This week I thought we'd try another new (to me at least) poetic form. The shadorma is a poem composed of six lines with a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5. That's it! Easy-peasy, right?
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.
Thank you for not giving a detailed, complicated challenge this week! I'm trying to ease back in:>)
ReplyDeleteHere's mine, based on what happened during cross-country skiing with my daughter last night:
Owl, Meet Skier
Shadowy,
Solid shape on tree
Lifts, spreads, swoops—
Hoo-hoo-hooooo!
Introduction drifts like snow
Hangs in twilight sky
--Laura Purdie Salas
I hope you don't mind but I used rhyme and did three. This is fun!
ReplyDeleteOnion Thief
He took ten
yellow onions from
a garden
late last week.
Then snuck back in on Tuesday
but just took a leek.
c2010 by K. Thomas Slesarik
The Peculiar Mosquito
It landed
on my arm with a
sweet, simple,
lilting grace.
The mosquito’s curlicue
covered her cute face.
c2010 by K. Thomas Slesarik
Marriage Minded Melons
Honeydews
should not elope with
cantaloupes
sans prenup,
in case of course, they divorce.
That’s a travesty.
c2010 by K. Thomas Slesarik
Shadowrama x 4
ReplyDeleteThis shadow
lifting from a branch,
a shadow
of a branch,
into the shadow-filled sky
reminds me of you.
This full moon,
caught in the tree’s arms,
the dead tree,
roost for owls,
knocking place for woodpeckers,
reminds me of you.
Each small thing,
in nature’s cupboard,
each shadow,
and each shade
of feather, fur, leafmeal, mold
reminds me of you
who is now
tree, moon, owl, sky, wing,
shadow, ash,
memory
as insubstantial as air,
as necessary.
©2010 Jane Yolen All rights reserved
Because weddings and having a bad cold make me philosophical:
ReplyDeleteMy Nephew's Wedding, 1/02/10
Too much noise,
too many people,
too much food...
But the best
too much was the look in her
eyes, the look in his.
Still Life with Yogurt
Blueberries
clump in a white bowl
beneath clouds
of yogurt.
I think about Einstein as
the minutes click by.
How is it
that each minute seems
fraught somehow,
yet pointless?
Now blueberries remind me
of wet wheelbarrows.
The yogurt
can be white chickens,
or this page—
it's white, too.
It can be chickens, and my
pen the wheelbarrow.
Everything
matters, or nothing
does. Yogurt,
my fingers,
the pen, and now you reading:
I say everything.
—Kate Coombs, 2010
Toughest kid
ReplyDeletein the seventh grade
was Paul Corr --
known as Moose --
who'd hit a girl with glasses
for her lunch ticket.
We feared him,
but I saw him once
running late
to a car
and a fat fist cuffed his cheek --
gift of Papa Moose.
Happy New Year to all Stretchers, and thanks, Tricia, for the challenge. The word "shadorma" made me hungry. And sleepy.
ReplyDeleteShadorma
sleep sizzles
aromatically
on the spit
of night. carve
juicy slices onto white
sheets of pita bed.
2010 Heidi Mordhorst
all rights reserved
Thank goodness everyone seems to be having more of an "up" day than I am. Here's my shadorma:
ReplyDeleteNOT EVERYTHING IMPROVES WITH AGE
When I was
younger I lobbied
for peace. Once
when I went
to buy a banner, the flag
store had only one--
Peace on Earth--
over a manger.
Christmas is
just ONE day!
Every year has three hundred
sixty-five total!
Foolish youth!
Now, I'm older. Now
I know that
if we had
peace on earth, for JUST one day,
we'd be in heaven.
Heidi--"Pita bed"? LOL! What a funny, strange, cool poem about sleep!
ReplyDelete--Kate
Interesting form but I wonder about the why behind it. Is there something about the syllable count of this one that appeals to the ear? Maybe it's all those prime numbers...do our ears pick that up? Or maybe I'm over-thinking it. Here's my contribution:
ReplyDeleteInquisition
A poor Moor
waiting at your gate,
too late now
for fake faith,
I hear a songbird confess, "Si...,
"si...te adoro."
Oops - that doesn't work - I have too many syllables in the next-to-last line. Oh, shoot. Well, strike the "Si" in that line.
ReplyDeleteJulie - This is a Spanish form. I wonder if there's something that we lose in translation. Do Spanish words just "fit" better?
ReplyDeleteI was wondering that, too, Tricia. It's possible that all the latinate words in Spanish, which tend to be more multi-syllabled (lots and lots of three syllables)than the blunt Anglo-Saxon words of English, lend themselves to this form. I'd love to see some in Spanish! Maybe I'll try to write one?
ReplyDeleteI took some unexpected time away from writing and am slowing crawling back to it. This was harder than I thought it would be.
ReplyDeletein silence
words impatiently
wait for me
beg me for
stories only I can write
soon, I promise, soon
Hi Tricia ~ found this form a real stretch this week.
ReplyDeleteJUMBLED INNARDS
Interview
twists up my belly
jumbles my
innards and
hurls me into a cyclone
of boisterous dread.
© Carol Weis