1. Creating your Narrative Poem
Journal 13. Warm-up: Write about the biggest lie you’ve ever told.

2. Sentence 1-
Identify the ritual or event shared with another person in your life (setting and characters) using enjambment and one hyperbole.
EXAMPLE:
On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax,
Close his eyes, and ask me to write
the same letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than man.

3. Sentence 2-3 Reveal the speaker’s attitude/tone towards the ritual.
Reveal the conflict (what the speaker wants vs. other characters’ wants. Note: Clarify conflict.)
Use alliteration and enjambment
EXAMPLE:
He’d beg her to
return and promised to never
beat her again.
I was almost happy
She was gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in something bad.

4. Sentence 4
Imagery- Provide details (sensory?) depicting the other character using modifiers and enjambment
EXAMPLE:
His carpenter's apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side
& extension cords coiled around his feet.

5. Sentence 5
Actions of the speaker using caesura (pause) and enjambment.
Words rolled from under
the pressure of my ballpoint pen:
Love, Baby, Honey, Please.

6. Sentence 6 We lingered in the quiet brutality
Illustrate the biggest challenge of the ritual through sensory details of the setting.
Use antithesis (opposites) and enjambment.
Develop the relationship (through actions).
EXAMPLE:
We lingered in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences the heartless
gleam of a two-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
a sunset in the doorway
of the toolshed.

7. Sentence 7
Using enjambment, write a sentence that has a tone that includes antithesis (opposite)
I wondered if she laughed
as she held them over a flame.

8. Sentence 8 Use enjambment, irony, and sensory details. EXAMPLE:
My father could only sign
His name, but he'd look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. (Sentence 9 Tomorrow?)

9. Sentence 9
Final Sentence: use enjambment, modifiers, sensory details using parallel structure, irony, and a simile.
This sentence should be the longest sentence of your poem and should begin on the same line where sentence 8 ended creating a caesura.
TIP: To create a very long sentence consider layering modifiers, prepositional phrases, and verbal phrases.
This sentence is also the climax of your poem. There should be a realization, understanding, or epiphany revealed here.
Readers should understand the purpose and importance of the ritual.
EXAMPLE:
This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, stood there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word,
opened like a fresh wound, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.