A poetry challenge

What writes you?

My father? He is an instruction manual. Table of contents, page numbers, detailed descriptions of how to assemble your life.

My mother? She is a photo album with hundreds if not thousands of ancillary comments, anecdotes, mini-missives written between photographs lit poorly framed in yellowing plastic.

My oldest sister? She is a novel. Protagonist, antagonist Tension building until a grand denoument. Her epilogue ensuring that every reader knows the world can heal and that there exists a warm, safe place for them at home.

The younger of my two older sisters? She is an e-book. You possess it, but do you really? No pages, only clean, hard glass swiping and wishing there was a place for your bookmark.

Me? I am a collection of notes written on napkins, beer coasters backs of hands and that notebook I swore I would use to organize my thoughts. Crumpled, but written and waiting for discovery by someone kind enough to take the time to decipher a true shitshow of emotional incapacity and effluence.

My younger brother? He is a message in a bottle. Written years ago carefully sealed recklessly tossed into the void. No concern as to whether he will be read, discovered or understood.

My daughter? She is a child’s first fantasy novel. Eyes wide for danger searching for the evils in this world sword in hand, shield in the other. A maiden whose innocence whose wonder whose unpresuming charity bring tears to the eyes of one who long ago retreated.

My wife? She is sonnet. Classical, refined, organized and weepingly beautiful in the ebb and flow of her rhyming couplets. Her pentameter a soothing balm to the furious uncontrol of my entropy.

American writer

I was thinking of my family this morning as I walked and had to smile as I started categorizing us as different brands of written media. The above poem went slightly out of control and honestly left me a weeping mess at times, but I am very much satisfied with how it portrays us all, the good and the challenging.

My challenge to you is to craft a response to the question, “What written media are you?” Are you the classic novel? Are you the religious text? Are you a yellowed, flaking scroll from an unknown civilization? Your response is your choice; prose, poetry, fiction, essay, whatever. I look forward to hearing your responses and wish you an enjoyable, introspective experience.

Heather Lengyel John Haslam John Hansen Praise Frank Martin Morrison Benighted augmented man Linda Sharp Nancy Santos Arie Castle Watermelon Claire Kelly Seana Ridge Edward Swafford Joe Glacken Jason Edmunds Reece Beckett Theodore McDowell KourtneyNicoleWrites Britt H. Ryan Ehrhardt

In gratitude :)