Find an Emily Dickinson poem – preferably one you’ve never previously read – and take out all the dashes and line breaks. Make it just one big block of prose. Now, rebreak the lines. Add words where you want. Take out some words. Make your own poem out of it!
Heaven” has different signs to me
Sometimes, I think that earth
Is but a sidebar to the Place
But when again, in Sorrow,
A mighty sigh runs round the World
And settles in my stomach
A Resentment, As if creation groaning
should be a stagewhisper like that
Upon the Ignomy steals a Thought
That when the promise of the hereafter is a Triumph
When death together becomes cause for Victory
And makes Some rejoice for the promise of Eternity
When the Rapture of an (un)finished Day
And Turning away from this now-unrest
All for the promise of the place
That Men call “paradise”
When “Heaven” Itself is fairer, preferable, to this present darkness
I prefer that Kingdom-come should not be Adored,
And held for a Superior Grace
Than Thy Kingdom come on earth
As it is In heaven.
Even the Not yet, Our eyes can see
On Afternoons and Coffeespoons 