How to Write a Poem about Piranhas

A friend sent Montesonti's poem years ago with the challenge to write a poem based on the subject matter, piranha. I wrote my version in a few minutes, but revisit it at least once a year to make changes. I write fiction, but read and write poetry because I love it, but also to work on language and imagery.

If you'd like to give the piranha poem exercise a try, I've included directions, Montesonti's poem, and my piranha poem.

Piranha Exercise

Directions:
1. brainstorm piranha facts, common knowledge info, images, etc.
2. focus on an emotion and list all the associations it evokes; explore all aspects of the emotion
3. focus on a person you know well and write a list of attributes that describe this person; explore all aspects of the person
4. begin writing about piranhas, (remeber to hold the emotion and person in your mind) yet realize what you’re really exploring and writing about is the person for which you listed attributes

Pirahna
Frank Montesonti

I try to tell my students to use images
like, say, a piranha eating an apple
or a piranha flying through the air
and biting a woman's jugular.
Maybe you cold say that when the blood
sprays from the woman's neck it looks like, hmm,
a red Chinese fan.

When I'm asked what a poem should be like
I say simply state the fact that a full-sized cow can walk into a river
and a school of piranha can devour it in two minutes.
They work their way in the belly and eat out the soft organs,
then you see the skin and head dance on top of the water.

Frank, do all our poems have to be about piranhas?
One of my students asks, the piranha,
such a biting question, ahh, and yes her flesh is tender...

No, no, not if you don't want them to be about piranhas,
I tell her, of course I really don't see the point of not writing about piranhas
that moment when the water starts to break and pop

before the frenzied eating.



Piranha
Danna

there is one who sits in the back
braced against the brick wall
the hard animal of his body
an ode to a time
when man killed what he ate

he shifts in his seat
runs a hand through dark hair
words are dark fish swimming inside him
scaling the water's spume with rigid dorsals

a fin unfurls inside him,
razor-teethed words hoover
the mute chambers of his heart
until the taut fish of his body breaks surface
teeth bared and gleaming like pearls