to Day 23’s Kay-Ryan-esque prompt, and second, Xanku‘s humorous take.

Today, our featured online magazine is the amusingly-named Miracle Monocle, which has been publishing twice-yearly issues since 2010. From their latest issue, I’ll point out Jessica Barksdale’s “Zoo Story,” and Coleman Childress’s “Broken Cabins on the Beach.”

Last but not least, here’s our prompt for the day (optional, as always). Hard-boiled detective novels are known for their use of vivid similes, often with an ironic or sarcastic tone. Novelist Raymond Chandler is particularly adept at these. Here are a few from his novels:

• A few locks of dry, white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.
• Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
• From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
• She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.
• He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

Today, I’d like to challenge you to channel your inner gumshoe, and write a poem in which you describe something with a hard-boiled simile. Feel free to use just one, or try to go for broke and stuff your poem with similes till it’s . . . as dense as bread baked by a plumber, as round as the eyes of a girl who wants you to think she’s never heard such language, and as easy to miss as a brass band in a cathedral.

Happy writing!