a sentence

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a sentence        

  

 

needs

at least one subject

and one verb

(though sometimes the subject

is unnamed it's understood

 

nevertheless

objects must be named)

 

...........Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant III.

 

subject: Johannes Mehserle

verb: shot

object: Oscar Grant III

 

a sentence becomes sophisticated

when it includes complexity and detail

 

...........Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant III who was...........restrained faced down

           on the ground surrounded by three police officers.

 

subject: Johannes Mehserle

verb: shot

object: Oscar Grant III

 

...........A white police officer shot a black man faced down...........on the ground

           and will spend less than two years in jail for his...........criminal conviction.

 

what is the object

of that sentence?

 

object? anyone?

  

 

-Kevin Simmonds           

   

Used by permission.

 

   

Kevin Simmonds is a San Francisco-based writer, musician and filmmaker originally from New Orleans. His books include the poetry collection Mad for Meat and two edited works: the poetry anthology Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality and the late poet Carrie Allen McCray's Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof. He wrote the music for the Emmy Award-winning documentary Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica and Voices of Haiti: A Post-Quake Odyssey in Verse, both commissioned by the Pulitzer Center. His genre-defying films, including feti(sh)ameand Singing Whitman, have screened internationally.

  

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Weekwidely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

 

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.   

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