First things first: a shout out to Oliver de la Paz, who unwittingly provided the impetus for this week’s prompt. Mr. de la Paz, we love what you write!
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Twitter recently in order to keep up with the LR community and last week, I happened to read one of Mr. de la Paz’s Tweets that said:
Oliver_delaPaz mustn’t put two spaces after periods anymore. Oops. Old habits die hard.
11:37 PM Nov 13th from web
The content of the Tweet registered briefly with me (I spent a lot of time this summer having to retrain myself to use one space after periods because my job involved cover copy work), but as the week wore on, I found that the rhythm of that first sentence had, in a strange way, worked itself into my head. “We mustn’t ____ anymore,” I thought as I washed the dinner dishes. “We mustn’t_____anymore,” chugged the buses rolling past my apartment on their morning routes. “We mustn’t ______anymore,” wheezed the teakettle as I brewed my afternoon cup.
Being haunted by a Tweet (okay, a variation on a phrase from a Tweet) is no easy thing. It twists itself into your every thought and action, pokes at you until your very footsteps are beating out “We mustn’t_____anymore,” and you feel you must do something with it. Hence, this week’s prompt. To Mr. de la Paz: apologies for hijacking your internet musings. No irreverence was intended. Twitter made me do it!
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This exercise takes its form from both the phrase “We mustn’t ______ anymore” and from Kenneth Koch’s classic poetry exercise for children, in which every line begins with the words “I Wish.”
Prompt:
Write a list poem composed of sentences that begin with “We mustn’t . . . ” and that end with ” . . . anymore.”