December Poetry Challenge (Sage Cohen) - ReadWritePoem

Your challenge this month is to write a 20-line poem using the list of words given as the ending words on each of your lines, i.e., stragglers should end line one, clink should end line two, etc. You can’t change the form of the word, but feel free to get creative with parts of speech (use the word as a noun, verb, adjective, etc.). What about the twentieth and final word? That one’s up to you. It can be any word you like or one you select at random. Just open any book like we did, close your eyes and point. 

Following is a list of nineteen words we chose completely at random from a number of different poetry books by poets who have widely divergent styles, and therefore, widely divergent vocabularies. We simply closed our eyes, opened the books to any page and pointed, so we refuse to take any responsibility for these words:

1. stragglers
2. clink
3. vulgar
4. reading
5. sundown
6. number
7. apricots
8. solar
9. wearing
10. park
11. California
12. sandwiches
13. ears
14. gray
15. walk
16. felonies
17. cadence
18. inconceivable
19. episode
20. ?

Forbidden

Several curious stragglers

Heard our crystal glasses clink.

Unapproving comments bordered on vulgar;

Whispers unmasked only by impeccable lip reading.

Oppositional, we continued toasting until sundown.

As an alternative, an indiscriminate number

Suggested indulging in delectably, delicious apricots,

Readily available locally due to intensive, persistent solar

Energy. We gathered them yesterday while wearing

Doc Martens and Bermuda shorts in a private park

Somewhere in southern California.

Today we savor tuna and watercress sandwiches -

Periodically nibbling on each other’s ears –

Under ominous clouds, gray;

Summer rain threatening while we walk.

Amusingly, we ponder real and imagined felonies

Committed during our day-long cadence.

Incarceration is unconceivable –

A forbidden episode –

Especially while wrapped tightly in your arms.

©Bridget Nutting , 2009