Judson Evans
Zebra Prompt
In order to be effective, signals have to be reliable; in order to be reliable, signals have to be costly.
—Amotz and Avishag Zahavi
1. You are writing as prey
to your predator or you are writing as
predator to its prey. This could be a love
poem (or not). This could be political poem (or not).
2. (For instance) You are writing a coded
love poem to a power that could annihilate you
purely through the pressure
of its recognition; that could dissolve you
through its distain in noticing
you not at all…
3. Your poem demands tropes that remain unintelligible
to censors while exposing the false consciousness
of the corrupt regime; that trade
on ambivalence of poetics of praise and blame.
3. Consider the zebra’s markings
as both display and camouflage,
distraction and diatribe.
4. Incorporate one or more
of the following “animal fun facts”:
Zebras stand while sleeping.
Zebras will not breed in captivity.
Zebras have black skin beneath white coats
5. Interpret the unique pattern of the zebra’s (lover’s)
skin. Consider the meanders as mandala.
What are the directions,
the compass points?
6. Incorporate three seemingly
trivial lies that unravel faith
in the communal force of language.
7. (Or) Construct a situation in a few lines
in which the zebra (lover) disappears
in the embrace of the predator (beloved). Invent a myth
of invisibility by which the predator
may compliment its prey.
8. Any statement should
be followed by counter-statement
that only partially negates what came before.
9. In a mulish time when language
will bear what it must, zebra
is the language that won’t domesticate.
Poems by Judson Evans have appeared in Pedestal Magazine, Contemporary Haibun Online, Cleaver Magazine, Interim, and Salt Hill Journal, among other journals, as well as in the anthologies New Smoke: An Anthology of Poetry Inspired by Neo Rauch (Off the Park Press, 2009), Viva La Difference: Poems in Response to Peter Saul (Off the Park Press, 2010), and The Triumph of Poverty: Poems Inspired by Nicole Eisenman (Off the Park Press, 2012), all edited by John Yau. After a tenure as director of liberal arts for Boston Conservatory from 1988 to 2015, Judson Evans is now a full-time professor in the Liberal Arts Department at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
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