Numbers (Part 1)

Recently we have taken a break from the pressure to always write poems during writing practice and embrace the prose form in response to poetry-as-prompts.  This week's prompts challenge us with numbers.  For me, once I started listing the cost of things, for example, the numbers flowed in a way different from how words flow.  Try it in your own writing practice!

Mentor Poem

indian dancer
NILA NORTHSUN

Source: The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature.  University of New Mexico Press (April 1, 1981)

Writing Prompt #1:

• Tell me about your recent expenses--or about money you've won.
• Tell me about someone who is like "little brother" -- or about a person who is all show.
• Tell me about someone you judge--or about being "judgy."

Writing Prompt #2:

 Take a look at a few song titles with numbers in them or songs with great number-phrases in them.  Under each song is a suggested prompt. Write for 10 minutes

• 50 WAYS TO LOSE YOUR LOVER    Tell me about 50 ways to _____ ?
• 99 RED LUFT BALLOONS     99 what?  What would you like 99 of?
• DECEMBER 1963 (oh what a night)    Tell me about “what a night!”
• 99 PROBLEMS    What else you got problems about if a lover aint one of 'em?
• I’M GONNA BE (500 Miles)    What would you walk 500 miles for?  Tell me about 500 miles of...
• NOTHING COMPARES 2 U ( It's been 7 hrs and 15 days)    Tell me about your last time frame​ How long has it been since . .  .  ?

Golden Lines . . .

. . . are chosen lines of text, popped in the chat sections for pondering.  Here are a few of ours after today's writing session. What are your golden lines?

• I know where to scritch, and just how to scritch
  
• Pluck your sister’s eyebrows
  
• The voice of water swishing through roots and brush on the bank. The voice of whispering cottonwood landing on my knee or quickly singed in the rippling waves of heat above the fire
  
• We were fed a steady diet of hope for the packaged life we thought we craved
  
• The  3,742 proclamations of gleefully sharing others sad stories of suffering
  
• To the Salish Sea and ferry boats and salty folks
  
• Mohawk man has written a poem on my hand, the hand that wants to stroke his long black hair fragrant with sage
  
• Learn to interpret eye corner folds, bouncing eyebrows and forehead rippling wrinkles
  
•  Looked in windows of apartments where only hippies and old writers live
  
• The waves of the ocean softly come to shore. Back and forth, she holds the space in the bowl of Mother Earth. She knows by heart that is how it’s done. And now, I too, get to remember
  
• I have no need for Indiana. Do they deserve the hawk wind and yearly snow dumps because they’re at the bottom of Lake Michigan?  Yeah
  
• Nicotine gum chews the sh_t outta my tongue
  
•  I sat on the swivel back chair, head against the wall
  
•  Nervous system like a 200,000 mile tranny
  
• I remember the bottom falling out of my belly. My heart followed…so did a thousand tears

In Closing:

We agreed that to think in numbers instead of all word-expression was freeing and reminded us of the "Life lessons From Math Class" session, where we treated provocative titles of mathematics theories as only words, making play on the title versus understanding anything about the actual theory--Pigeonhole Principle? Excluded Third? Hopf Lemma, anyone?

What have been your number discoveries? Tell me about it in the comments section.