From Lynda’s Journal ~ Write a Zip Code Poem~
I updated and published this article on Sunday, September 8, 2024.
Let’s do something that is easy and fun. Let’s write a “Zip Code Poem.”
Anyone can do this!
This project is called The Zip Code Poem.
Here are your options – Choose one:
_Use the zip code of a place where you live.
_use a place you would like to live.
_use a place you want to visit.
_Use a place you have visited in the past.
Note: If the zip code has a zero in it, you can leave a blank line.
Another way to represent the “zero” in a zip code could be to repeat the line above the “zero.” Be creative and you may even think of another way you want to show the “zero” in your poem.
***
My example is below:
I live 2 miles away from a small rural city – Ellwood City, PA 16117
I grew up here and have spent most of my life near Ellwood City, in a small village called Wurtemburg. Our post office zip code is the same as Ellwood City.
My ancestors settled in Pennsylvania in 1730.
Ellwood City was the number one producer of stainless steel in America..
My father, William (Bill) McKinney, was a steelworker in our western Pennsylvania rural city. I dedicate this poem to my father, and all the men who labored to produce steel for the entire world.
How I wrote this poem:
First, I focused on those steel town images that knew intimately as a child and as I see them every day. By the early 1980s this state was devastated by the closing of almost every steel mill – every city and town along the many rivers is a landscape of abandoned steel mills.
I used the syllable count for the zip code numbers: 1 6 1 1 7
I focused on 4 words to signify the history of the steel mills in western Pennsylvania.
steel, mills, steal, still
I chose to CENTER my lines…
_I wrote a Zip Code Poem about
Ellwood City, PA 16117
***
“steel”
by Lynda McKinney Lambert
steel
abandoned rusting mills
stand
still
stainless bargain priced cold steal
__
Lynda McKinney Lambert. Copyright 2015 and 2024. All rights reserved.
Email: riverwoman@zoominternet.net