Greetings once more, friends! My poem today is #95 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #460, including last year's Stafford Challenge poem count).
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: Write a “poem in which you muse on your name and nicknames you’ve been given or, if you like, the name and nicknames for an animal, plant, or place.”
Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For the third Two-for-Tuesday prompt: 1) Write a high poem, and/or . . . 2) Write an low poem.”
I've been successful this month in consistently combining the prompts. Done again today. I'm writing today in the haibun form — a Japanese poetic form with a prose paragraph and a haiku together.
Nicknames High and Low
—haibun
|
In fifth grade, my classmate Steven Pasquale called me “The Goat,” a pun on my family name, and that nickname stuck for a year, with other classmates also calling me that. Thank goodness it went away. Thirty or forty years later, there was a high point for that nickname when people started referring to the GOAT as an acronym for “greatest of all time,” applied often to Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali. But there was no such high point when we were in fifth grade. Steven also made up another nickname: “Gotera Paper” (that is, “go tear a paper,” like in the bathroom). That was a low point that only stuck around for a day or two, again thank goodness. If I had been sharper, I could have struck back with a nickname for Steven like “Piss Quality.” I wonder where Steven is these days — never too late, even sixty years on.
|
Friends called me “The Goat”
when we were ten. They were right —
“greatest of all time”!
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Today, Alan is also combining both prompts — he was a DJ in college and this poem is about that biz, especially stage names for radio personalities.
These Are the Pros and Cons of Broadcasting
In Tuscaloosa, two guys
in the dorm room right next door
“studied” media, the jock
who couldn’t walk on baseball
half-assing his sports writing,
not being telegenic,
and a radio DJ,
another aspiring Rush.
In those days, local stations
weren’t all syndicated yet,
and one learned cultivating
personality alone,
unless a car wash opened
or a B-side musician
headlined a Shriners potluck.
I won’t name these two—the sports
guy’s byline runs locally,
but barely; the DJ’s name
on air is still “Steve Shannon,”
a common DJ handle
in the Ronald Reagan years,
but this one once ridiculed
a local public figure,
already troubled, until
he threw himself—overpass,
oncoming traffic, morning
rush hour—Steve Shannon changed
his name and took graveyard shifts
at a small sister station
until notoriety
faded and he could resume
being Steve Shannon on air
at a charity bazaar
or some rural high school dance,
introducing the prom queens
whose names remain in gossip
scrawled on yearbook endpapers.
—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Okay, we're three weeks down. Thanks for coming by the blog. See you again tomorrow?
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks!
Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment