Read the full post here.

Our featured participants – Rhyme and Reason and Xanku.

Our featured online magazine – Miracle Monocle, Jessica Barksdale’s “Zoo Story,” and Coleman Childress’s “Broken Cabins on the Beach.”

Prompt: Hard-boiled detective novels are known for their use of vivid similes, often with an ironic or sarcastic tone. Novelist Raymond Chandler is particularly adept at these. Here are a few from his novels:

A few locks of dry, white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.
Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.

Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which you describe something with a hard-boiled simile… use just one, or try to go for broke and stuff your poem with similes.

I read today’s prompt whilst I was out in the garden planting seeds. Rhyme and Reason wrote a thought-provoking poem.

The kind of blot
That none forgets,

A contrast to featured poem from Xanku– Front by Xan.

Mind you
my address is
on the front of
my house but
my front door is
not

I loved the exploration in this one and that ending… perfect!

JESSICA BARKSDALE’S Zoo Story

was an intriguing poem, a force of poem which pulled me right in. A fantastic opening couplet:

Let’s not think about bears, or anything cute (and dangerous)
like a marriage, a first husband, and how things go wrong.

you once married to a bear

and now a giraffe, mother to a chimp, a steadfast rhino, stepmother
to a moth and a gecko, daughter to nocturnal beast undiscovered.

COLEMAN CHILDRESS

Next I read Broken Cabins on the Branch.

The furrowing of branches, of hardwood, of sun.
your hands statuary with tranchelight

There’s some beautiful imagery in this surreal poem.

PROCESS NOTES:

‘Write a poem in which you describe something with a hard-boiled simile.‘

Before I had a clue about subject I went here to read some similes to get my evening brain working! I just had a quick glance over the list. I thought I would create 1 simile and then as I started to write I decided to incorporate more (not to total saturation).

I wrote the poem and made several drafts/ playing mainly with the white space. I have something I think I can work on and found myself not just writing similes but making links to traditional nursery rhyme characters and these two well known figures.