Warning: Sensitive topic broached. Björn at dVerse: MTB asks us to write a cadralor, which poetic form consists of "5, unrelated, numbered stanzaic images, each of which can stand alone as a poem, is fewer than 10 lines, and ideally constrains all stanzas to the same number of lines. Imagery is crucial to cadralore: each stanza should be a whole, imagist poem, almost like a scene from a film, or a photograph. The fifth stanza acts as the crucible, alchemically pulling the unrelated stanzas together into a love poem. By “love poem,” we mean that your fifth stanza illuminates a gleaming thread that runs obliquely through the unrelated stanzas and answers the compelling question: 'For what do you yearn?'" Click on Mr. Linky to join us.
A bird cries over the tele-
phone wire, is it you? is it done?
over black shrouded head
Shiny pruning shears in her gloved
hands, methodically apply to de-
locate dead heads, snip, snip
There once was a small torso in a
womb severally dislodged by forceps
into medical waste
If death comes in slippered feet,
will they curl at the ends
or just your lips? Mother?
All the ghosts have left, barren
in winter, the autumn leaves twist
the sea breezes rustle in her mind.
This Jolly Beggar 