As promised, I’ll be posting poetry writing prompts occasionally throughout April in celebration of National Poetry Month. Here’s one adapted from The Poet’s Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux:


What do you do every day — or on a regular basis? Write a poem about showering, or jogging, or cooking, and so on. Try, in the poem, to get at the particular way you perform this activity, that might be different from someone else. 


Here’s a poem by Al Zolynas for inspiration:


The Zen of Housework


I look over my own shoulder
down my arms
to where they disappear under water
into hands inside pink rubber gloves
moiling among dinner dishes.


My hands lift a wine glass, 
holding it by the stem and under the bowl.
It breaks the surface
like a chalice
rising from a medieval lake. 


Full of the grey wine
of domesticity, the glass floats
to the level of my eyes.
Behind it, through the window
about the sink, the sun, among
a ceremony of sparrows and bare branches, 
is setting in Western America.


I can see thousands of droplets
of steam — each a tiny spectrum — rising
from my goblet of grey wine.
They sway, changing directions
constantly — like a school of playful fish,
or like the sheer curtain
on the window to another world.


Ah, grey sacrament of the mundane!