WD Poetic Form Challenge: Triversen Winner
Another poetic form challenge, another round of great reading–and tough decisions! The problem with these form challenges is not finding 10 great poems, but limiting it to 10–and then, choosing…
Another poetic form challenge, another round of great reading--and tough decisions! The problem with these form challenges is not finding 10 great poems, but limiting it to 10--and then, choosing a winner. But that's what I did, and I'm super happy with the winning poem: "The Thinnest Wall is Often the Thickest," by Joshua Michael Stewart.
Here's the winning triversen:
The Thinnest Wall is Often the Thickest, by Joshua Michael Stewart
The blue jays are eating the cat food
that flung to the ground
when I slipped on the icy back step.
I caught myself by grabbing the rail,
but the Meow Mix in the plastic cup
scattered among grass and pinecones.
I didn’t know it at the time,
but my neighbor was dead by then,
blood from his mouth staining his sheets.
The hallway between our apartments
began to reek of rotten eggs
tinged with a sickly sweetness.
The building manager came with a key,
and opened my neighbor’s door
to a silence that spread the news.
Maintenance is in there now
ripping out the carpets,
and I haven’t seen the stray cat all week.
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Here is the Top 10 list:
- The Thinnest Wall is Often the Thickest, by Joshua Michael Stewart
- Nowhere, by Sherry Toland
- My "Self," by Statten Ell
- Hidden Love, by Tracy Davidson
- The Eulogy, by Daniel Roessler
- Grandpa's Knee, by Joshua Michael Stewart
- The Birds Scan the Birders, by William Preston
- Pushing 50, by Laurie Kolp
- Divinum Mysterium, by Jane Shlensky
- For 370, by Bruce Niedt
Congratulations to Joshua and everyone in the Top 10! And congrats to all who participated and wrote triversens with abandon! There were many other poets who made the short list before I narrowed things down to a Top 10 list, and it was all great reading.
To read them all, click here.
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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of Solving the World’s Problems. He plans to write more triversen in the near future. Learn more about Robert here: http://www.robertleebrewer.com/.
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Check out these poetic forms:
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
