Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson


April 25, 2009 - NaPoWriMo - Day 25

I am participating in National Poetry Writing Month, where the goal is to write one poem a day for 30 days. During the month of April, I will be using the writing prompts at ReadWritePoem.org and posting the results.

Day twenty-five prompt (how-to)

Write a “how-to” poem.

Need some inspiration? Freewrite a list of all the things you wish you knew how to do. Pick one and write a poem about it. Brainstorm a list of things that are impossible to do. Choose one and write a poem about how to do it. Open a cook book. Choose a recipe. Using the recipe format, insert your own instructions for something completely different. Turn a meatloaf recipe into “how to get a date.”


How to Look in the Mirror

Imagine you're
red-carpet ready, in high
glamour, ready
to swirl and swagger. Cheers
for your name, while cameras
flash. Your theme music swells,
and it's go, baby, go!

Imagine your best day,
a joy-love-blessing day,
clear-sky sun (dae)
of automatic smiles.

Sing yourself a lovesong:
praise for your eyes,
a hymn to your hair,
a sonnet for shoulders,
encomium for curves,
for honeyed hips, for sultry
lucious you. Divine
beautiful you. Now

open your eyes.


I wanted to write about something that we do every day, something that we do automatically without thinking. Something that we, nevertheless, manage to do wrong. What's more basic than looking in the mirror? And yet, we screw it up: sending ourselves negative messages, nitpicking the aspects of ourselves we dislike instead of loving our best qualities. I dictated this into my Sony digital tape recorder while walking the dog on a bright, sunny late afternoon. The spirit of this poem owes a lot to Carson Kressley's show "How to Look Good Naked."

Moral:
See the world as it is: infinite.

Copyright 2009 by Alyce Wilson

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