Ode to the Mundane

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Poetry isn’t always about the grandiose or life changing. Journey around your house and search for the most simple of household objects, from an old sock to plastic plants to a crumpled receipt. What is the mundanity that colors your existence? Which things do you never think of but can’t live without? Select an unconventional muse, one that is rarely celebrated, and let it inspire your poem. Tell its secrets, explain its role in your life, or offer it a thank-you. How will you discover beauty in simplicity?

Example by the NHTPL Team: Ode to Movie Theater Popcorn

Chloe:

So yellow that it’s gold,

I scraped the bottom of the barrel

only to find you 

littered like rain,

crushed underfoot like snowy underbrush

creating eternity out of 2 hours and 24 minutes.

You unfold like a flower and I feel you,

disappearing,

with every Washington emblazoned.

End credits.

Erin:

never quite crunchy enough and always too salty,

you taste like sleeping past bedtime

and collecting stickers from doctor’s appointments.

when i grab a handful of you with my right hand,

curling each finger into a miniature fist, 

you spoonfeed me my first taste of indulgence.

with “unhealthy” as part of your essence,

you teach me that “good” is not always “good”

and “bliss” is sometimes greasy and fleeting.

Catherine Manley:

I am reminded of five years old, flashing lights,

we trade the buttery prize over clasped hands.

Let’s go in July, you’d promised.

(Let’s go in July, I promise.)

When the whole world is sweet & sticky & hot,

when the whole world 

is in our palms.

Serena Yue: 

I never know where you end up.

Melting between my fingers, under my tongue, into the shadows of plush red-seats,

always melting, half-here & half-gone

(I never know where to look).

The colors of the screen reflected on her face–

In twenty years, this will be it:

You, me, and movie theatre popcorn.