1. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
2. He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
3. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
4. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
5. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
6. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
7. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
8. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
9. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
10. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
11. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
12. The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
13. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
14. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
15. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
16. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
17. Even in his last years, Grand pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
18. He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.
19. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
20. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
21. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
22. Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”
23. The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
24. He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo.
25. I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.
26. She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.
27. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
28. It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
29. Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.
30. The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.

Always on the Train

by Ruth Stone

Writing poems about writing poems

is like rolling bales of hay in Texas.

Nothing but the horizon to stop you.

But consider the railroad’s edge of metal trash;

bird perches, miles of telephone wires.

What is so innocent as grazing cattle?

If you think about it, it turns into words.

Trash is so cheerful; flying up

like grasshoppers in front of the reaper.

The dust devil whirls it aloft; bronze candy wrappers,

squares of clear plastic–windows on a house of air.

Below the weedy edge in last year’s mat,

red and silver beer cans.

In bits blown equally everywhere,

the gaiety of flying paper

and the black high flung patterns of flocking birds.

—

(The poets.org website includes forums on everything from how to write poetry to the difference between voice and style.)

Kickstart Your Writing

Wednesdays, January 18-March 21, 2012

(or)

Thursdays, January 19-March 22, 2012

Both classes meet 6:30-9 p.m. in Northeast Portland, Oregon. Exact location provided upon registration.

$200/10 weeks.

Registration deadline: Jan. 6

Whether you’re working on a novel or interested in short stories, memoir, essays, articles or other forms of fiction or nonfiction, Kickstart Your Writing offers a supportive environment in which you can work on specific writing projects. Students set weekly goals; read their work aloud; and receive positive, helpful feedback from the instructor and other students. Kickstart Your Writing students have gone on to be published in Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Oregonian, salon.com, Oregon Humane Society Magazine, and Hood River News, among other publications.

To register for either class: Mail payment to Nancy Woods, P.O. Box 18032,Portland,OR 97218. To pay by credit card call (503) 288-2469.

• Set limits on your project. Know exactly what it is you want to write.
• Read newspapers to get ideas.
• Watch documentaries.
• Take a drive in your car.
• Go for a walk.
• Take the day off and visit garage sales.
• Learn a new sport.
• Ask yourself what’s troubling you.