by Carolee Sherwood
Let’s be rubberneckers this week. Gawkers. Extreme voyeurs.
I have a distinct memory of being a kid on a road trip with my parents. We were crossing the bridge from Maine into New Hampshire, and we passed a terrible accident. Mashed up cars. Rescue vehicles. Sheets. My mother made us duck our heads. She forbid us to look out the window. She wanted to protect us from seeing anything horrific.
But this week, fellow Read Write Poem-ers, there are no mothers to protect us, no sheets to shield our view. Find a poem in the typical things that we can’t look away from, like train wrecks or car crashes or look deeper into our fascination with human oddities or other people’s domestic dramas. Peep at something you’re not supposed to see, like a couple having sex or a stranger crying.
Use your poem to show us what you see. Put us there with you. Wrap us up in your words so we can feel your quickened pulse as you scramble to make sense of the scene.
Come back next week, starting after midnight Monday morning (CST in the States) and post a link in the Get Your Poem On post that will be waiting for you.
Oh wow, that is pretty daring or provocative, which is really a coincidence to say the least! I just checked out a book of poetry by Ai today, who writes poems in the similar vein that you are prompting us to write! Really, what a coincidence!!
Her book is called VICE, which won the National Book Award, and so far, I’m so hooked with all the disturbing, frightening, and even daring poems she’s written about humanity. I mean, it feels REAL and RAW, even though the characters in her poems are fictional. Wow, I would so love to write like her. Anyway, just sharing.
I’ll definitely be using Ai as my inspiration to do this prompt!
PRAYING, NOT PREYING, at NICKERS AND INK
YAY! just wrote one and was debating whether to post it–it’s untitled as of now–so now know I will put it up and will come back on Sunday or Monday and post the link
thanks for the push!
Do some rubberneck travel to this wonderful rural really rural place:)Stuck in Vintage.
[...] 2008 · No Comments This is my first attempt at the six sentences form and was written for Read Write Poem prompt # 43: rubberneckers. I remembered the couple who took their nighttime beach walk in Beach After Dark and found out that [...]
I haven’t contributed in a while but this prompt looks like it may just do the trick!
Thanks!
Okay, I wrote this before you posted the prompt and it’s a short story but the title says it all, The Voyeur
Will come back with a poem shortly.
[...] was a response to Carolee’s prompt to “watch” something we’re not supposed to see. Incidentally, at the top of the [...]
[...] us to go places we weren’t supposed to, describe things we weren’t supposed to see. To rubberneck. And [...]
[...] 5, 2008 But this week, fellow Read Write Poem-ers, there are no mothers to protect us, no sheets to shield o… addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fmygorgeoussomewhere.org%2F2008%2F09%2F05%2Fpoets-like-to-watch%2F’; [...]