“ . . . are best left in hell!” I love the gusto of this ending. What if hell is indeed just the place where all the rankest odors gather, and its unlucky inhabitants are “blessed” with the noses of dogs?
I love this playful persona poem from the standpoint of a garlic clove endowed with exceptional rhyming abilities, Larry! I could easily see this paired with some playful illustrations as an interlude in a cook book, a chapbook, or a kids book :))
2/3 of my children have entered the phase of life where their aromas are a little less endearing, and your poem takes me back to the time when they were tiny enough for taquito breath to only add to their sweetness! This is such a lovely, tender poem, A.
This is so wonderful A. I love where these prompts take each of us, often to unexpected places in unexpected ways. Ah, the smell of children and how their scents and aromas change as they go. Your son will remember these smells and these feelings, even if they can't be spoken!
"How am I meant to hold on/to this inevitable letting go?" Such powerful lines, a question that's translatable to all the many ephemeral loves we experiences we go through here on planet earth...heart swelling and bursting, really. For what it's worth, I have a feeling that little guy he is now will never fully disappear, and he will always want to meet you under "the blankets." <3
Another sweet Lisa Jensen poem! I love the symmetry you built in with "blows" in the beginning and "nose" at the tail. Here's my offering on this prompt:
You have such a talent for lining words up in a way that both surprises me and makes me feel like no other outcome was possible. Such a great poem . . . and such a great aroma!
My mom loathed coffee, too...she couldn't even stand the smell of it, but would get out the percolator at holiday time and other times she was entertaining. It was a real treat to smell it when she did! Good for your dad, thinking outside the box...who says you have to drink it??
And now that I've read Larry's excellent garlic poem, let's expand that get-together to include a garlic-heavy meal (or maybe we could meet up at a garlic festival? Or a garlic and poetry festival?
This is do sweet, Keith. A terrific testimony to the coffee bean and the smells they send forth, especially while brewing. I liked the smell of coffee long before I came to drink it, and it invokes some powerful memories for me.
Thanks, Larry. It was always a smell I loved, too - even as a kid. I was fortunate to spend a few years working (playing, it felt like) at a coffee roastery.
I appreciate your clever wordplay here...being "nearly felled by the smell of lumber," (poetic justice for trees, yes!) and dreaming of grizzlies while asleep in a hide-tanning shop (more poetic...justice?), and your beginning with sniffing and ending with snuffling. So good.
I took a journey back in time with this one. We live in a mobile home up until the time I was about 13. My mom was always obsessive about keeping everything clean even though it was "just a trailer." She always used bleach water and she called all bleach purex (I think it was competition for clorox back in the day)- still does! This one is a little rhyme-y and kitschy but here goes:
Once every week without fail
She filled the sinks, no need for a pail.
.
With "purex water" to wipe it all down
Laminate counters and cabinets and tub surrounds.
.
The strong chlorine smell always seemed to me clean
I love the sing song rhyming - it makes me feel like a little kid again in a good way, and that fits so well with the vibe of the poem. I also love that without doing anything overt or preachy, you paint a lovely, homey image of a single wide that contrasts with the stereotypes in the media and elsewhere.
I’ve got a short story that fits the prompt if you have time.
1982
When I tell you I loved to fish, you will know that at one point in my life I went fishing everyday for almost two years straight on the days that you could actually fish. My fishing holes were primarily the lakes around the Butler Country Club and Raft’s Pond and the Bauer’s pond in their front yard. But once a year there was an event that was known as the opening day of trout season and on that day I would usually go to Thorn Creek. (We locals liked to call it Thorn Crick). Thorn Crick, if my memory is correct, ran for a few miles through South Butler county and the area I would fish was just at the bottom of Three Degree road near Renfrew. Renfrew wasn’t much to look at but because of Thorn Crick I always liked to drive through that part of town. It was probably the hilliest terrain of the area where I grew up and if you were going to Butler you could go straight up Route 8 or drive the long way around through Renfrew or as my mom liked to say, take the scenic route.
Well on opening day of trout, sleepy Renfrew turned into a mini metropolis population wise. Trucks and cars lined the road as far as you could see. Fisherman were lined up shoulder to shoulder on the banks of the crick on both sides. No one fished with flies or fly rods it was all regular rods and reels with most everyone using things like minnows or colored fish eggs to catch the newly stocked trout. I had just turned twelve and this would be my first opening day out on my own.
I had decided I’d walk from my house to the crick as I’d have to leave my bike on the edge of the road and with so many people it might get taken or run over. So I had my rod and reel and my brown on brown plastic tackle box. I usually fished for small mouth bass with spinner lures and I had those in my tackle box and I had a little section with some tie on Eagle hooks and two jars of fish eggs. One jar was fluorescent orange and the other fluorescent yellow. I walked about three maybe four miles from my house to the crick and when I got there it was busier than I’d ever seen it. From the road I could oversee the valley where the crick ran through and I noticed a little spot where no one had set up. It looked perfect. The crick took a nice little turn in that area and it was relatively flat. A perfect spot but no one had claimed it yet.
I slid between two trucks and jumped over the guard rail by the road and scurried down a small dirt path to where I was at crick level and started walking through a little estuary with some sand and gravel and some lush vegetation. It was fairly flat and I couldn’t believe no one had taken this spot. At this point I could see a few of the fisherman and they could see me. I nodded and they nodded back. The grass about twenty feet from the crick was about a foot high and I slid my feet through it looking out toward the water and the shore where I’d set up. I smacked into something and fell down hard my rod and tackle box still in my hands. I could hear the fishermen near me laugh. I looked down and then I saw it. A half decomposed deer was rotting in the foot high grass. I had walked right into it. The wind had been behind me and now literally on top of it, I could smell the decaying animal. Flies and maggots were all through it’s bloated body. I gagged and the fisherman laughed again. I was in a near panic as I tried to move away from the deer and the death it held. My tackle box had come open and my favorite Blue Fox lure had come out of the box along with the Eagle hooks and the fluorescent orange eggs. I held my breath and tried to gather it all up but I had to leave the Blue Fox lure. It has flown a few feet away on the edge of the shore. Too far to go to retrieve it amongst my embarrassment and the laughter that rained down. The stench was something awful. The horrid smell drove me quickly away. I retraced my steps and went back up to the road. The men were back to fishing and had forgotten about me quickly. One of the men had one on his line. He lifted it up and I could see it was a rainbow, good sized, probably twelve inches. It’s wet body glinting in the morning sunlight. I opened up my tackle box again and took inventory. Things seemed out of place without the Blue Fox lure. I thought for a moment about going back down and getting that spinner lure but I closed up the tackle box and decided to walk down toward the bridge. I would fish there. I looked back down one more time where my lure lay. The fisherman who’d caught the rainbow had a boy about five years old with him and the boy had crossed the crick and quickly returned to the fisherman who I assumed was his dad. The boy held up my lure and pointed toward me. The fisherman patted him on his back and then pointed toward the tackle box on the ground. The boy looked at me again, slid over a few feet and put the lure in their tackle box. I swung my feet over the guard rail and moved between the trucks and started walking down the road, the smell of the dead deer still in my nose.
Wow, what a powerful memory, Billy. Visceral not just because of the horror of stumbling upon the deer, but losing the prized Blue Fox lure, then having it taken right before your eyes. Oooph, I'm feeling that. Incidentally, I too grew up in western PA (Erie)...and I think we're the same age, too. Small world (!).
And here I thought this was going to be about the smell of fish (I grew up fishing with my dad and know it well) 😅 I've been nearby when my dad gutted a deer, and I cannot imagine how much worse it would be if it were rotting. 🤢
Great prompt Lisa, smell. Not my typical poem or writing, so please forgive me for some of the references.
.
Oh the power within the sense of smell.
Both odiferous and fragrant come to foretell
of life’s wondrous mystery as one magic spell.
Some becoming perfumes for the market to sell
while others travel the body only to expel.
The delicious ones I am most moved to tell
sweet aroma’s lingering on my tongue do dwell.
Yet those vile and foul stenches, are best left in hell.
“ . . . are best left in hell!” I love the gusto of this ending. What if hell is indeed just the place where all the rankest odors gather, and its unlucky inhabitants are “blessed” with the noses of dogs?
Fun!
These rhymes, references included, are swell ; ) - truly, Julie...this was a fun read!
I like this Julie! So creative how you used the “ ell” sound wonderfully well. A nice flow, rhythm and cadence e leading to that whopper ending!
I am completely sure only the incredible Lisa Jensen coud elicit a poem about garlic from me!
Garlic
.
I am a spicy little clove, yes I am
and I hail quite proudly from the garlic clan,
sliced and diced by many a hand;
sending my super powers across the land.
.
Fit for a pizza, pasta, stir fry and cheese,
I am even ready for a freeze!
Yours to share and enjoy as you please
breathing in that feisty fragrance on the breeze.
.
Protection, healing, keeping vampires at bay
I am ready to stir, shuffle, blend and play.
Guaranteed to bring a heightened spice to your day
trust me, there really is no better way.
.
Some have tried to quiet and throw me out,
If you imbibe too much you’ll sweat me out,
learning in the truest way what I am about
not content to be silent, but to shine with a shout!
Oh my goodness, you had me at “I am a spicy little clove.” What a fun poem, Larry!
I love this playful persona poem from the standpoint of a garlic clove endowed with exceptional rhyming abilities, Larry! I could easily see this paired with some playful illustrations as an interlude in a cook book, a chapbook, or a kids book :))
Thank you Keith! Maybe we can create a collection of good, smells and other sensory writings!
That would be a blast!! :))
Fun Larry, I ended up doing a rhyming poem too. It seems to fit poems for "smell".
Garlic is one of my faves too! Too much is not enough!
Garlic is one of my favourite scents and flavours and I love this so much.
It is one of my very favorites, too!
Well, I started with a scent and then this happened.
I am greeted by taquito breath
as my toddler tucks our heads
beneath a blanket. I try to breathe
.
in my baby, wishing I could trap
and bottle some bit of this time
before he is too big to be trying
.
to hide under blankets with me.
How am I meant to hold on
to this inevitable letting go?
.
It feels too big and too small
and I know someday he might,
too. But maybe that won't be
.
the end of the world. Maybe
when he is troubled and tired
he will still be willing to meet me
.
underneath blankets to breathe
together, letting go of the rest
of the world, for a moment.
2/3 of my children have entered the phase of life where their aromas are a little less endearing, and your poem takes me back to the time when they were tiny enough for taquito breath to only add to their sweetness! This is such a lovely, tender poem, A.
This is so wonderful A. I love where these prompts take each of us, often to unexpected places in unexpected ways. Ah, the smell of children and how their scents and aromas change as they go. Your son will remember these smells and these feelings, even if they can't be spoken!
What a sweet sweet moment in time.
"How am I meant to hold on/to this inevitable letting go?" Such powerful lines, a question that's translatable to all the many ephemeral loves we experiences we go through here on planet earth...heart swelling and bursting, really. For what it's worth, I have a feeling that little guy he is now will never fully disappear, and he will always want to meet you under "the blankets." <3
Ahh the smells of childhood. How endearing A.
Another sweet Lisa Jensen poem! I love the symmetry you built in with "blows" in the beginning and "nose" at the tail. Here's my offering on this prompt:
*
"I smelled you coming
before I could see you."
Words percolating through
granules of memories.
Granules browned by time
of days nesting inside years
spent in the close company
of coffee beans.
Scooping, weighing,
blending, grinding,
flavoring, bagging,
imbibing, inhaling,
infusing lungs and circulating
particulates both
carbonaceous and full-bodied yet
unseen through my bloodstream,
my pores simultaneously
absorbing and off gassing
floral notes and hints of earth and cedar,
trailing chocolate, citrus and almond
in aromatic wake I came to mistake
for my own.
You have such a talent for lining words up in a way that both surprises me and makes me feel like no other outcome was possible. Such a great poem . . . and such a great aroma!
Thank you, friend...this feedback is making my night <3
My dad absolutely loved the smell of coffee and could barely tolerate the taste - but he would brew a pot just to smell it!
My mom loathed coffee, too...she couldn't even stand the smell of it, but would get out the percolator at holiday time and other times she was entertaining. It was a real treat to smell it when she did! Good for your dad, thinking outside the box...who says you have to drink it??
Keith, are you a poet laureate? Dang, that’s some good stuff.
You flatter me, Billy (and thank you)!!
You and Larry both wrote about one of my favourite scents and flavours! I love "in the close company of coffee beans."
I wish we could all sit down for a cuppa together :))
Someday, I hope!
And now that I've read Larry's excellent garlic poem, let's expand that get-together to include a garlic-heavy meal (or maybe we could meet up at a garlic festival? Or a garlic and poetry festival?
If it doesn't exist, we can make our own.
This is do sweet, Keith. A terrific testimony to the coffee bean and the smells they send forth, especially while brewing. I liked the smell of coffee long before I came to drink it, and it invokes some powerful memories for me.
Thanks, Larry. It was always a smell I loved, too - even as a kid. I was fortunate to spend a few years working (playing, it felt like) at a coffee roastery.
First time wandering into the hampton coliseum for something other than a Virginia Squires basketball game,
reefer introduces herself,
with a smile
and a warm smoky handshake,
to the nose of a young,
ripe-for-the-picking
hippie-in-training.
Thank you Grand Funk Railroad.
So delightful!
Nice - did the hippie-in-training make it to full blown hippie??
Almost. 🙂. The navy jumped in for a little while, but I think the spirit is still in there somewhere
"introduces herself/with a smile/and a warm smoky handshake" - it really is a relationship sometimes.
I meant to go sniffing
for words, but they
muscled in
when I entered
my friend’s tool shed
and was nearly felled
by the smell of lumber.
.
I am seven,
playing hide-and-seek
in an unfinished
stick frame in Georgia.
I am nine,
in a Tahoe condo,
and Tahoe is the wildest place
I know.
I am 21
and sampling other states.
Asleep in a hide-tanning shop
in Montana,
I dream of grizzlies
as they snuffle the yard.
I love this so much! How you didn’t waste any words but you pulled us right with you from a single smell to each of these vivid scenes.
I appreciate your clever wordplay here...being "nearly felled by the smell of lumber," (poetic justice for trees, yes!) and dreaming of grizzlies while asleep in a hide-tanning shop (more poetic...justice?), and your beginning with sniffing and ending with snuffling. So good.
Love it - and unfinished lumber takes me back too to my grandfather's cabinetry/woodshop,
I took a journey back in time with this one. We live in a mobile home up until the time I was about 13. My mom was always obsessive about keeping everything clean even though it was "just a trailer." She always used bleach water and she called all bleach purex (I think it was competition for clorox back in the day)- still does! This one is a little rhyme-y and kitschy but here goes:
Once every week without fail
She filled the sinks, no need for a pail.
.
With "purex water" to wipe it all down
Laminate counters and cabinets and tub surrounds.
.
The strong chlorine smell always seemed to me clean
Windows thrown open to air out the scene.
.
Sent out to play while she mopped all the floors.
Slamming behind us those metal screen doors.
.
A single wide trailer soon as clean as could be.
The happiest home in my memory.
I love the sing song rhyming - it makes me feel like a little kid again in a good way, and that fits so well with the vibe of the poem. I also love that without doing anything overt or preachy, you paint a lovely, homey image of a single wide that contrasts with the stereotypes in the media and elsewhere.
I love the rhymey-ness, and this is a very vivid sensory postcard from your childhood home :))
thanks Keith!
don't forget to wipe your feet.
Of course! My dad was the one who got in the most trouble for this - in and out, in and out all day from his shop or working and tinkering on cars...
I love this poem and how you played with the shape so it mimicks scents travelling through the air. It's so impactful.
Good morning! Another wonderful prompt and top of the line photo! Lisa, you are the best! Smell you later!
Wonderful poems. Wonderful prompt!
I’ve got a short story that fits the prompt if you have time.
1982
When I tell you I loved to fish, you will know that at one point in my life I went fishing everyday for almost two years straight on the days that you could actually fish. My fishing holes were primarily the lakes around the Butler Country Club and Raft’s Pond and the Bauer’s pond in their front yard. But once a year there was an event that was known as the opening day of trout season and on that day I would usually go to Thorn Creek. (We locals liked to call it Thorn Crick). Thorn Crick, if my memory is correct, ran for a few miles through South Butler county and the area I would fish was just at the bottom of Three Degree road near Renfrew. Renfrew wasn’t much to look at but because of Thorn Crick I always liked to drive through that part of town. It was probably the hilliest terrain of the area where I grew up and if you were going to Butler you could go straight up Route 8 or drive the long way around through Renfrew or as my mom liked to say, take the scenic route.
Well on opening day of trout, sleepy Renfrew turned into a mini metropolis population wise. Trucks and cars lined the road as far as you could see. Fisherman were lined up shoulder to shoulder on the banks of the crick on both sides. No one fished with flies or fly rods it was all regular rods and reels with most everyone using things like minnows or colored fish eggs to catch the newly stocked trout. I had just turned twelve and this would be my first opening day out on my own.
I had decided I’d walk from my house to the crick as I’d have to leave my bike on the edge of the road and with so many people it might get taken or run over. So I had my rod and reel and my brown on brown plastic tackle box. I usually fished for small mouth bass with spinner lures and I had those in my tackle box and I had a little section with some tie on Eagle hooks and two jars of fish eggs. One jar was fluorescent orange and the other fluorescent yellow. I walked about three maybe four miles from my house to the crick and when I got there it was busier than I’d ever seen it. From the road I could oversee the valley where the crick ran through and I noticed a little spot where no one had set up. It looked perfect. The crick took a nice little turn in that area and it was relatively flat. A perfect spot but no one had claimed it yet.
I slid between two trucks and jumped over the guard rail by the road and scurried down a small dirt path to where I was at crick level and started walking through a little estuary with some sand and gravel and some lush vegetation. It was fairly flat and I couldn’t believe no one had taken this spot. At this point I could see a few of the fisherman and they could see me. I nodded and they nodded back. The grass about twenty feet from the crick was about a foot high and I slid my feet through it looking out toward the water and the shore where I’d set up. I smacked into something and fell down hard my rod and tackle box still in my hands. I could hear the fishermen near me laugh. I looked down and then I saw it. A half decomposed deer was rotting in the foot high grass. I had walked right into it. The wind had been behind me and now literally on top of it, I could smell the decaying animal. Flies and maggots were all through it’s bloated body. I gagged and the fisherman laughed again. I was in a near panic as I tried to move away from the deer and the death it held. My tackle box had come open and my favorite Blue Fox lure had come out of the box along with the Eagle hooks and the fluorescent orange eggs. I held my breath and tried to gather it all up but I had to leave the Blue Fox lure. It has flown a few feet away on the edge of the shore. Too far to go to retrieve it amongst my embarrassment and the laughter that rained down. The stench was something awful. The horrid smell drove me quickly away. I retraced my steps and went back up to the road. The men were back to fishing and had forgotten about me quickly. One of the men had one on his line. He lifted it up and I could see it was a rainbow, good sized, probably twelve inches. It’s wet body glinting in the morning sunlight. I opened up my tackle box again and took inventory. Things seemed out of place without the Blue Fox lure. I thought for a moment about going back down and getting that spinner lure but I closed up the tackle box and decided to walk down toward the bridge. I would fish there. I looked back down one more time where my lure lay. The fisherman who’d caught the rainbow had a boy about five years old with him and the boy had crossed the crick and quickly returned to the fisherman who I assumed was his dad. The boy held up my lure and pointed toward me. The fisherman patted him on his back and then pointed toward the tackle box on the ground. The boy looked at me again, slid over a few feet and put the lure in their tackle box. I swung my feet over the guard rail and moved between the trucks and started walking down the road, the smell of the dead deer still in my nose.
Oh my that took a turn. Very visceral as Keith said. And I'm kinda irked they didn't give the lure back to you!!
Wow, what a powerful memory, Billy. Visceral not just because of the horror of stumbling upon the deer, but losing the prized Blue Fox lure, then having it taken right before your eyes. Oooph, I'm feeling that. Incidentally, I too grew up in western PA (Erie)...and I think we're the same age, too. Small world (!).
And here I thought this was going to be about the smell of fish (I grew up fishing with my dad and know it well) 😅 I've been nearby when my dad gutted a deer, and I cannot imagine how much worse it would be if it were rotting. 🤢