poetry 2017 / 074

Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates overheard speech. It could be something you’ve heard on the radio, or a phrase you remember from your childhood, even something you overheard a coworker say in the break room! Use the overheard speech as a springboard from which to launch your poem. Your poem could comment directly on the overheard phrase or simply use it as illustration or tone-setting material.

Black Bags

Dog waste bags stuck in trees look like crows

she said, as if the horrors of the A61

were something she'd been forced to witness.

Sometimes they fly away,

cackle at the passing cars

and the full ones just hang, limp,

like a farmer's spoils on the barbed wire.

But if the waste bags are crows,

then supermarket bags

are the plastic equivalent of pigeons

flocking together,

scavenging in shopping malls

and market outlets,

clustering high on chimney pots

and sycamore trees,

tattered and resilient

spreading disease the colours of petrol

and suffocating sparrows.