Wednesday Write-Off: What's on YOUR Plate?

Write-Off Prompt for Wednesday, January 27, 2010:

Write a [minimum] 10-line poem

about the last time

somebody

or

something

made you angry.

Rhyming not required.

* * * * *

Last Week's Prompt:

Find something weird, cool, comical and/or inspiring

on a license plate or bumper sticker,

and write about it.

Take it any direction you'd like,

in any format you choose,

and write at least 20 minutes, altogether

(you can break it up if you want to).

I stuck with the original personalized plate I saw,

the one that prompted the prompt (grin):

GONINJA

Squashed-fig purple, almost brown but sparkling, spinning rims, suspension with the hiccups.  GONINJA plate.  A woman's car.  She opens that glitter-painted driver's side door, sets her left foot squarely on the pavement.  Pauses, then glides out of her seat in one power move.  Baseball cap with ponytail tugged through the slot in the back, tank top, blue jeans, shit-kickers with a Frye Boots heel but a pointed toe (not for embellishment, but for use when emphasis is required upside somebody's behind).  Gold stud earrings, a gold cross tucked under her tank.  She glances around, once, and moves out just enough to close the car door, swinging her keys on one no-nonsense, no fake-nailed finger.  This is not a bikini-&-pumps-on-the-beach super hero woman.  She's never even seen Charlie's Angels (the original TV series or the film remakes), just heard about them and languidly picked her teeth with the rough edge of her thumb.  She's a woman of few words but those can sometimes out-colorize the rainbow, bi-lingual expletives and minus hesitancy.  Hers is an animal stride, like a large calm cat, checking its territory - aware, awake in every muscle & tendon.  So beautiful, raw & lithe like she is.  She's a woman who startles by saying a plain, "No, "  neither preceded nor followed by an apology or explanation, the way men say it.  She walks by two women with full grocery carts, one juggling several Payless shoe bags, a group of four giggling girls cloistered outside the entrance to La Salsita -- and they all feel a flicker of their own interior false notes as she passes.  This woman, she's a wave of confident personal reality, personality realized, as low maintenance as she can conceive for her own comfort.  The hideous car, recently purchased, takes her from point A to point Z, reliably, gets good gas mileage, and on Saturday she and her brothers will tackle that soft suspension.  She passes and the other women watch, quietly at first, then commencing the insult-chitter - have to put down she who challenges their posturing, their compromises.  Later, though, one who has observed will chisel something of those out of her own way, and privately practice her personal panther stride.

* * * * *

S'a'right.

18 minutes of just-keep-writing.

I recognize myself as the watcher who returns to my home,

chisels off a piece of b.s., and practices my stride.

That's okay, too,

because I'm learning.

Sightings of a woman like that are

still quite rare, don't you think?

I feel it whenever I watch the DVD

Veronica Guerin

Hey, didya write something? 

Leave me a

comment and a link!

I'm still working on a Mister Linky

gizmo and hope to

have it ready for next week!