If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read-Around is 7/27/23 at 5:00 PM PST

How It Works:

  1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts in the column on the right

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

My Thoughts

Wo Chan’s poem, june 8, the smiley barista remembers my name, makes me want to take leaps in my poetry, to go counter to myself, to offer myself up to something in the course of my day the can sweep through my whole life, that can raise the forlorn child in me up like a loving parent would with eyes beholden to beauty. We’ve all had those leaping moments, whether we recognize them or not, when something in us is stricken by an everyday thing or by some small act like doing email or grand gesture like saying I forgive you.

Wo Chan’s poem reminds us that we’re in another, deeper conversation on the surface of which our anguish and our joy flourishes. When we let that surface gloss distracts us, it takes us to the bright and dim of an elsewhere in our own mind. And then the relentless surface flux keeps us walking toward that stand-alone door we think will open up our true life. But our true life is never on the other side of anywhere. Our true life is in the flux but we only live it when we accept the invitation and leap into a genuine conversation with life.

june 8, the smiley barista remebers my name

Beauty on earth so blue, even the cheese flowers
a culture with no democracy...    Yesterday (for example),
I ate the same sandwich I eat every week: eggplant
roasted in red pepper aioli, a focaccia jammed full
by arugula, capers sweaty in browned butter. How
have I come to love routine? I’m thirsty and abashed.
The fabric of my childhood underwear triple axels in the wind—wow.
The whole neighborhood watches me do emails, go to therapy: she shed

revenge for forgiveness. I said it, “i forgive you” slipping
like a key beneath a door, where never was a house attached.
Is it beauty on earth, so blue? Each side stalled, you are touched,
forstanding the sun. Its fat macula borne down grips
(i wish! i saw! i fear! i heard! i dream) like an emotion.
This is not a feeling. This can be, I think, a conversation.


Wo Chan
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151765/june-8-the-smiley-barista-remembers-my-name

Prompt Ideas

  1. Wo Chan’s emigmatic opening line has many layers, including the references to “blue” and “cheese” and “culture”because blue cheese is actually made by adding cultures to cheese that “flower” in mottled blue patterns. Use blue cheese as your prompt or write an ode to cheese.

  2. Take a favorite food or dish and describe it in delicious sensory detail. How does that food relate to the way you ilive your life?

  3. Journal or write a poem naming and describing what you love about your routines or about a specific routine.

  4. Use the stem sentence, The fabri of my childhood… as your prompt and free write what comes to mind.

  5. Use the image of a stand-alone door with no house or building attached as your prompt. Describe the door, its feature, and the frame it is in. Then write what that might represent as a metaphor.

  6. Journal or write a poem that lists or describes emotional opposite (like revenge and forgiveness).

  7. Journal or write a poem about a conversation you are currently having with life.

  8. Consider a standoff with someone or something, or one you observed, or about a conversation, where each side “stalled.” What happened when it stalled? or use the prompt, When the conversation stalled…

  9. As usual, write about anything else in the poem or in life that inspires you.