If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read-Around is 8/28/25 at 5:00 PM PST

How It Works:

  1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

My Thoughts

I was immediately struck by the title of Laura Villreal’s poem, My worries Have Worries. The idea that an idea can have ideas of its own delighted me and a whole brood of nested begetting tumbled through my mind. Worry, of course, does have a pernicious quality of self-perpetuity, ratcheting up gut-wrenching turmoil while spinning itself out in our heads and hearts like a tireless psychotic hamster running wild on the wheel and getting nowhere. Villareal ’s poem does refer to worries having worry babies, but the poem is mostly about the narrator’s mothering of her worries, which, to me, is a touching sentiment. It is easy and natural to wish them away or seek some psychic surgery to rid us of unproductive or negative patterns. But, there is truth to the adage that what we resist persists and the better option is to welcome these patterns as parts of us that need to be heard, held, or healed. Worry, for instance, is often an effort to solve a problem in a way that sets things right. In other words, worry is designed to put a concern to rest, so to speak, even though it actually does just the opposite! So, that gives two directions for your prompts this week: one is to consider a negative emotion or pattern in your life (worry, guilt, revenge, Etc.) and write about how it self-perpetuates; a second approach is to describe your relationship to the pattern and consider what happens when you welcome the pattern as an attempt to do something useful or positive for you. What service is the pattern trying to accomplish or what positive state of mind is it trying to achieve?

My Worries Have Worries

So I build little match stick houses
with large ceilings, a garden for them to grow

tomatoes, cilantro, and carrots
their worry babies will eat,

but they chew on the henbit of me anyway
both my past and future and twined into disasters

I tell them I worry about their health
that they’re not eating properly

I mother them
the way I do anyone I love

they ask if I love myself
I tug the sleeves of my sweater

begin thatching a leaking roof
water their garden
at night

I can hear them
dancing around a bonfire

and all I built burned
down, a soot snowfall

tomorrow they’ll wait for me
& I’ll reconstruct their home
anyone would do the same

Laura Villareal
https://www.lauravillareal.com/

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem titled after Villareal’s poem, My Worries Have Worries. If your worries had baby worries, what would they look like and what would they “eat?"

  2. Pick some other repetitive negative pattern (guilt, resentment, self-deprecation, etc.) and journal or write about how that pattern perpetuates itself and what it is ultimately trying to accomplish?

  3. Villareal describes building a matchstick house and a garden for her worries. How do you metaphorically support your worries (or your chosen “negative” pattern) in your life?

  4. Journal or Write a poem about what the negative pattern is trying to accomplish. If the goal of the worry or negative pattern were completely fulfilled, what result or state of mind would that achieve? Keep up the inquiry until you get to a positive intention with which you can consciously agree.

  5. Journal or write a poem about the worries you have about your worries.

  6. In Villareal’s poem, the worries ask if the narrator loves herself. What do your worries (or chosen negative pattern) ask of you?

  7. In Villareal’s poem the worries burn down the house she has built for them. How do you house your worries (or negative pattern)? How do your negative patterns self-destruct and how do you rebuild a space for them inside?

  8. Write about anything else in the poem or in life that inspires you.