Hybrid poem prompt: the colour of your imagination — freed from the carousel I ride through the flash and flicker bird’s wing bright a brigade of colours rioting, revelling, ravishing someone’s tousled the streets — splayed them out in a spectrum — I sample lavender and lilac, gag on rancid garbage, crisscrossed by the wild-roasted bread of prairie grasses…

Who drives you to the page: Treadwell, tread lightly — The Plot “the story of a woman who murders her husband — an ordinary young woman, any woman” — Sophie Treadwell, Machinal Scene: an empty flat, its meaning stripped bare: cold, colder, coldest. Sounds: always the indifferent purr of machines, the high-pitched squeal of brakes. A voice that mumbles in circles in…

In.ter.X.ting: Hybrid poetry — “I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.” — Roland Barthes, Le Plaisir Du Texte shrewd Eros that outrageous flirt floods my screen with flashbang sentences & suspect vows of vulpine flesh each persuasive Pavlovian ping pong penetrates with a throbbing thought — a gorgeous galloping, our…

And we’ll keep reinforcing the same dangerous, sexist narratives — How old were you when you had spectacular partnered sex for the first time? 20? 35? 50? No shame if your answer is “not yet.” Like most human activities, fabulous sex takes practice. You have to find out what you enjoy. …

Hybrid Prose Poem: Getting unblocked — “I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps.” — Adrienne Rich, “Diving into the Wreck” Crumpled a hood, folded in on itself metal/rumpled/wrinkled wrecked. How To Climb Out of This Crenulated Car — an optimist might call this dead-end devastation braille and touch its lines tenderly, scan its ridges for lessons not…

Why are we like this? — “What’s something bad about your childhood that made you a better person?” We are strolling along a murky, sluggish river as my friend shares this question, which comes from his therapist. He can see the skeptical, sidelong look in my eyes. I’ve had enough of toxic positivity. …

Is anyone ever ready? — “Sex started to hurt,” my friend confesses in an anguished voice. “I worried that was it for us. I’m only 63. Would ever have sex again? Had my body just given up down there?” We’re in the kitchen, talking in that conspiratorial way women do when they don’t want men…