I tried another quadrille. A quadrille poem must be exactly 44 words, making it a micro-poetry form,  designed to challenge writers to be precise, concise, and impactful  within a tight constraint.   SNOW DAY [27] She sleeps and snow falls . . . settles thickly on windowsills, drifts deeply over graveyard headstones, covers streets with zigzagged velvety chenille, transforms her neighborhood into alabaster splendor. She forces open the frozen window, breathes icy air, thinks maybe they'll be snowed in all day. -- comments welcome --

  HAIKU FERNS [26] Spring-green fern fronds make low ruffling sounds in the wind, lyrical surprise. --comments welcome--

  NOTE: I was inspired by  Kaci Cutshaw Rigby  to try a quadrille.  A Quadrille is a poem that consists of 44 words, no more/no less. You can infuse meter or not. You can introduce rhyme, or not! As long as it is 44 words, you’re golden. I picked a one word prompt to get me started: JARS JEWELED JARS [27] September 1954. I'm sitting on the back steps  at Golden Lake, Mother in the kitchen canning  watermelon pickles, my favorite.  Rinds cut from sweet red fruit, eight pint jars in the water bath. As jars cool, they seal and pop. We smile each time.

  THE STAFFORD CHALLENGE. DAY 10 "GHOST CARS" Just another empty car on a dark Minneapolis street; flashers on, doors open, motor still running. Not because of car trouble. ICE has taken them away, the people inside the car. Abandoned cars are Ghost Cars, the people driving them forced out by ICE, wrestled to freezing ground, savagely beaten, handcuffed, taken to Whipple for processing. ICE likes to detain people they think are illegal; they also like to arrest them. I haven't read anything yet that says,   ICE can murder people in cold blood. Sometimes the people are moved to local jails; jails in Crow Wing, Freeborn, Kandiyohi counties, they get paid to keep them locked up. Sometimes they're put on a plane, flown out of state. Sometimes they never come back. Tow trucks come for the ghost cars waiting sad   and empty, helpless in the frigid Minneapolis nights.

  WHERE I'M FROM [23] Child of the fifties,  I'm from the land of sky-blue-waters, only daughter in a family of sons, the one who never quite fit in. I am the descendant of a German grandmother I never knew and a Polish grandma I adored. I am from a house on a lake sheltered by ancient oaks and elms. I'm from a country church hemmed by a patchwork quilt of pastures and cornfields, the non-believer with the Catholic upbringing singing hymns on Sunday mornings, eating  doughnuts in the church basement after mass. I'm from black and white TV, Laurel & Hardy and Ed Sullivan, Little House on the Prairie books, walking barefoot down dirt roads and warm chocolate chip cookies in our red kitchen. I’m from peonies blooming at the back door, two blue canoes and a rowboat, a dog named Sam and Bridal Wreath cascading behind the garage. I am from the pink bedroom with organdy curtains and checkered wallpaper; I'm from pigtails with ribbons. And I am from Dad at the ...

  Inside Outside In this neighborhood, folks tend to stay inside on dark winter evenings.   They eat hamburger casserole, then she wipes down cracked linoleum counters and he watches mind-numbing TV.   At exactly ten o'clock, she lets the dog in, he checks the locks on all the doors and together they climb the stairs.   They fall immediately into dreamless slumber, while old family photos mutter from their frames in the hall.   Outside, a heavy hush fills the empty streets as night unrolls over the city like a bolt of thick, black flannel.   The piece describes a life where, in order to cope with a harsh, cold world, people have created a perfectly ordered, monotonous routine that keeps them safe but also deeply isolated and disconnected.

What is Color Poetry? Color Poems: Use descriptions, nouns, experiences, and the five senses to express feelings about one or more colors. Color Poems can be any length, usually do not rhyme, and can contain similes. INTO THE BLUENESS Blue, you've been my color since the beginning.  I'm drawn to your deep blue shadows gracefully  reclining on January snow, your purply-blue violets  sprouting in new spring grass, the wise blue-gray eyes  of my mother, the blue serge uniform I wore  at Catholic school, skirt hiked up an inch or two  to show off my legs, blue-petaled cornflowers  in Grandma's garden, my intensely dark-blue  lapis pendant, sky blue water, blue denim,  shiny blue buttons. I've always liked you best, blue.  It's extraordinary how you fill  a space  with your dedicated fragments of heaven. -marianne mcnamara ..comments welcome..