Inspired by her “Poetry Baby Daddy” Pablo Neruda, Samantha Thornhill writes odes to almost everything– from her apron, “dotted with delicious / splatter and spill,” to the experience of single parenthood, which “is rain beading across your hair, / snow melting on your lips. Avalanche.” The secret to a good ode, Thornhill observes, lies in both the animation of the inanimate, but also in acknowledging the “shadow,” the difficult truths that must hold hands with the form’s celebratory tone.

Write a full-throated ode in which you animate an ordinary object or experience, making sure you explore its shadows as well. Make it sing!

Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Poems