Poetry Prompts for When I am Almost Depressed

Kyo has been struggling to write poetry since the publication of her debut poetry collection. She has since been lost on what poetry is about and what her poetry is about. Before, it felt like poetry was inside her, but now she has to seek poetry. The “prompts” in this poem are real things that she jots down in her notes app. Through these notes, Kyo is desperately seeking for something to drive her work but it is not quite there.

The bruise I left on your upper left arm
January, the quiet walks home with wet socks
& snow sparkling like a mirror that broke
while you were still inside
August
Mixing paint on the ripped out pages of a Bible
The lipgloss & the tiny bottle of Jim Beam in your purse
Used tissues
Your photo album of every fat chickadee you’ve spotted
Libra by Pity party (Girls Club)
The summer I failed my driver’s test
August
Your small gold hoops, how they hug  the wounds on your lobes
The way your body trembles  when someone else sneezes
Our months-long love-letter email chain
Lavender farms after all the lavender have gone
Everything not quite beautiful enough to be in poems
Apple headphones
August
Emperors crying softly in the washroom
Brutus’s shoulder sticky with Caesar's sweaty blood
How we’ll leave here
in August with the dying sparrows. 

Kyo Lee is a writer from South Korea and Waterloo, Canada. She is the author of the poetry collection i cut my tongue on a broken country (Arsenal Pulp Press), and the youngest winner and finalist of the CBC Poetry Prize and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award respectively. She has a love-hate relationship with morning classes, summer, and improv baking. You can visit her at kyolee.me.