Poetic response to the “Eyesore” prompt:
A Neighborhood Surprise
Chopped twigged bushes
let a view of the brook show through
and glint silver between early spring’s naked trees.
A driveway paved black. A bare mattress
white against dark, soggy and stained,
sits on top of melted cardboard.
Junk mail’s been mashed under the weight of rain:
a mass too heavy to lift. And that must be why
no one's picking it up year after year.
Always a surprise when that corner is turned.
One side of the driveway stays clear and clean
so cars can mosey in and park by the mobile home.
Beyond that, a small house perches against an earthen
embankment. The brook down the cliff
must appear pretty from the kitchen windows.
But out here on the neighborhood side,
a chair with broken legs waits upside down
on a mash of garbage. Metal cans, pizza boxes,
Scott Towels (the quicker picker-upper)
and mounds of Kleenex have been poured with snow.
What's inside that house that drains human energy?
A child walks the driveway, pushing a scooter.
“A Neighborhood Surprise” awaits me on my stroll down the road beyond my neighbors’ house. The “Eyesore” prompt zapped me to that driveway with the pizza boxes and defeated, discarded trash strewn on the grass, and the snow, spanning the seasons. I can’t fix it; I can only keep track.
Jeanne DeLarm was born in a remote corner of Connecticut and now lives with her husband on the far corner of the same state. Their three children were raised in yet another corner of Connecticut. As far as her writing, a chapbook of poems titled My Father’s Mirror was published in 2025 by Penumbra Press. Jeanne earned an MFA in poetry and fiction from Fairfield University.
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