This Salmon Tastes Like the Smell of a Petting Zoo

Artist: Juan Bosco

This could be lovelier than you think.

 I’m going to give you a word. But the word itself isn’t the prompt for you, poet. I first learned this word when my poetry professor turned to me, after reading several works I’d turned in for her class, and said, “Do you have synesthesia, by any chance?”

…what?

Synesthesia: the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body.

Oh. Okay. That’s why my parents laughed, but with genuine concern, when in high school I would mention that the taste of salmon made me smell a petting zoo. Or when I heard certain instrumental music I saw patterns, like plaid, or sometimes saw light, kind of like a laser pointer, dancing around in front of me. The biggest thing for me is the texture of velvet—it sounds like crunching metal or bricks. It’s difficult to describe—not exactly true hallucinations, but sort of like an involuntary, compulsory association. It also explains why, when I was a kid, each number and letter and car that passed by had a color and gender association. 

Now, I’m no doctor or psychologist so I’m not going to go into how exactly this works, because I truly have no idea. I know there are different forms of synesthesia and I know one can experience it mildly or severely. However, this infographic I found is pretty cool and great at explaining it. The “ordinal-linguistic personification” type sounds like a lot of poets I know. 

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You task today, poet, is to write like you have synesthesia. Maybe you have it already. If not, that’s fine too, you can make it work. 

The prompt: 

1. Think of different words related to each sense. A smell, a taste, a sound, a texture, a sight.  Gasoline. Coffee. Electric surge. Cotton. A leaf.
2. Mix up your sense words in unexpected ways. Instead of a line relating coffee to the color of gasoline, relate the smell of gasoline to the taste of coffee. A taste that brings you to new places. Relate the sound of an electric surge to the texture of cotton. What is it about softness that could knock you out and then bring you back to life, humming? 

If that proves unsuccessful or completely nonsensical, try this (my photography teacher in high school had us do this exercise and I thought it was extremely cool):

1. Put on a song. Preferably instrumental. Something like “Building Steam with a Grain of Salt”.
2. Take out a piece of paper and a pen and draw the shapes you feel correspond to the song.
3. Write a poem about what appears on the page.
   

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Don’t worry too much at first about making sense, and instead focus all on the senses. Be unexpected. Imitate the weird arrival of mixed-up-sense association synesthesia causes.  It might prove a little difficult at first, ‘cause it requires a bit of rewiring of the mind. But that’s kind of what poetry is all about anyway, right?