HuffPo’s Oddball Poetry Contest
Jason Linkins, over at Huffington Post, challenges us to write poetry using an odd combination of words:
FUN FACT: Our blog software has four alternate suggestions for the word “tchotchkes,” which it does not recognize. They are:
LATCHKEYS.
HOPSCOTCHES.
CROTCHLESS.
HOTCAKES.I should very much like to see if anyone can write a bracing poem or epigram using these four words, in any context. Send your submissions to me, via email, with the subject line: “THE GREAT HUFFPO LATCHKEYS HOPSCOTCHES CROTCHLESS HOTCAKES LITERARY CONTEST IS AFOOT!” I will, in turn, nominate your offerings for prestigious literary awards, like the Man Booker Prize.
So I decided to have some fun with it, writing both a limerick and a more serious poem. First, my limerick:
As a crotchless young woman from Spain
Is savoring hotcakes on Main,
Who hopscotches by?
A buck-naked guy,
Twirling latchkeys and looking insane.
And now something more serious, using the same quartet of words:
Disconsolate youth,
Lacking latchkeys and adult supervision,
Run around crotchless, uncouth,
Subsisting on hotcakes,
While their absent father
Hopscotches through life.
Tags: Huffington Post, Jason Linkins, Poetry Contest, Writing Prompts
I like both of your poems. I like the way you were able to use the words to write a humorous poem and a very serious one. What a great sense of familial instability you create by describing a father who “Hopscotches through life.”
Thanks so much Tiffany!
We are the generation of latchkeys
We swoon crotchless panties at Vickies
We buy stock like hotcakes
Our Toyota has no breaks
Our baby hopscotches with Nikes