September Monthly Mini Workshop: Monday September 6, 2021. We do a monthly “mini workshop” online using zoom before the Lehigh Valley Poetry Salon, on the first Monday of the month from 8:00 PM EST-8:30 PM EST. These are typically short prompts, reflections, techniques, and generative exercises. For more information and some background, please check out this page. Facilitated: E. Lynn Alexander, host of the Lehigh Valley Poetry Salon and Open Mic.
September Mini Workshop: Great Day for An Ode
We hear about “odes”. That might sound like a stuffy form, but it just means a poem in praise of something. It can be anything. As we will see, it can even be in honor of cheese fries. Jose Olivarez thought them worthy.
So what is an ordinary thing, that might not be important to many people but is important to you?
Our prompt is to chose something, and try an “ode”. It can be serious, or silly. But it isn’t a bad approach to have fun with it and pick something unexpected.
In the following poem, take notice of a few things:
*The poet combines a seemingly silly subject with serious themes
*Fake cheese and the idea of fake joy
Ode to Cheese Fries
golden goo of artificial delicious
what probably lines
my stomach with sunlike grease for weeks after
eating the yellow
so yellow it could only be manufactured so what
if it’s fake
as much cheese content as Apple Jolly Ranchers
i come from
a city of foreclosure empty lot city
where we got
dollar store brand action figures so what
my Wolverine didn’t
have retractable claws or the right uniform
so my joy
at Pano’s my favorite fried everything spot
the cashier’s voice
a box of Newports filtered through throat
i didn’t know
i would miss this home where the patties
come from freezers
and maybe not ever from cows or even animals
i live in
a city that brags about it’s organic fair trade
quinoa fed beef
of course i miss the ’90s pop playing the restaurant
the Backstreet Boys
live in Cal City where the band never breaks up
the song plays
on repeat as the cashier takes my order say it with me
cheese fries please
give me everything artificial including cardboard fries
the bread fresh
out of some Walmart cloning experiment throw in
a cold pop
i want a joy so fake it stains my insides and
never fades away
— José Olivarez, 28, Calumet City
