Grant Park

I received a prompt from January O'Neill in her poetry workshop to write from a photo on my phone.  I combined it with the monostich form I learned in Major Jackson's workshop: a poem all in one sentence, but syntactically correct.  Here is what I've put together.

Grant Park

The blueberry sky as a background

for slighting clouds, and I’m wearing

my orange heather Sanibel Island

Writers Conference shirt and stone-colored

jeans, hands on my hips, wide shot,

red bricks in the foreground, and behind

me a wrought-iron fence, grass, water,

and Buckingham Fountain rising up

framed by the buildings of South Michigan

Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, water cascading

from the circular stone structure, majestic

tower of water straight above my head,

a dragon spitting a stream to my right,

a fuzzy triangle of water to my left,

sunglasses on, head cocked, it’s a bright

June day, one of the best of the year,

and after my friend Amy takes this photo

of me and the fountain and the city we

find a shady spot to sit and let the breezes

of Lake Michigan wash over us, and we

think about the history of this place fifty years

ago when generations and politics collided,

a rising of resistance and rebellion,

but there is no rage here today, no police

or protestors, just two women in peace

with the sky, the water, the wind.