PAD Day 16: On Weeding and Clipping

Todays' dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "catch" poem and/or "release" poem, and (2) "write a poem that uses the form of a list to defamiliarize the mundane."  I wrote two today: The first one, which I don't consider entirely successful, takes a mundane object (perhaps too mundane) and dreams up alternative uses for it, some a little strange. I also use the words "catch" and "release" throughout the poem, which is loosely inspired by Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", one of the great "list" poems. The second poem, a two-part tanka, is inspired mainly by the first prompt, although one could argue that the subject is one of the more "mundane" plants in nature.

13 Ways of Using a Binder Clip (Catch and Release)

1.   Press the wire handles,

      the  spring steel triangle opens.

      Snap it shut, like an alligator mouth.

2.   Catch your report,  your tax return,

       your miscellaneous pages.

       Release them into the wind.

3.  Clip some together in a chain,

      a necklace or a choker

      around your pretty neck.

4.   Catch your hair,

       pulled back in a pony- or pigtail.

       Release it; let the tresses fall.

5.   Catch your lip, your eyebrow,

       your earlobe.  Release them -

       much more  painful than a piercing.

6.   Catch your finger, inadvertently.

       Release, and nurse the purple bruise.

7.  Collect a few thousand

      and build a scale model

      of a new office building.

8.   Clip one to your wall calendar.

       Release one month at a time.

9.   Clip some to your cherry tree

      to keep the blossoms on -

      some call them "spring clips".

10. Catch a fish without a hook -

       pull it up by a pinched fin

      and release - it's too small.

11. Set some at the dinner table

       to clip your spaghetti in place.

12. Send some to a space station -

       they are a cure-all

       for weightlessness. 

13.  Catch a cold, catch a bus, catch a baseball.

       A binder clip is of no use

       for any of these.

14. Toss them to random strangers -

       they catch, you release.

In the Yard Galaxy

I.

Dandelions -

little sunbursts catch the sun

on suburban lawns

and later, supernovas -

seed globes released in the wind

II.

Dandelions -

I must catch the yellow stars

invading my lawn

uproot their sunshine before

kids release seeds with their breath