school street sound-off
the finalists at the annual first-light
regional cheering competition
begin out of sight, with
the canada goose squad in flight, honking
towards dawn and away from night:
give me a g! give me an o,
give me another o! …
the wild turkey team bunches up tight
on the limbs of a tall pine,
gabbles from that height:
lean to the left lean to the right
stand up sit down fight fight fight!
i am sole judge but give no score
except to laugh with frank delight.
—dotty seiter
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~7.5 x 7.5″; collage on paper
Sketchbook Revival Challenge
2026
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Notes about poem and art:
• As my artist friend Lola Jovan asserts, “Your morning walks are a never-ending source of inspiration and wonder!” I provide the playful poem “school street sound-off” as ongoing evidence to support her assertion : )
• The collage-in-progress above is a start I made during the Sketchbook Revival Challenge in which I participated in April. This was my first response to the invitation from Jane Davies to put together two or three pieces of unrelated collage from any source, including bits of your own past work, moving quickly and without much thought on many pages, returning later to play with the visual prompts you’ve set in place. My sources in this start, from left to right: a scrap of oil paint on yupo paper sent to me by Lola, a bit of magazine text, and a snippet from a piece I made several years ago with acrylic on canvas paper.


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