Day 26: Lexicon & Pic and a Word #229: Choices

• Manja Maksimovič

Today’s poetry and photo challenge prompts go together well. The poem is full of my choices, just like my life.

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Prompt 26: “For this prompt, you will need to fill out, in five minutes or less, the following ‘Almanac Questionnaire.’ Then, use your responses as to basis for a poem.

Weather:
Flora:
Architecture:
Customs:
Mammals/reptiles/fish:
Childhood dream:
Found on the Street:
Export:
Graffiti:
Lover:
Conspiracy:
Dress:
Hometown memory:
Notable person:
Outside your window, you find:
Today’s news headline:
Scrap from a letter:
Animal from a myth:
Story read to children at night:
You walk three minutes down an alley and you find:
You walk to the border and hear:
What you fear:
Picture on your city’s postcard:

Not in exactly this order, but this is what I’ve done and here are my answers in a poem, perfect also for Patrick’s theme of choices for his Pic and a Word challenge.

Lexicon

You call it almanac,
we called it lexicons in primary school,
predating Facebook, full of nosy questions
about favourites:
Actor? Singer? Group?
Weather, plant, animal?
Sunny but not hot.
Fields of wildflowers.
Chinchilla, iguana, škarpena
which sounds more alluring than Red Scorpionfish.
Architecture? Funky, individualistic.
Hm? My customs? Nation’s?
To dance wildly at midnight in some crazy mask?
Childhood wish? To become a detective.
Likes to see? Art in the street.
“Nisam ja odavde.” (I’m not from here.)
Hm? I’m not a country to export. Myself?
One lover at a time.
No conspiracy, everything is true somewhere.
Not wearing much, mostly clothes.
When electricity was rationed back in Yugoslavia
and we were in the playground
and all lights went out at the same time.
Christopher Reeve,
watching a ski race in Slovenia
next to me for a while.
He wore a huge smile and thick huge gloves,
and clapped, and gave me an autograph.
News headline?
“Maybe he is dead or just vegetating, nobody knows for sure.”
Whose? Mine? I remember my letters more than other people’s:
“And now he is building this garden for me.”
I was only read to. Pippi was always the big win.
One beast from a myth?
Ah, don’t know, one of those with many heads.
Now outside my window?
The dog, birds, Tuscany, viruses.
Three minutes away? A field full of wildflowers.
What they say? “You cannot enter. Not now, not ever.”
What I fear? More and more things.
“Other people,” my mother replied in an old lexicon.
Dragon, if it’s the previous city.
Flamingo, if it’s the present.

In photos, my choice of glimpses from my dog walks yesterday and today.

  • Poppies getting ready to take over.
  • Four pines of the quarantine.
  • The promise of heat to come.
  • The dog outside my window.
  • Not a chinchilla.
  • Dog sees rabbit.

For Day 26 of NaPoWriMo 2020

and

In response to Patrick Jennings’ Pic and a Word Challenge #229: Choices

19 thoughts on “Day 26: Lexicon & Pic and a Word #229: Choices”

  3. OMG, OMG, OMG. You met Cristopher Reeve!😍Swooning here, big time.
    ‘One lover at a time’ sounds like a healthy goal.😊 There are so many good lines in your lexicon. And the photos–out of this world! It’s hard to decide what I love more–a field of poppies or a smiling Christopher Reeve.😉

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Hihih, thanks, Romana. I was just the right age for it too, 13 or so. He was huge, really tall. And he had moustache. 🙂 Somehow I didn’t see that coming. I knew he was in town, shooting a movie nearby. We spent the day before in his hotel, my parents and I, sitting in the lobby for a long time, as if just chilling, until he entered. And what he does? He slides on the floor as if on ice. I will never forget that entry. I didn’t bother him then. I was happy to have seen him and we left. 🙂 My parents were really patient. And for the next day my journalist father secured me a place in a VIP section of the skiing race…

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
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