Third Time’s The Charm

Today is the third day of NaPoWriMo. I hope you are having fun so far. I also wanted to remind everyone that you can follow along with NaPoWriMo via twitter and on Facebook – check out@napowrimo2014, and the NaPoWriMo facebook page.

I’m tooting my own horn a bit with today’s featured press – I hope you don’t mind too much! Operating out of the United Kingdom, Shearsman publishes a wealth of poetry books each year, as well as Shearsman magazine. Shearsman’s titles include books by authors throughout the English-speaking world, works in translation, and reprints of classics. And now the horn-tooting: Shearsman recently published my own second book. I couldn’t be happier to see it out from a press that is doing so much to make poems both new and old available to a global audience.

Our featured participant for Day Three is Scant Scintilla, offering found poetry, erasures, and “other attempts.” The poems here are built out of (and both revel in and deplore) the language of business, of news, and of the general internet insanity that is all around us.

And now, the (as always, optional) prompt. In keeping with today’s status as the third day of NaPoWriMo, I challenge you to write a charm – a simple rhyming poem, in the style of a recipe-slash-nursery rhyme. It could be a charm against warts, or against traffic tickets. It could be a charm to bring love, or to bring free pizzas from your local radio station. Here’s a little springtime example of my own concoction, inspired by what I hope turns out just to be hay-fever.

A Charm Against the Common Cold

Petals from a tulip,
Leather from a new whip,
Snow from years ago,
And a tiger’s left-most toe–
In no freezes steep me,
But from all sneezes keep me.