Writing Prompts: The Last

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​This week's focus is around the theme of  "the last" -- the last of something, the last time, the last as in the most recent time. What are all the connotations of the last?

First Mentor Poem

The Last Wolf
—Mary TallMountain
 
The last wolf hurried toward me
through the ruined city
and I heard his baying echoes
down the steep smashed warrens
of Montgomery Street and past
the ruby-crowned highrises
left standing
their lighted elevators useless
 
Passing the flicking red and green
of traffic signals
baying his way eastward
in the mystery of his wild loping gait
closer the sounds in the deadly night
through clutter and rubble of quiet blocks
I hear his voice ascending the hill
and at last his low whine as he came
floor by empty floor to the room
where I sat
in my narrow bed looking west, waiting
I heard him snuffle at the door and
I watched
 
He trotted across the floor
he laid his long gray muzzle
on the spare white spread
and his eyes burned yellow
his small dotted eyebrows quivered
 
Yes, I said.
I know what they have done.

Source: Library of Congress

Poem Prompt #1

​Imagine the last of something – can you describe its qualities, its “habitat”, a speaker’s reckoning? or the main subject's reckoning?  Write this poem for 12 minutes.  Ready? Go.
Combine reality with imagined details, fictionalized details, futuristic details.

Second Mentor Poem

The Last Time
BY RACHEL MCKIBBENS
 
I did it alone, 
without leaving.
 
The welt on my face
still hot, I crept downstairs, 
pried open the toolbox
and grabbed the hammer
with his initials burned deep 
into the handle. 
 
Upstairs, my brother slept
in his room, a glass box
of reptiles watching over him.
 
I turned the knob slowly, 
and stood over my father's body,
his chest heaving, then sinking, 
when his tongue rattled, then stopped,
 
and the whites of his eyes
rolled over, and he stared
only at the weapon in my hand
and I looked at him and said, 
If you ever touch us again, 
I will kill you.
 
Rachel McKibbens, "The Last Time" from Pink Elephant. Copyright © 2009 by Rachel McKibbens.
Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/153340/the-last-time

Poem Prompt #2

Tell me about the “the last time” something happened,  as in someone put a stop to it. Write about it in a poem.  – OR – Tell me about the last as in most recent time something happened, as in last time it rained, the last kiss, this last year. Write this poem for 12 minutes.
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Something Extra

Source: poetryfoundation.org

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