Five minutes, that is. Today’s topic is hairbrush. Because it was the first thing I looked up and saw when I needed a topic.

Time starts now.

Hairbrush

Prickly stick, stuck
in my long thick mane
I stomp and stamp, steamed
as you scratch my tender scalp
and stretch my sunny tresses
to their breaking point,
like straw snagged
in a pitchfork.

—Kristy Dempsey (all rights reserved, meaning especially that I reserve the right to revise!)

Okay, now let’s get to work revising. The above is just an example of ideas put down on paper in a five minute limit. I’m not sure there’s anything there of use, though when I thought of hairbrush, I immediately thought of my four-year old daughter’s contentious relationship with the hairbrush. So while I may not have captured that relationship in her true four-year old voice, it’s a start. And that’s what these five minute COP exercises are for. The true poem comes later when there is time for what I’ve written in the first five minutes to gel and grow and change into something that sings.