Own Form

I’ve been writing through Lightning Paths by Kyle Vaughn since October, and today is the final poem exercise. The prompt calls for writers to create their own form and write one. I enjoy the Golden Shovel form, and spent a month last year writing Multiple Shovels. Vertical lines may appear in one line, a Double Shovel, a Triple Shovel, Quadruple Shovel, and yes – – I even made it to a Quintuple Shovel. Here is a Double Shovel from my spooky October theme from 2021, when I visited Salem, Massachusetts. Here’s a Triple Shovel. Here’s a Quadruple Shovel. Here’s a Quintuple Shovel.

Today’s writing is a double golden shovel poem using two lines from Elizabeth Willis’s “The Witch.” Lines are emboldened vertically. 

Double Double Golden Shovel 

with herbs and frogs she concocts
a potion which may at first 
glance appear soupish ~ then 
she will call to powers that 
will not be weak but will 
make her stew an acting agent,
rancid only in deed ~
the enemies of a witch sip 
fresh hell from silent spoons, 
butter creamy film residue 
of wickedness from whose actions 
her spell placards exacting
righteous evil are cast upon her
neighbor who soon goes missing….