It’s 4/20. And if pot was legal nationwide, this prompt would be very different…

Today, write an abecederian poem. It’s when the first letter of each line follows the order of the alphabet. So, the first line starts with A, the second with B, the third with C, etc. In the end you should have a 26-line poem.

Here’s one by Michelle Bonczek Evory (yours truly):

Lake Affected

April 11^th and through my Michigan window: no surprise, really:

Blizzard. The small sidewalk trees sag under fluff and sky.

Cindy says she can’t take it, this weather. She misses

Dallas, the blue bells, has had enough of the lake’s snow globe

Extending its stay beyond this season’s home opener, yellow

Flowers and late night light for late nights

Grilling. Her hand opens back toward Texas like a beauty queen’s,

Her eyes bat their long lashes: Take me back old friend, holy hell,

I am sorry. But everyone has different needs

Jig-sawing their bellies. Pieces of life floating down like, well, you

know. Kevin, I’m leaving messages like lightning on your machine.

Lying in bed this morning I couldn’t sleep. Snow

Makes electric champagne of my nerves, pops me open, twists me until sweet

Nostalgia curls me up with a book, squeezes poetry from my skull, seduces me to

Ogle over young faces in old pictures, realphabetize my library, boil

Potatoes until my kitchen windows steam. I burned yesterday’s leftover

Quart of coffee reheating on the stove. But I didn’t care, all

Restless as I was and hungry for everything no longer

Snuggling in my shoes or my bed, which is to say, bodies from the past.

Time, oh time and time again time

Undoes more than the elastic seams on lingerie, but like that—

Very much like that, the things that make us sexy

Wear away. And when it snows like this I want to melt until

X-rays show me one white dot, unique, branching out, stuck,

Yearning for others like me that will have a ball with me making something

Zesty as an orange, ready to be thrown at the world.