This Chorus has Ended
At twelve years my Voice dropped off a cliff;
Soprano plunged to Alto.
High C cracked as the suicide claimed
my beautiful Hallelujahs.
A final note forged by Puberty's hand:
This chorus for us has ended.
In sorrow, my Range sharply fenced in its scale.
Now
like a cow
I low.
Why is this in my blog? Counts as "some other stuff." But also I remember the process of creating thi,s and I like to document paths from point A to B.
This was a Creative Writing class exercise at a local community college. Part 1: I was given five words to incorporate into a poem: blackberry, cliff, cracked, chorus and one other I can't remember. Part 2: rewrite it and feel free to toss the five words out.
Though I don't remember the original poem, I do remember that the work "cracked" triggered the memory of my voice cracking as I tried to belt out the high notes in the chorus try-out, the notes so easy to reach the year before. From there I got the words "voice dropped", and I already had "cliff," so "suicide" showed up next and so on. I let my brain do its own thing (felt very right-y), and got a pretty good draft going. Then the logical part stepped in and started organizing, architecting, crafting, etc., possibly a bit too much.
This happens often when I write. The left brain wraps up the story or poem, as if it's socking the right side in the arm and yelling "Last hit!" The right side is too wimpy to swing back and is nowhere near fast enough to catch the other side.
