I’ve been released from the heroic formality of iambic pentameter – Fry has moved us on to other rhythms, rhythms that – as he points out – feel easier to speak between breaths. In the exercises over the past couple of days, I’ve written a lot of dreck, but occasionally have had moments of meaning and inspiration come to me.

I don’t pretend that this is a very good poem, but it means something to me to share it. (For those counting, it’s alternating iambic tetrameter and trimester, with some trochees and weak endings thrown in.) Because, really, it means something:

A long-lost memory appears
From when I was a teen
A sticker on a dorm room phone
Declaring ‘never again.’

The image used was disconcerting:
A hanger drenched in blood
To call to mind the need for legal
Abortion for all.

Today the call “never again”
Is similarly stark
Its images a dying child,
Hot rifles, empty rounds.

The call is clear, the message pure
The meaning still the same
Nobody else should have die…

Nobody else should have to die…

(Photo: Joe Rondone, USA Today Network via the Tallahassee Democrat)