Poem prompt: “Our featured resource for the day is the online gallery of the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Although it may be most famous for its witch trials, Salem was a seafaring town whose sailors and shipowners brought back all manner of items from their travels – which became the initial source of the museum’s collection. The museum has a stunning group of “Asian Export” items – goods that were crafted in India, Japan, China, and other locations visited by Salem’s ships (often as part of an overall trade in tea, porcelain, and textiles) – to appeal to an American/European market. That’s how you wind up with things like this French-styled dressing table with elaborate lacquer-work.

And here’s our optional prompt for the day. Like music, poetry offers us a way to play with and experience sound. This can be through meter, rhyme, varying line lengths, assonance, alliteration, and other techniques that call attention not just to the meaning of words, but the way they echo and resonate against each other. For a look at some of these sound devices in action, read Robert Hillyer’s poem, Fog. It uses both rhyme and uneven line lengths to create a slow, off-kilter rhythm that heightens the poem’s overall ominousness. Today we’d like to challenge you to try writing a poem of your own that uses rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths. For extra credit, reference a very specific sound, like the buoy in Hillyer’s poem.”

Dr. Eve's Orders

An apple a day keeps the chaos at bay. 
But a bushel will nickname you Thief. 
Slow. 
Wander the orchard and wait for the wind, 
for the woosh and the kiss of a leaf. 

When apples start to hit the ground, 
pick the one about to break. 
Listen for the goddess, 
her whisper within the wood: 
This is your trophy; take it, and bake. 

Your reward lingers, alive, suspended. 
Pull the hanging twig down, 
twist the stem, yank the calyx, 
gently 
wreathe spent buds into Eden's hollow crown. 

Now hold the red skin of your triumph 
like a halo-light close to your cheek 
while mature fruits fall all around you, 
globes colliding grass 
beside a flowing creek: 

Hear the shuf, bowling roll and thump.
Deft feet avoid the hail but lift the hale
nourishment to pale lips
eager
to taste the infused trail.
 
Pierce with teeth's edge, a firm crunch. 
Rip the soft sinew, the cool flesh, 
chew 
the immortal cure, 
what was overlooked by Gilgamesh.