Poet & Resource for the Poetry Community
Nightbitch after Rachel Yoder’s novel Nightbitch
I would stain December gluey red. I would bring you rabbits in my teeth. The frost has bite, and so do I.
I don’t owe the world my lungs, but I howl the quiet out of the milk-blue morning anyway, sprint peppermint spirals in the indigo mists
of my own breath. I would curl up in December’s furrowed brow, smothered in the comfort of fur and raw satisfaction. I am learning to love myself
We trim the tree of its evergreen and dance with moons between our palms. We cloak our summer freckles in wolf skin, slip on our rabbit feet, speak in Morse code to the snow. We plant soft magic in ordinary hours, bleed out over silver lawns. Bruised knees, raspberry mouths, violet bellies— every bloom’s a shadow after midnight. Every woman behind glass is an animal waiting at the shore of attempt between seasons’ breaths. We lie down in the hollow of the darkest night, where sleep-leaden thoughts can constrict and sprawl. We are scars softened by rain. We are nearly dead, but we have each other. Together is a beautiful place to spend the long way back.
Write a poem inspired by or using at least one of the following alliterative lines:
Keep the alliteration going and learn more about this poetic device below!
Alliteration is a literary/poetic device in which several words that are close together start with the same sound (usually a consonant):
the leaping lemur stopped to lick the lonely lemon
Use at least one of these ocean-and-eye themed images in your poem:
Using these quotes from Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing as inspiration, write a poem in which you personify the weather, seasons, or other natural phenomena.
‘Then one afternoon, just like that, spring elbowed her way in for good.’
‘It was a gray-sky day, and fingers of fog flirted with the waves.’
“light as a feather, stiff as a board”
Use this line from the classic slumber party game/levitation trick as the title of your poem.
