Back to the Poem Board

Scott scolded me for not having written any poetry since turning in my senior honors thesis in April. Goodness me, it's been a year. This morning the internet was down at work (and since I don't have any actual work to do) I wrote a sestina. It was just for fun, so don't judge my talent by it, but I thought I'd post it for you to read, if you are interested. It doesn't have a title yet--it's just my getting back to the drawing board sort of thing. I forgot how much I really love to write poetry.

*Enter the world of sestina:



Ever since the unfortunate poodle debacle, we’ve all had our fair share strawberry
daisy shortcakes. Day by day we do nothing but devour little bitter daisy
shortcakes smothered in squished strawberries. As the one who’s ancient
curiosity mirrored the ancient Alabama goddess, I got us into this poodle-
predicament, like she before me (whom I never notice having to eat the white
many-petaled flowers, or strawberries, or shortcakes, herself for that matter,

but that’s another matter
altogether). It was the middle of Alabama’s famous strawberry
tombola, and the daytime clouds were spongey and white
with no chance of showers of any nature. The dime-a-dozen daisy
was the only unnatural phenomenon, naturally, with absolutely no sign of poodles
to be sniffed in the summer air. The famous shortcakes were being baked by ancient

housewives using their ancient granmothers’ ancient
recipes, and cooling the cakes in windowsills posed the only matter
troublesome to happy townswomen in that juicy-strawberry poodle-
forsaken southern state. For a dollar tourists harvested the old strawberry
patchwork land, and for fifty cents more they gathered the phenomenal daisies
in their little handmade baskets, made of fantastic white

wicker, which were politcally endorsed by the White
House in favor of Alabama’s annual celebration of ancient
strawberry-worship (as well the majority vote). It was the First Lady who desired a daisy
from Alabama, and it was she for whom I dutifully undertook the matter
and travelled many miles to participate in the ever famous strawberry
picking festivities. And it was I, curiously unfortunate,who unleashed the cursed poodles.

The sun was at mid sky when I arrived, and poodles
were the furthest quadraped from my mind. For my dollar-fifty I entered the white
and red picking garden to fill my wicker basket with daisies and gigantic strawberries,
wherefore I stumbled upon a brass box half buried in the patch like an ancient
treasure chest. I stooped to inspect the misplaced matter
and scratched the soil from the lid only to uncover a diamond daisy-

shaped key and a keyhole the shape of a five-petal daisy
jammed inside. If only curiosity had killed the poodle
instead—but it did not, and I desperately desired full discovery of the matter,
causing me to turn the key. The lid flipped open, and the sky went lightening white,
terrifying shrieks of thunder screeched, and shortcakes tumbled off ancient
windowsills as they had in ancient times. In mighty chaos we squished the strawberries

as we fled the strawberry fields, tearing at every daisy to ward away the terrible
ancient poodles which chased us all, tourist and townsman alike, straight into the Temple
where we have been eating white shortcakes of strawberry daisy matter ever since.