"Guest Writer: Dustin Brookshire"

FREE writing prompt featuring a surprising experimental form

I am thrilled to include my friend Dustin Brookshire as this issue’s featured guest!

Dustin Brookshire (he/him) is the recipient of the 2024 Jon Tribble Editors Fellowship awarded by Poetry at the Sea, and the author of the chapbooks Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023), Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021), and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). He’s the co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023), which was named to the 2024 “Books All Georgians Should Read” list by the Georgia Center for the Book. His poetry has been read on NPR and other radio stations, featured in Georgia Poetry in the Parks, and earned Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. Dustin is the founder of the Wild & Precious Life Series, Limp Wrist, and the Why I Write series. He volunteers as the Director of Virtual Programs for Punch Bucket Lit.

Visit him at dustinbrookshire.com.

Me and Dustin are meme exchange partners, pressmates at Harbor Editions & superfans of Jennifer Coolidge (check out this amazing sticker purchased at Possible Futures, my fave neighborhood indie bookstore in New Haven! Without further ado, here’s Dustin!

Raging homosexuals (me!!) love Dolly Parton, ice coffee, and lists. Yes, lists make the list. After all, the gay agenda is a list.

Okay. Okay. We also love more than that, but I can’t help but name a few of my favorite things that may help, what I honestly consider at times, a glorious stereotype (when it’s on my terms). I love so much about poetry that I could take you over the rainbow to Dollywood and back a few times telling you the ins and outs of my love; however, today, I’m thinking about list poems. List poems are so much damn fun to write.  

Kim Addonizio’s “What Do Woman Want?” (Tell Me) is the first list poem that I can recall reading. I was in my early 20s, and Addonizio’s poem captivated me from the first read. Blessed be Saint Dolly Parton, I wanted that red dress and to “want to walk like I’m the only / [gay man] on earth” to “have my pick.” I wanted to wear that dress and let it “confirm / your worst fears about me, / to show you how little I care about you.”  

Chen Chen melted this ice queen’s heart with his love list poem, “For I Will Consider My Boyfriend Jeffrey” (When I Grow Up I Want to Be A List of Further Possibilities), which is inspired by Christopher Smart’s “Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, [For I Will consider my Cat Jeoffry].”

David Trinidad is a queen—he’s gay, I’m gay, I can honor him as a queen— of list poems: “Gloss of the Past” (The Late Show); “For Joe Brainard” (The Late Show), which is inspired by Joe Brainard’s “I Remember;” and “Ancient History” (Plasticville).  Trinidad is a national treasure with his wit and zinger pop culture references.   

Want more list poems? Here are a few more that should read: “Nothing Wants to Suffer” by Danusha Laméris, “I Have Slept In Many Places, For Years On Mattresses Entered” by Diane Seuss and Denise Duhamel’s “I Have Slept in Many Places” inspired by Seuss, “When My Daughter Tells Me I Was Never Punk” by Jessica Walsh, “Song Of An X” by Beth Gylys, and “Pockabook” by L.J. Sysko.  

Are you ready for the prompt?  

Ready? It’s time to write a villanelle.  As my older brother would say—psych!

It’s time to write a list poem, a very specific list poem. Read Lisel Mueller’s “Curriculum Vitae.” Then read Susan Rich’s “Curriculum Vitae” (see below), which is inspired by Mueller’s poem.  Rich’s poem, first published in the Colorado Review, is also in her  2024 released collection, Blue Atlas.

CURRICULUM VITAE

after L.M.

1. In the year of my birth, Anne Frank appeared as a / Broadway play. Mother ate caraway seeds. Bit down hard.

2. I was brought into a family of changelings.

3. At the bottom of the stairs, Father called out, “It’s the / Boston Strangler,” a joke that delighted me, his youngest / daughter.

4. (There were maps of Lithuania and Russia, where the / grandparents ran from, dragging pillowcases of hazelnuts / and silver, were never mentioned again.)

5. After school, I searched the mother’s dresser drawers for / clues of our identity: ripped photographs, torn nylons, / Miss Liberty dimes, and a girdle.

6. In the old language, the parents exchanged nests of secrets: / putz, alta cocker, tuchas leker.

7. The potato kugel and gefilte fish, strudel and krepla: bright / lintels into the past. Repeating each consonant calibrated / its own entryway back in time.

8. The family’s toehold into the middle class sent the teenager / fleeing into the past. She believed in parallel lives, walls / that open into history, the alchemy of windows that open / out. Also, the Sahara, Sarajevo, Marrakesh. An infinity of / fresh starts.

9. The imaginary lover seems a little late. Running behind schedule.

10. Sometimes the single life feels like a painting in plein air, / sometimes an ice cave.

11. I watched Mother ready herself for death.

12. Stoic, except for brief tears. / A life of trying hard not to feel / finally left her unable to speak.

13. And then suddenly, three decades in the Northwest. / Flickers and Steller’s jays. Sonnets.

14. No nuclear life. No child calling out—

15. Father taught me to scramble an egg, perfect a waffle; / to love angel wing begonias; and discern the specific / knock of a cantaloupe, to test for sweetness.

16. One day, men no longer looked at me. I remember there / was a storm and then a sunrise obscured in clouds.

17. The hours twinkle and iridesce. Sometimes after midnight, / I steady myself conversing with stars, readying for the / world-to-come in a constellation of longing.

18. ... --- / ..-. .- .-. / ... --- / --. --- --- -.. / ... --- / ..-. .- .-. / ... --- / --. --- --- -..

Prompt: We all hate updating our CV, but now it is time to have fun with creating a new CV.  Write your own poem titled “Curriculum Vitae.” Let Mueller and Rich inspire you.  If you feel up to, I’d love to read your poem when you’re finished!  Happy writing, friends.

Wait! There is extra credit. Read “Curriculum Vitae” by K.B. Brookins. You can also find their poem in Freedom House. Brookins approaches the CV poem differently than Mueller and Rich. Brookins uses the traditional CV format, but they do so in a wildly creative and impactful way.

Extra credit can only be earned if you mimic in the exact format.

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