Day 29 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2018

Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the Plath Poetry Project’s calendar. Simply pick a poem from the calendar, and then write a poem that responds or engages with your chosen Plath poem in some way.” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “write a response poem. Respond to whatever helps you get your poem written, but my thought is that you should respond to one of your poems from earlier in this challenge.” My poem today is a response to this poem excerpt from the Plath Poetry Project: “The smile of iceboxes annihilates me. / Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one! / I hear her great heart purr.” (from “An Appearance” by Sylvia Plath). The combination of “iceboxes” and “purr” elicited a childhood memory. Fifties Frigidaire When I was around ten years old, I began to fear the refrigerator in our kitchen on Woodland Avenue. Some late Friday night, after my parents went to bed, I watched the horror movie The Blob, which starred a teenage-looking Steve McQueen, battling a monster that moved like a humongous amoeba, dissolving people left and right. Now, it’s all just cheesy schlock, but to my ten-year-old brain, it was believable and terrifying. How do you stop a giant gelatinous mass that was both intelligent and hungry? Worst of all was the gurgly hum The Blob would make, because it was the exact noise that issued from our Frigidaire. I couldn’t go into the dark kitchen for a midnight snack because of that sound. And forget about jello! I eventually got over it, but deep inside me a little boy is afraid of the fridge. Watch out, it'll eat you! Glurg. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] That was fun, wasn’t it? Here’s a movie poster for The Blob (1958), though it doesn’t match my remembrance because that time I saw the movie it was on a black-and-white TV in 1962. And here’s a photo of the door of one of those old ’50s Frigidaires. That handle always intrigued me, so reminiscent of automobile design and car culture: opening the fridge felt like opening a car door. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word “comments” in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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