New prompt: write a poem in the voice of an object, 16 lines or fewer

[Finley]

This month we hand the pen to the furniture. The prompt is persona poetry with a twist, write in the first person voice of an OBJECT, any object, the house key, the kettle, a motorway bollard, your father's unused armchair, and let it speak for 16 lines or fewer

The craft challenge hiding inside the fun, an object's voice is all perspective and limitation, it knows only what passes through its small world, and the poem lives in what that narrow window reveals about the humans moving past it. The kettle knows the household's mornings better than the household does

Guidance from previous persona rounds, resist making the object wise, the best entries let it be confused or wrong about what it witnesses, and the reader's understanding overtaking the speaker's is where the feeling gets in. An object that fully understands the funeral is a lecture, one that just notices the kettle boiling more often is a poem

Usual rules, critique the poem not the poet, say if you want detailed feedback, and one entry as your official submission. The inanimate world has been watching us for a long time, let it talk

[Chris_50]

Direct address is legal and devastating when earned, an object that finally speaks TO someone after fifteen lines of watching them is the persona poem equivalent of a key change

[RusticDaemon]

The kettle boiling more often line is a whole workshop in one sentence, immediately abandoning my wise doorknob draft and starting again

[Rustic Stuart]

Claiming the motorway bollard before anyone else does, it has seen ten thousand journeys and understood none of them, which per the guidance makes it the perfect narrator

[Luca76]

Craft question for the room, can the object address a specific human as YOU or does direct address break the spell? My umbrella has things to say to its owner and I am unsure of the etiquette

[Sienna89]

Drafting as the spare room bed and the confused perspective arrived naturally, it cannot work out why it is only ever slept in after the loud nights downstairs. Posting once I stop being got by my own poem

[Tel75]

The spare room bed just demonstrated the entire prompt in two lines of a forum reply, the bar is officially set

[Owen84]

Entry incoming from the charity shop suit, worn to three interviews and one wedding by different men, it keeps their shapes and none of their names. This prompt is doing things to me

[Taker04]

First timer question, does the object need to stay realistic or can it know impossible things like what is in the letters it carries? Asking for a postbox with opinions

[ArcMage]

House rule from past rounds, the object knows its senses and nothing more, the postbox knows weight, handwriting pressed through envelopes and the hesitation before letting go. That hesitation is your whole poem, incidentally

[GatewayDrifter]

The hesitation before letting go, there it is, the thread has now written three better lines than my actual draft and I am taking this personally

[Odd Maverick]

Sixteen lines as my grandmother's sewing tin assembled and ready, the buttons in it outlived her and the poem noticed before I did. This board does this every single month and I keep coming back