Evolution of a Short Story

This week I am taking One Story's short story class with Hannah Tinti.  The class is all  about structure, and yesterday our assignment was to right a five-sentence short story.  Check back to see how my story evolves!

Like every evening on the den’s sofa with her knitting in her lap, Joyce gazed past Kevin’s feet towards the back kitchen door.

So when Kevin cleared his throat, a sound more canine than human, and Joyce jumped--she startled so easily--she realized she had purled the last nineteen rows.

“Joyce, what’s it this time?” he said to her as the skein flared in her palms like nettles.

So many times, she had rehearsed this moment, but suddenly it seemed that it was her tongue she gripped and fought, tangling it and shredding it to knots, while Kevin just sat there peering over the half-moons of his reading glasses.

But how could he know, scratching his smug gummy ear with the smug little end of his pencil, that in another den halfway across town, just like this one with the reading lamp and the knitting basket, and even the same red paisley ottoman, he sat waiting for her, with his two attentive ears, his fine white whiskers, and a tail that would never feel another woman's caress, only hers.

Enter a contest!

2015 Student Poetry Contest

Accepting entries from now through April 30, 2015

The Student Poetry Contest is open to all students, residing in the USA or Canada, enrolled in grades 3-12

(including home schooled and tutored children)

Each entrant may submit one poem of no more than 20 lines on any subject

and in any style except concrete (shape poems) provided that the poem is the original and individual work of the entrant.   

Click here to read the official rules of the contest.

If you have any problem using the form, please email your entry, along with a note explaining the difficulty, to contest@libraryofpoetry.com

Response to "Valentine for Ernest Mann"

Valentine for Ernest Mann

Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.

Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”

and expect it to be handed back to you

on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.

Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,

write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.

So I’ll tell a secret instead:

poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,

they are sleeping. They are the shadows

drifting across our ceilings the moment 

before we wake up. What we have to do

is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife

two skunks for a valentine.

He couldn’t understand why she was crying.

“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”

And he was serious. He was a serious man

who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly

just because the world said so. He really

liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them

as valentines and they became beautiful.

At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding

in the eyes of skunks for centuries 

crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us

we find poems. Check your garage, the off sock

in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.

And let me know.

Valentine for Ernest Mann"" Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2015.

Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Valentine for Ernest Mann" is all about finding beauty in unexpected places. For example, the man in the poem thought the skunks were beautiful: "Once I knew a man who gave his wife / two skunks for a valentine" (14-15).  The skunk shows beauty because the man "thought they had such beautiful eyes" , which shows everybody is beautiful in their own way (17). The man was serious; he seriously thought the skunks were beautiful, which was unexpected and his wife didn't expect it: "he couldn't understand why she was crying" (16).  She wasn't pleased; she thought they were ugly. This shows the poem's theme which is everyone sees love in different ways.

--written by 5th hour

Response to Edward Hirsch's poem "Fast Break"

Fast Break
BY EDWARD HIRSCH

In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984

A hook shot kisses the rim and

hangs there, helplessly, but doesn’t drop,

and for once our gangly starting center   

boxes out his man and times his jump

perfectly, gathering the orange leather   

from the air like a cherished possession

and spinning around to throw a strike   

to the outlet who is already shoveling

an underhand pass toward the other guard   

scissoring past a flat-footed defender

who looks stunned and nailed to the floor   

in the wrong direction, trying to catch sight

of a high, gliding dribble and a man   

letting the play develop in front of him

in slow motion, almost exactly

like a coach’s drawing on the blackboard,

both forwards racing down the court

the way that forwards should, fanning out

and filling the lanes in tandem, moving   

together as brothers passing the ball

between them without a dribble, without   

a single bounce hitting the hardwood

until the guard finally lunges out   

and commits to the wrong man

while the power-forward explodes past them   

in a fury, taking the ball into the air

by himself now and laying it gently   

against the glass for a lay-up,

but losing his balance in the process,   

inexplicably falling, hitting the floor

with a wild, headlong motion

for the game he loved like a country

and swiveling back to see an orange blur   

floating perfectly through the net.

Edward Hirsch, “Fast Break” from Wild Gratitude. Copyright © 1985 by Edward Hirsch. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

           Edward Hirsch's poem "Fast Break" describes a play in basketball where a player makes a lay-up. This poem is written in memory of Dennis Turner, Edward Hirsch's friend. The player grabs the ball and tries to pass it to another player: "and spinning around to throw a strike / to the outlet who is already shoveling" (7-8).  The player caught the basketball and continued the play to try and shoot a basket.  Next, the players started to run through their play that was developing exactly how it was supposed: "like a coach's drawing on a blackboard" (16). Every detail of the play was elaborated to show how much that goes on in the five seconds of the play. As he goes up for the lay-up, he falls and hits the floor, "losing his balance in the process" (29).  This shows that he is on his own, just like when Dennis Turner learned he had liver cancer. The ball still goes through the net, but Dennis falls.   The ball symbolizes that he still has a shot, a chance, perhaps for treatment or hope that he might survive longer. Life can move pretty fast, so if you don't look around once in a while, you might miss it. Even though you might feel like things are not going your way, you have to keep trying because you don't know what's head, just like the ball "floating perfectly through the net," which symbolizes Dennis Turner even though he died too soon, he had a great life and the important move in life he made before he had to go.  --written by 5th hour