In Sean Baker’s film Anora, which won best picture at this year’s Academy Awards, the title character spends the majority of her time zigzagging around New York City with various characters and in one particularly indelible shot, she strides past the iconic Cyclone roller coaster at a deserted Coney Island boardwalk on a gray winter afternoon. This week write a poem that revolves around an iconic location with a depiction that is unconventional or atypical in juxtaposition. You might consider how this locale is usually thought of in the popular imagination, how it was designed to function, or how it looks in different seasons. Play around with diction and rhythm to amp up a sense of tension and upend conventional expectations of your subject.
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