On the persona poem. . .

A persona poem is when you pick another person—a celebrity or the mother who deserted you or the one who got away—and write in their voice. 

You can be anyone: Dr. Phil, George W. Bush, Cookie Monster, Simon Cowell, Batman’s The Joker, etc. The sky’s the limit.

It can be fun to take someone who is misunderstood or judged or stereotyped in some way, and let your poem serve as an explanation or a defense or even as a boast.

Writing a persona poem can be like putting on a costume. It gives you a chance to try on accents and mannerisms and ways of thinking.

The following is one of my persona poems. 

I made the fireworks 

Let God claim the night—
limp piece of construction
paper pin-holed with stars
that made Greeks sprawl
like kindergarteners playing
at dot-to-dot puzzles, naming
constellations, finding solace
in their thrice-flawed deities

I made the fireworks
But you knew that, didn't you?
Those nights you mouthed
the shape of wonder, when heaven
cracked raw into a thousand

wildfire petals, fire-escape banquets,

suicide planets, lava-flow spankings

and ohhhhh…

that final lightning kiss

Let God, workmanlike set-painter,

smile at the darkness, counting his

sleeping flock like a boy palming

marbles

one

two

three

Because after he starts to yawn

I get the party started waist-deep,

set sparklers to fizzing, flickering

M.o.r-.s-.e code thoughts sulfuric

with independence, summer soliloquies

No taxation without yay no school just

one more helping of potato salad maybe

I’ll call in sick tomorrow I can already

feel the hangover I can't believe he’s

kissing me will she really meet me

underneath the pier?

Let God embrace the quiet that turns

crickets into tiny Yo Yo Mas and cradles

the whispers of Spanish moss, hanging

long-faced in willow-bough confessionals

Because the cannon-fodder stalactite shatter

Harley ice crack musket boom of dynamite

compressed, ejected, shot, thrown long

sounds like the crash after my dark celestial

stage dive, that leap that made the hottest

chapter in that thumping-good best-seller

And, you know, it’s worth it every year

I’m the King of Fireworks, the Chancellor of the Cheer

—Sarah Torribio