Today’s prompt is so fun and unique! I’ll be revisiting it in the future. I have so many ideas that could fit into this conceit. Many thanks to Sawako Nakayasu for coming up with such a concept in the first place with her original prose poem!

Poem prompt: “Our daily resource is the Shanghai Museum, where you will find everything from a carved hairpin featuring two mustachioed fellows, to a hot-pink Taoist master, to a calligraphic ode to wine.

And now here’s our daily (optional) prompt. Sawako Nakayasu’s poem ‘Improvisational Score‘ is a rather surreal prose poem describing an imaginary musical piece that proceeds in a very unmusical way. Today, try your hand at writing your own poem in which something that normally unfolds in a set and well understood way  — like a baseball game or dance recital – goes haywire, but is described as if it is all very normal.”

Tightrope Players

Late in the morning, when teenagers are just waking to break fast with lunch, the chamber ensemble begins. 

First, an avid birdwatcher must shed eyelashes and position them at three-inch intervals around a feeder's perch. Whether this is a tube, a hopper, or a platform is irrelevant to the melody, but it may change the tempo. 

Coffee cardinals high on hot drafts gather up the hairs and pin them between two claws. With the other foot, they strum. This is more tedious than a tightrope, so naturally, spread wings—beating fiercely—keep them aloft. 

Ballads are sung to the hanging serpent sun over these organic violins. If the strands are made of hematite rather than keratin, then the source was a giant, and drums resound instead. 

If pleased, the sun flicks a forked tongue. A robin emerges from the mouth, sent to take over while kicking dirt for worms. 

At the denouement, the teenagers adorn their hair with dropped feathers and russet fluff. The cardinals gladly discard their clothes, the risk of rips to unprotected skin and scalp accepted for the promise of blinks tomorrow.