Pick a Word, Any Word

For this week's Poetry Thursdayprompt, we were supposed to use the random prompt generator on their site to create a poem. So, for my poem, I decided to get a list of 10 words from the generator and write 10 couplets that included the words. I was surprised at what resulted, a poem about an earthquake that happened 13 years ago, when I had just moved to Minnesota and my dad still lived in Los Angeles. After the poem, I'll list my required words.

6.7 on the Richter Scale

My dad called me on my 17th birthday, two hours before
I awoke. He was already sifting through the remains

of his home after the earthquake. He told me
all about the sagging freeways in the Valley, the mirror

shards in the bathroom sink, the black thicket
of downed power lines dotting the street. He lived

near the fault line, and his bedroom became
an angry ocean. He tried to tell me this calmly, narrate

the disaster like a joke. I was used to that, his swift
barrage of words building towards the punch line.

Through the cross-country phone line, I listened
for his silence, the pauses filled with static, as he fumbled

towards the next detail. I tried to envision
the new version of our house, the shadow cracks creeping

along the foundation. Our ancient cocker spaniel
shivering and barking back talk at the suspect ground.

And of course, my father, blanched white, surveying
the wreckage with the phone clamped to his ear. As we talked,

he tripped on the fallen chandelier, stubbed his toe. When he cursed,
under his breath, I thought, it’s official – I can never go home.


My required words were: mirrors, barrage, shadow, back talk, fault, thicket, sift, static, stub, and blanch. Of course, I changed their tenses, but I used one in each couplet.