Phillip Larrea is an American poet and syndicated columnist. He invented a poetic form he calls TriCubes. Tricubes are poems composed of three stanzas, each containing three lines of three syllables. This was the form my poetry sisters and I took on as this month's challenge.
This year, we have no theme to hang our poems on, so we are free to write on any topic. I began by drafting poems related to the lunar new year. Then I turned to the snow, my dog, and baking. The biggest hurdle in writing these poems was making them sound and feel poetic. Three-syllable lines are a challenge. I liked what some of the drafts were trying to do, but they felt choppy and unfinished. I finally turned to writing a series of three-syllable lines on related topics and tried to rearrange them into coherent poems. That approach didn't really work. In the end, I found the first poems I wrote to be the best of the bunch.
Tricube for the Year of the Horse
New year dawns
doors open
luck enters
Kin gather
to honor
ancestors
lanterns rise
wishes fly
like horses
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Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2026. All rights reserved.
- Tanita Davis
- Mary Lee Hahn
- Sara Lewis Holmes
- Laura Purdie Salas
- Liz Garton Scanlon
I hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm. Happy poetry Friday!
