Anaphora for mixed-up memories

NaPoWriMo Poem #14

NaPoWriMo Day 14: Today’s prompt asks you to write a poem of at least ten lines in which each line begins with the same word (e.g., “Because,” “Forget,” “Not,” “If”). This technique of beginning multiple lines with the same word or phrase is called anaphora, and has long been used to give poems a driving rhythm and/or a sense of puzzlebox mystery. To give you more context, here’s an essay by Rebecca Hazelton on her students’ “adventures in anaphora,” and a contemporary poem that uses anaphora to great effect: Layli Long Soldier’s “Whereas.”

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Yesterday I labored in the water, playlist trudging through “It’s Not a Bad Thing.” 
Turn it off, I moaned, and all the music went away.

Yesterday I sat in my first grad school class, face covered in a rash from eating an unwashed mango down to the bone.

Yesterday we picked up the puppy, black fur curling around a small black face. 
My oldest son held him on the way home, head bent as if hearing a secret.

Yesterday I shoplifted books from a bookstore, a ring from a craft fair, shit I don’t even remember wanting. Yesterday I got caught stealing earrings from a drugstore.

Yesterday I got married, wind picking up a little, a light rain flirting with the barely-sprung spring.

Yesterday a piece of meteorite fell out of the sky, a blue wheel blazing past our backyard, where I sat with the cordless phone pressed to my cheek.

Yesterday I sat in the hospital with my son, his breathing untethered from the tetherball chain, a wild yellow ball bouncing through his lungs.

Yesterday was yesterday and also all yesterdays, every day a day away from the last one, all of them waxing and waning at once.