Shameful: A Spoon River Verse

You stood above me
your hands touching
absent letters in
my nameless grave.

Clearly, that’s how much
you hate having me.
Even a name, just a name,
feels so expensive, so costly.

With shameful smile you begin to cry
for a soul you willingly let die.
The heartbeat you created,
is the same life you ended.

Are you proud now, Mom?

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Photo credit: Unsplash

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In response to OctPoWriMo 2016 by Morgan Dragonwillow‘s Day 14.

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Spoon River Verse is a subgenre of Mask or Persona poetry. The term is inspired by the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, American Poet (1869-1950). The anthology is a series of poems written as if each poem was being spoken by the dead. The setting is a cemetery in an imaginary western town, Spoon River. The voices make up a ‘history’ of the town’s past residents and their relationships.

The Spoon River poem is a poem of voice. The poem speaks from and for a person, not necessarily the poet. The subject, diction and imagery should reflect the character who is speaking through the poem.

Spoon River Verse is:

• framed at the discretion of the poet.
• dramatic.
• written in the voice of a character of a particular time and place. Usually the voice comes from the grave. The person, the era, the location should all be heard through the words of the poem.