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:

No Read Arounds for this week.
Next Read-Around is 11/21/24 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

Note: The next read around will be on on November 21, 2024. In the interim, may the muse be with you! I offer you my poem, Undoing, as inspiration to keep your pen warm on the page now that we have all taken the fifth. No prompts, so make your own and let it flow!

Undoing

Undoing, my Undoing, my selfless love and my promise,
you are more tender to me than a thousand heartbeats,
and closer to me than any wet-nurse or milk-sibling.

Undoing, my Undoing, my distraction and my equalizer,
through you I know myself to be inexplicable
and not to fear my formless freedom,
and in you I have found my distillery
and felt the joy of being ripped apart.

Undoing, my Undoing, my pen and my ink,
in your eyes, I have read
that to be whole is to be fixated
and to be seen is to be fractured
and to be held is but to break me
until I am unbreakable

Undoing, my Undoing, my daring dreamer,
you shall carry what is left of me through the door
And none but you shall know my wedded bliss
Or part my lips in exaltation or
walk me through the fire of revelation
and you alone shall enter the holy chamber

Undoing, my Undoing, my unyielding seed,
you and I shall brave the thousand deaths,
we shall dance on the grave of our distress,
and flourish in the garden of our unrest
and we shall be formidable.

—Nick LeForce
Written in the style of Kahlil Giobran’s Defeat