Tweetspeak Poetry

Thank You Notes: Potatoes, Parsnips, and Other Root Vegetables

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golden-potatoes-poetry-prompt
Thank You Notes is a monthly prompt that focuses on expressing our thanks to a particular person, place, or thing—in poems, paragraphs, or pictures. This month, we’re crafting thank-you’s to potatoes, parsnips, and other root vegetables.

Prompt Guidelines and Options

1. Be specific. Think nouns instead of adjectives. If you are crafting a pictorial thanks, show us something unusual or intriguing that we might not have otherwise noticed if we hadn’t seen your picture.

2. Consider fitting the form of your poem, paragraph, or picture to mirror the nature of the person, place, or thing to which you are expressing thanks. A sonnet is different from a villanelle, for instance. Maybe one would be more fitting than the other.

3. Consider playing Taboo and try writing without using the words and phrases thanks, thank you, gratitude, or grateful.

4. Consider doing a little research about your subject: its history, associated words (and their etymologies), music, art, sculpture, architecture, fashion, science, and so on. Look for unusual details.

That’s it! We look forward to your creative thank you notes.

Photo by jamonation, Creative Commons, via Flickr.

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Comments

  1. Bethany Rohde says

    Baby Carrots

    Quiet sweetness steamed
    whirl-cut
    into glossy puree

    Undeniably orange yet
    willing
    to meld and melt
    into my toddler’s
    mac and cheese

    You get past
    his baby teeth

    Reply

  3. Monica Sharman says

    Ode to the Sweet Potato

    Indebted to your dark,
    blushing skins and versatile
    flesh, deep with autumn orange,
    I pair you with curls of coconut
    or, just as well, tongue-biting spices
    oils, herbs. Will you ever know
    how far my taste for you extends
    to those at my table?

    Reply

  4. Sandra Heska King says

    We Did the Mash

    I saw you there in your sleek brown coat,
    but it was your Irish eyes
    that set me steaming.
    (I’ve got an eye for an eye, you know.)
    You were so fine.
    I sidled up to you,
    tried to butter you up,
    but that lumper boyfriend of yours
    saw something sprouting,
    and he was boiling mad.
    He grabbed the nearest knife,
    thought to skin me alive
    make chips out of me.
    Well, I peeled out of there in an instant,
    believe you me.
    But then—good morning glory!
    I saw your sweet cousin,
    fresh scrubbed and all decked out in purple
    with blossoms in her hair.
    The party had just begun,
    the scene was rocking
    and everyone was having fun.
    So we did the mash.
    Mmmmm.

    Reply

  5. Laura Lynn Brown says

    Quid Pro Carrot

    In appreciation and exchange for your working-class lack of pretensions, your knowledge of the dark, your tiny hairs that still try to root themselves in the air, your delicate green feathertops, your versatility, your raw crunch, your roasted sweetness, your very orangeosity, I give you this: I will never again let you die a sad, lonely, lingering death entombed in the crisper.

    Reply

  8. Linda O'Connell says

    FARMERS MARKETING

    Vegetable avenue. The smell of dirt. The fresh earth.
    And nothing, nothing but clean.
    Food.
    Ruddy faced beets and greens and deep purples.
    As raw and as ripe as newborns in their cradles.

    Potatoes.
    An entire mob scene.
    Tomatoes. Hysteria among fingers.
    Groping.
    And hoping to cop a feel .

    Sunflowers with smiles on their faces.
    Huddled up beside the corn.
    Fit to bust.
    Accommodating themselves to the wooden crate.

    Dark skinned figs. Split open.
    Flirting.
    Luring me in, with their evocative flesh.
    I was just passing by.
    They must want me.

    Butternut squash. Hard.
    As orange as the sky now.
    Cuddled beside a blanket of chard.

    Mushrooms. Wild as my mind at all this.
    How or why
    would I ever want to leave here.

    The pears and the apples.
    Sugar by the mouthful.
    Heaving,
    and breathing out loud.

    Pumpkins, of all kinds
    rich and warm.
    Glowing.
    Already lit from within.

    Hoards of berries.
    Golden, black and blue.
    Juice on the balls of my thumbs.
    Love on my mouth and my tongue.

    And then honey.
    Sweet love feast.
    Summers gift from the bees.
    I do believe in passion.

    I believe in everything.

    Linda R. O’Connell © 2010

    Reply

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