Responding to Renee's prompt

During the writing time, my mind seemed blank. I was, however, "saved by the Internet."

I wasn't sure how to approach Renee's prompt. I tend to include narratives in my poems, but that was a no-no in her prompt. Time passed...nothing was on my paper. I'll admit it... I decided to roam the Internet for awhile. Since Sassy was the best magazine ever (it is no longer published), I frequently read the website, www.xojane.com. It's run by Jane Pratt, founding editor of Sassy magazine. I saw an article about homeless deterrents; these are basically spikes, sharpened stones, slanted walls, and other architechural designs that deter the homeless and other people from loitering. Horrible, right?

http://www.xojane.com/issues/anti-homeless-deterrent-spikes-hurt-homeless-people-and-they-arent-good-for-anyone-else-either

http://stsnext20.org/vignettes/2014/03/26/when-parisian-benches-have-politics-street-furniture-and-the-strategies-of-spatial-exclusion/

This is the poem that came about because of the prompt and the two articles:

In our afternoon session, I read "Deterrents" to the workshop group. When Cat has us read our pieces, immediately afterward, we enter a fake "green room." The writer remains silent while the others in the group discuss the poem. Cat created an open environment where we did not have to be "afraid" of having our poems discussed or critiqued.

The discussion about "Deterrents" made me smile. The group was discussing the images and how they were cold images, similar to images that would be in a dystopian piece. Questions were asked such as "Has the world ended?" One person in the workshop commented on the use of hydrangea bushes. Apparently, when iron (in the form of iron drops or even in the form of buried, rusted nails) is added to the soil of hydrangea bushes, it helps to make them have a blue hue. Someone had questioned where the mention of hydrangea bushes being near iron gates was intentional.

When I was "released" from the green room, I told the group about the article on homeless deterrents. In the end, it didn't matter if they thought my poem was about a Hunger Games-esque dystopia or if it was about my intended subject, homeless deterrents. The poem got the group to discuss and debate. Interestingly, even though I used tons of concrete images, without the narrative, the readers were left to figure out their own story to tell.