Hey, y’all.

For Day 13 of National Poetry Writing Month, the prompt is to:

Play with rhyme. Start by creating a “word bank” of ten simple words. They should only have one or two syllables apiece. Five should correspond to each of the five senses (i.e., one word that is a thing you can see, one word that is a type of sound, one word that is a thing you can taste, etc). Three more should be concrete nouns of whatever character you choose (i.e., “bridge,” “sun,” “airplane,” “cat”), and the last two should be verbs. Now, come up with rhymes for each of your ten words. (If you’re having trouble coming up with rhymes, the wonderful Rhymezone is at your service). Use your expanded word-bank, with rhymes, as the seeds for your poem. Your effort doesn’t actually have to rhyme in the sense of having each line end with a rhymed word, but try to use as much soundplay in your poem as possible.

Here’s my poem:

RHYME TIME

By Farah Lawal Harris, 2024

Light skin, brown skin, dark skin, caramel—

definitions of skin tone live in a tin of sin

akin to a pin pulled from a hand grenade.

Boom! colorism fills the room.

The fumes settle enough for a

soot-covered groom

to spy his bride,

unhide a TV remote

and cast a seedy vote

for a new day.

On this day,

lavender blooms in November,

offenders remember mistakes seasoned with lemon pepper.

Lepers bare their souls,

leave their lairs and experience fair treatment.

You should see the tears when they’re offered a chair

under a tree.

A kind gesture is like a key,

like a decree to be free,

a key to let go of

straight lines and rise from below,

grow toward the sun like afros,

aglow with music like albums

choking stiff air like talcum

and making intentions clear like glass.

You can pass this class real fast

if you put down the crass, but keep the sass,

travel to where expectations unravel,

open a book and look at how,

by hook and by crook,

cooks took ingredients and made meaning of them.

We can, too.