Particular, people-filled places

I didn’t much care for the appearance of last night’s newsletter without an image, so please enjoy today’s selection of free stock art found on my first Google search!

Today’s prompt from NaPoWriMo: Start by reading Katie Naughton’s poem, “Debt Ritual: Oysters.” Now, write your own poem in which you refer to a specific writer or artist (or work of literature/art) and make a declarative statement about want or desire. Set the poem in a particular, people-filled place, like a restaurant, bus station, museum, school, etc.

I immediately found myself very drawn to the phrase “particular, people-filled place” and knew that I would be using similar alliteration in whatever piece came to me. When I started sketching ideas around Tennessee Williams and ”The Glass Menagerie” — “Streetcar” felt too obvious, given the theme — I realized that particular place needed to be a zoo. Naturally, there’s a “Menagerie” quote within the piece, if you can spot it.

Naughton’s enjambment makes her poem feel quite slidey (like an oyster!) and I love the way new meanings reveal themselves line by line, reread after reread. So I try that technique here, too.

Thanks for being here!

Menagerie

A young child pressing her nose
up like a pig and showing the
orangutan look I am animal too

Williams would set this scene in glass
how beautiful it is and how easily 
it can be broken people who want 
not to be alone so fervently that they 
can commune with caged creatures
cooing and cawing and carping to
guests with cotton candy and soft
pretzels and soft smiles at the snow
leopards even while sweating into
the pits of their commemorative tees

A young child climbing unnoticed
the fence of the primate enclosure
while freer beasts avert their gaze

careful not to catch the alpha eye