Truth, or: Dare

Posted on by ben Alexander

A free verse poem

No choice, he
figured. No bullets 
but
the one
in his leg. No windows,
no noise, no smoke. No
way of knowing,
but
he wouldn't survive outside in 
the snow.

"Hey! Anybody in there?
Hello? I need shelter! Anybody there?"

No response. As he pain-
fully limped his way a-
round to the front, he not-
ed the absence of foot-
prints in the snow. The cab-
in seemed aban-
doned, but he knocked any-
way. No response.

Pushing the door open, he entered,
squinting through the darkness,
when
the bounty hunter
fired, and a murder
of crows scattered, squawking 
into the sky.

d’Verse poetics:

Outside looking in

For this d’Verse Poetics Prompt, we were to be voyeurs, peeping through windows and doors of a house that has no family connections and no memories of our own to call upon.

  • Conjure an imaginary house of any size, any place, any age;
  • Fill it with an imaginary person/people past or present; or ghosts; or leave it empty with its history’
  • Make it literal but move into the metaphorical if you wish

If you find it hard to imagine, you may use a picture of a house (exterior or interior) and write an ekphrastic poem. Alternatively, you may select a house from your neighborhood; a historic place; or book or film, but reinvent its history, story, or narrative.

77 thoughts on “Truth, or: Dare”

  4. Nice wordplay. Just a couple of examples:
    “…he pain-
    fully limped his way a-
    round to the front, he not-
    ed the absence of foot-
    prints”

    “the bounty hunter
    fired, and a murder
    of crows scattered”

    Well done, David.

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s