Re-Vision Your Family


Like it or not, our parents remain a fundamental and powerful part of our lives. Let’s make up new stories for them. Pretend you don’t know what they were like before they met. Pretend you don’t know anything about how they came to be married (if they did). Or pretend they never met. Pretend they married other people. (Don’t worry, you still exist—you’re an omniscient observer.)

Write about your parents in new ways — remember this is poetry — it will be true even if it’s completely fictional. 

Include the following:

a famous person
a specific kind and color of flower
one or more specific places
a form of transportation
an occupation
weather
a fragrance
a stink
something the color of lemons
music — be specific
danger

If you finish, do it again. Change everything. Of change a single key element that everything else depends upon.

Just an idea — someone in your life is or was the linchpin. Someone else is or was the lodestar. Write using these two concepts (but not those words). These people do not necessarily have to be your parents, but they could be.

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