Writing Prompts: Masks

Image by Gordon Johnson

First Mentor Poem

Lucha Libre
Esteban Rodríguez
 
It was the mask I wanted more
than fame, the tight turquoise leather
tied with red shoestring around my nape,
the thought of being someone else
without being anchored to a face,
so as not to face the features in the face
that were slowly changing, growing
stranger by the year. And there was
the white complexion so different from
the darker shades of skin around me,
and the pimples unwilling to renounce
their loyalty, leaving me to reinvent
the candy-red bumps as chickenpox instead.
Even if I didn't know the one-hit wonder
of this disease, once I saw those Mexican
men fighting on TV, I couldn't care less
if anyone else believed it, if I, like them,
was putting up a front because a front
was the surest thing to guise myself in,
to carry my confidence further than
their choreographed jumps, than their lunges,
plunges, angelic dives, than the tiptoe
rope-walking as they back-flipped farther
into the ring, or as their sweaty bodies
began to sync with the crowd's shock
and awe, feed off their praise and screams.
And there I was, bouncing off my bed,
mumbling Spanish I could barely speak,
and hardly able to drop-kick, eye-poke,
cross chop, pile drive, head-butt, body slam,
brain-bust, somersault, shoulder claw,
slingshot or sleeper hold into my role
as rudo, the dirty-playing villain desperate
to pin the appearance I no longer wanted,
to wait for the count and finish off
with a headlock so I wouldn't have to take off
my mask, reveal to myself who I knew
I really was.
 
Copyright © 2019 by Esteban Rodríguez
Source: https://poems.com/poem/lucha-libre/

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) explains Lucha Libre moves and masks, helping us appreciate the speaker in the poem when he describes the guises, lists dives and craves audience reaction!
​

Pick a Lucha Libre name, learn some moves and . . .
a few other surprises.

Illustration by Leo Romero

Poem Prompt #1

Write a poem about masks, or a mask.  Who wore it? What did it embody? Who did it influence? How? Where did it come from? Can you remember a mask of your own?  Write for 12 minutes.  Go!

​Second Mentor Poem

Phizzog
Carl Sandburg
 
This face you got,
This here phizzog you carry around,
You never picked it out for yourself
at all, at all—-did you?
This here phizzog—-somebody handed it
to you–am I right?
Somebody said, “Here’s yours, now go see
what you can do with it.”
Somebody slipped it to you and it was like
a package marked:
“No goods exchanged after being taken away”—-
This face you got.

Image by David | Funky Focus

Image by Michelle Badenhorst

Poem Prompt #2

​What about your face? Write a poem about your face.  A face.  Write for 12 minutes. Go!

For Discussion

Move to the City
​Nathaniel Bellows
 
live life as a stranger. Disappear
into frequent invention, depending
on the district, wherever you get off
the train. For a night, take the name
of the person who’d say yes to that
offer, that overture, the invitation to
kiss that mouth, sit on that lap. Assume
the name of whoever has the skill to
slip from the warm side of the sleeping
stranger, dress in the hallway of the
hotel. This is a city where people
know the price of everything, and
know that some of the best things
still come free. In one guise: shed
all that shame. In another: flaunt the
plumage you’ve never allowed
yourself to leverage. Danger will
always be outweighed by education,
even if conjured by a lie. Remember:
go home while it’s still dark. Don’t
invite anyone back. And, once inside,
take off the mask. These inventions
are the art of a kind of citizenship,
and they do not last. In the end, it
might mean nothing beyond further
fortifying the walls, crystallizing
the questioned, tested autonomy,
ratifying the fact that nothing will be
as secret, as satisfying, as the work
you do alone in your room.

Copyright © 2013 by Nathaniel Bellows.
Source: https://poets.org/poem/move-city