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 10/5/23 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 below

  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

Danusha Laméris kicks off her poem, Feeding The Worms, claiming that an earthworms are covered with taste buds. The fact-checker in me looked it up. It’s true. The earthworm’s body is covered with chemoreceptors to taste and smell things in the soil. Laméris demostrates how facts come to life in the poetic imagination. Though many of us might squirm thinking of earthworms, she imagines the writhing ecstasy of an entire body covered with tastes buds immersed in the sweetness of apples. This poetic rendering transforms the lowly earthworm into a pleasure palace. She then finds delight in dropping leftovers into the compost with a surprising twist at the end.

Feeding The Worms

Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds
all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,
I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine
the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples
permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,
avocado and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.   

I always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden,
almost vulgar — though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure
so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can,
forgetting,
a moment, my place on the menu.

—Danusha Laméris
https://www.danushalameris.com/

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem based a strange fact from nature.

  2. Journal or write a poem celebrating the sense of taste.

  3. The skin is the largest sense organ in the body. Give skin a voice and journal or write a poem reporting what it says about what it wants, needs, or fears.

  4. Immerse yourself in one of the other senses—sight, sound, or smell. Describe the world as perciev3d through that particular sense.

  5. Journal or write a poem about composting. Consider it as a metaphor: What behavior and emotions would you toss into the compost? What they decompose into?

  6. Consider an insect or animal that you think has a menial existence. Discover something surprising about it or write or about its purpose or life.

  7. When your time comes and you are tossed into the compost of life, what taste from your life experience might the earthworm enjoy?

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