Tag: open write

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November Open Write – Day 5

Today is the final day of the November Open Write, but this is a fun form today. Fran Haley and I have enjoyed hosting this week. You can read today’s prompt at http://www.ethicalela.com here, or read below.

Title: Doggerel

Our Hosts

Fran Haley

Fran Haley is a literacy educator with a lifelong passion for reading, writing, and dogs. She lives in the countryside near Raleigh, North Carolina, where she savors the rustic scenery and timeless spirit of place. She’s a pastor’s wife, mom of two grown sons, and the proud Franna of two granddaughters: Scout, age seven, and Micah, age two. Fran never tires of watching birds and secretly longs to converse with them (what ancient wisdom these creatures possess!). When she’s not working, serving beside her husband, being hands-on Franna, birding, or coddling one utterly spoiled dachshund, she enjoys blogging at Lit Bits and Pieces: Snippets of Learning and Life. 

Kim Johnson

Kim Johnson, Ed.D., lives on a farm in Williamson, Georgia, where she serves as District Literacy Specialist for Pike County Schools. She enjoys writing, reading, traveling, camping, sipping coffee from souvenir mugs, and spending time with her husband and three rescue schnoodles with literary names – Boo Radley (TKAM), Fitz (F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Ollie (Mary Oliver).  You can follow her blog, Common Threads: Patchwork Prose and Verse, at www.kimhaynesjohnson.com. 

Inspiration 

We have enjoyed collaborating on this series of Open Writes inspired by the work of Poet Laureate Ada Limón! Next April, honor National Poetry Month with us by taking part in the discussion of Limón’s book, The Hurting Kind (you can join via Sarah Donovan’s new Healing Kind book club). 

In the past few days we’ve written along many themes in Limón’s work: Family, community, belonging, nature. 

Today we expand all that to include a celebration of our pets—in our case, dogs! We decided to end our Open Writes on a fun note.

Or should we say a punny note?

Time for some doggerel!

Process

Doggerel is intentionally bad poetry (what a relief)! Dictionary.com defines it as “comic verse composed in irregular rhythm…verse or words that are badly written or expressed.”

Many nursery rhymes are considered doggerel. Remember this?

I eat my peas with honey

I’ve done it all my life

It makes the peas taste funny

But it keeps them on my knife. 

—Frequently attributed to Anonymous and Ogden Nash

Speaking of Odgen Nash, consider these lines of his:

I sit in an office at 244 Madison Avenue

And say to myself you have a responsible job, havenue?

Why then do you fritter away your time on this doggerel?

If you have a sore throat you can cure it by using a good goggerel…

You can read that whole poem and more here. 

Today, celebrate the pets (hopefully dogs) in your life with a short whimsical, silly, rhyming or non-rhyming verse. Perhaps a limerick…

or write some haiku

and if you don’t have a dog

—sigh. A cat will do.

Just have pun! Er, fun!

Fran’s Poem

A Bit of Doggerel in Honor of My Granddog, Henry

Time for a nap

time to recharge

if only for a bit

on a teeny-tiny pillow

that ain’t a good fit

this is what comes

of living large

Kim’s Poem

(Texts and verse written with Boxer Moon as he delivered wood and saw the dogs at my house – I asked if I could use our texts for doggerel, and this is what we wrote in our rural Georgia vernacular):

Logs & Limbs & Dogs & Dem 

I hope dem dogs don’t get me, he sent

  In a text on delivering wood

Dey real visshus, I sent back

We put dem up

‘cause you need yo’ limbs

***

Did dem dogs get you? 

I checked on the poetic woodcutter

Dem dog’gerel visshus, 

but dem dog’dint get me, he replied.

***

The Woodcutter’s Afterword:

Dem Kim’s lims now

Dem dogs dint get me,

I stack’t da logs and lef’ dem dogs

-Kim and Boxer

Your Turn

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November Open Write – Day 4

Fran Haley and I are hosting this week’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com as we prepare for April’s discussions on Ada Limon’s The Hurting Kind. You can read Fran’s prompt today here or below. Be inspired and come write with us!

Title: Birdspiration

Our Host

Fran Haley is a literacy educator with a lifelong passion for reading, writing, and dogs. She lives in the countryside near Raleigh, North Carolina, where she savors the rustic scenery and timeless spirit of place. She’s a pastor’s wife, mom of two grown sons, and the proud Franna of two granddaughters: Scout, age seven, and Micah, age two. Fran never tires of watching birds and secretly longs to converse with them (what ancient wisdom these creatures possess!). When she’s not working, serving beside her husband, being hands-on Franna, birding, or coddling one utterly spoiled dachshund, she enjoys blogging at Lit Bits and Pieces: Snippets of Learning and Life. 

Inspiration 

As previously mentioned in this series of Open Writes: Come April, Kim Johnson and I will be honoring National Poetry Month by facilitating discussion of The Hurting Kind, the most recent book by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón (you can join us via Sarah Donovan’s new Healing Kind book club). 

In preparation for this event, I came across a May 2022 interview with Angela María Spring of Electric Lit in which Limón speaks of inspiration for her book and the way humans search for community: “It’s the Earth and it’s the animals and it’s the plants and that is our community.”

What a glorious opening for birds today. 

Over several summers past, I facilitated a writing institute for teachers. We spent a portion of one session crafting poems about birds, for, truth is, everyone has a bird story of some kind. Just as we went out for lunch, two doves flew into the building to land on the windowsill of our room. How’s that for symbolism?—and awe.

Process

Listen to or read the brief transcript of Episode 674 of The Slowdown, Limón’s podcast. Here she shares a poem by Hai-Dang Phan entitled “My Ornithology (Orange-crowned Warbler)”. Note Limón’s reflection: In observing birds and their world, we learn something true about ourselves. Experience Phan’s warbler up close and personal through every rich detail in the poem.

You might also read Limón’s “The Year of the Goldfinches”.

Now, consider what you’ve learned from birds in some way. Find a kinship. You don’t have to love or even like birds; you could contemplate the Thanksgiving turkeys sacrificed for your holiday table.You might go on a birdwalk or watch awhile through your window for birdspiration. 

Explore birds and their lessons for your life in a short form like haiku, senryu, tanka, or a series of stanzas with the same number of lines. Invent a form! Phan uses three lines over and over. Consider how enjambment and varying sentence lengths can create bursts and phrases like birdsong. After all, poetry is about sound. 

Play with form today. Let your lines sing.

What truths have birds taught you?.

Fran’s Poem


Harbingers

  1. That Morning You Drove Me Home From the Medical Procedure

back country byway, winter-brown grass
trees, old gray outbuildings, zipping, zipping past
small pond clearing, wood-strewn ground
bald eagle sitting roadside—too profound—

I thought it was the anesthesia
until you saw it, too,
before it flew.

And I knew.

  1. On the Morning I Returned to the Hospital After Your Surgery

lanes of heavy traffic, day dawning bright
our son says you had a painful, painful night
dew on the windshield, fog in my brain
all hope of moving past this gridlock, in vain
but for the glory of autumn leaves, a-fire
against cloudless blue where a solitary flier
glides by, white head and tail gleaming in the sun…

I promise, beloved one.

Your healing
has begun.

Your Turn

Kim’s Poem

Lesson Learned

It was only fair to each pick a tour

So he picked one, I picked two.

Sled dogs and glaciers: what fun!

But a hovercraft?!  He picked a hovercraft.

I willed a smile. 

This was his vacation, too. 

We fell in love with the dogs,

Laughed at Pumpkin, whose destiny

Was clearly supposed to be different

But oh, how she tried,

Tripping over her own feet,

Tangling the ropes.

“Pumpkin!” the driver yelled

A dozen times at least.

I could tell: she’d rather be

Chasing butterflies.

We held the next generation,

Puppy teeth nipping our ears.

He spied every seal on those icebergs

I photographed them all

We stood in awe as the glacier calved

Heard its thunder, saw its majestic crash

Into the bay, baby rainbows circling

But then came hovercraft day

My forced smile, my fake excitement

Was a Christmas sweater I’d wear once

Then pass along and forget.

We stepped aboard the yellow craft,

Took off like a racecar

Over the waters of Juneau

Then abruptly stopped in deep water.

The tour guide lifted the doors.

Had we broken down?

Were we swimming?

He reached down into a bucket

Pulled out a fish

Threw it high into the air.

From out of nowhere, the talons

of a huge Bald Eagle swooped in and

clutched the fish,

so close its mighty wingspan

made a cheek-brushing breeze.

It called its whole family

Uncles, aunts, cousins once- and twice-removed

“Fish! Over here!” it surely said.

Or perhaps they all knew to watch

For the yellow hovercraft,

Put on a show for the hovercraft wives

To redeem the husbands.

Baby eaglets at the tip top of a tall tree

Were the best “catch” of the day –

We caught a binoculared glimpse, but not a photo

Five hundred shots of eagles, two clear favorites

But most importantly, a lesson learned:

Step aboard, even when the smile is fake

It just might become the truest smile

Of the whole adventure. 

He won the tour picking.

(He knew what he was doing).

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November Open Write – Day 3

Fran Haley of North Carolina and I are hosting this week’s writing prompts at http://www.ethicalela.com for the November Open Write. You can read today’s prompt below or here on the website. We’d love to have you join us as we write and share!

Give Me This – an Ada Limon-inspired Poem

Our Host

Kim Johnson, Ed.D., lives on a farm in Williamson, Georgia, where she serves as District Literacy Specialist for Pike County Schools. She enjoys writing, reading, traveling, camping, sipping coffee from souvenir mugs, and spending time with her husband and three rescue schnoodles with literary names – Boo Radley (TKAM), Fitz (F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Ollie (Mary Oliver).  You can follow her blog, Common Threads: Patchwork Prose and Verse, at www.kimhaynesjohnson.com. 

Inspiration 

As part of Sarah Donovan’s Healing Kind book club, Fran Haley and I will be facilitating a discussion of The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon in April to celebrate National Poetry Month.  Preparing for these conversations led us to choose several of Limon’s poems this week as inspirations for topic, form, or title.  In Give Me This, Limon watches a groundhog steal her tomatoes and envies the freedom of this creature in the delights of rebellion.  

Process

Use Limon’s poem as a theme or topic, form, or title (or combination of these) to inspire your own Give Me This poem.  

Kim’s Poem

I’m using a moment I would love to re-live, a moment I did not want to pull away from, as my inspiration for today’s poem, and I’m choosing the Nonet form, in which each numbered line from 1-9, or from 9-1 has that many syllables on each.  I’m writing a nonet and a reverse nonet to form a concrete (shape) poem resembling a prairie dog’s hideout.  

Give Me Prairie Dogs

I didn’t want to leave our hotel~

prairie dogs were entertaining

me to no end, their antics

suspicious, unaware

of my watching them

skittering…. then

standing still….

seeking

ground

How 

could a

famous row

of graffiti’ed

buried Cadillacs

come close to competing

with Amarillo sunrise

prairie dogs in sheer merriment

of their Tru Hotel fenced-in playground?

Your turn.

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November Open Write – Day 2

This week, Fran Haley and I are hosting the November Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. Come join us as we write poetry together. You can read Fran’s full prompt on the website along with the poems of others or the prompt only, here below.

Title: Belonging

Our Host

Fran Haley is a literacy educator with a lifelong passion for reading, writing, and dogs. She lives in the countryside near Raleigh, North Carolina, where she savors the rustic scenery and timeless spirit of place. She’s a pastor’s wife, mom of two grown sons, and the proud Franna of two granddaughters: Scout, age seven, and Micah, age two. Fran never tires of watching birds and secretly longs to converse with them (what ancient wisdom these creatures possess!). When she’s not working, serving beside her husband, being hands-on Franna, birding, or coddling one utterly spoiled dachshund, she enjoys blogging at Lit Bits and Pieces: Snippets of Learning and Life. 

Inspiration 

As Kim Johnson mentioned in yesterday’s Open Write: Come April, she and I will be honoring National Poetry Month by facilitating discussion of The Hurting Kind, the most recent book by current U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón (you can join us via Sarah Donovan’s new Healing Kind book club). 

Let me linger a moment on the word healing. How often, how long, have we cried out for healing as individuals, families, communities, nations, humankind? When a group of students asked me what superpower I’d want most, that’s what I said. Healing. Oh, to lessen suffering, restore wholeness, impart peace…

In contemplating the despair and destruction of our times—of our human history, honestly—I cannot help picking up the inextricable thread of belonging. Think on this: How much pain stems from the need to belong? To know, to have, a safe place of being? 

In a May 2022 interview with Angela María Spring of Electric Lit, Limón speaks of inspiration for The Hurting Kind: “We are all part of a community, we’re all connected. And sometimes we work so hard at trying to fit in somewhere to find our community, to figure out what it is that makes us connected…you’re already connected. You already have all that you need. And it’s in everything that’s come before you and it’s in everything that’s going to come after.”

That is the spirit of today’s poetry writing.

Process

Read Limón’s poem, “Ancestors”. Note that her images and metaphors are drawn from nature. She writes, exquisitely, of being from rocks, trees, and the “lacing patterns of leaves,” concluding with “I do not know where else I belong.” There are telling lines about roots and survival.

Considering the whole of your life: Which places impart the greatest sense of belonging to you? Why? Concentrate on details and possible symbolism of these settings. What’s the story? Which people are connected to these places? They’re often, but not always, family. 

Try writing free verse or a prose poem incorporating these meaningful images, perhaps borrowing the phrases I’ve come here from and/or I do not know where else I belong.

Fran’s Poem

Origins

(after Ada Limón’s “Ancestors”)

I come here by way of the king’s river
a moody expanse, as vast as the sea
gray-green depths
with bell-topped red buoys
bobbing, bobbing
Right, red, returning
 —a rite of passage

I’ve come here from bridges
yes, most of all from bridges


traversed by my predecessors
seeking livelihood

—did they ever encounter
bridges in their dreams

the way I have?
Distorted structures of dizzying heights

spanning waters at dead of night
absurd angles

impossible to navigate


I never think I can

but I always
find my way.

Like a pigeon, released

driven by some coding
deep in my DNA

I’ve forsaken the riverside
the mammoth steel cranes

the sound of buzz saws, rivet-guns,

metal striking metal
—over time, making a man
lose his hearing

to return, to roost
here in the dawn lands
where abandoned gray houses
and weathered-wood barns
sink decade by decade
into the earth

—for it always
takes back its own


where white-spotted fawns

guarded by their mothers

step like totems from sun-dappled woods

swelling with cicada chorus 

—little living buzz saws
echoing, echoing in my blood
the generational song

—I don’t know
where else I belong.

Your Turn

Kim’s Poem

Ancestors Speak (inspired by Ada Limon’s Ancestors)

I’ve come here

from island and swamp

from Spanish Moss live oaks

from river and ocean

from marshland spartina

from cypress and mangrove

magnolia and black gum

Georgia roots running deep

all sunshine and black water

chaos and order

from hermit and hoarder

from ghosts that still speak

of lies that were spoken

of promises broken

of sermons not lived

the hard slap of truth

I don’t know

where else

I belong.

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Taking a Boon Canine for a Walk

Today’s host for our final day of the October Open Write is Anna Roseboro of Michigan, who inspires us to write Take a Word for a Walk poems. You can read her full prompt here, along with the poems of others and the responses to writers.

Anna writes: Take a word for a walk.  Students might choose a word from the class generated vocabulary list or from a list of concepts or abstract terms. Move this word through the poem so that it appears in each “X” position.  There can be six words in each line.  Use color, abstraction, or other poetic devices in your poem. Use this formation:

X – – – – –

– X- – – –

– -X- – –

– – – X – –

– – – – X –

– – – – – X

Master of the House, Doling Out the Charm, Ready with a Handshake and an Open Paw

Boon – blessing, benefit, favorable, friendly, chipper

Everybody’s boon companion – one convivial mister

Les Miserables boon lyrics loop de-loo

We have a boon canine: Boo,

who sleeps under the boon moon

awakening soon, our Boo boy boon

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If My Shoes Could Talk

Today at http://www.ethicalela.com, Tammi Belko of Ohio is our host for the second day of the October Open Write. You can see her prompt and read her poem here as she inspires us all to write. Today, we are writing about what our shoes would say if they could talk. I got a little concerned about the reality of this ever happening…….all my secrets would be told!

If My Shoes Could Talk

If my shoes could talk
they’d tell all my dark secrets:
sweets-binge hiding spots
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Crossings

Erica Johnson, our host at http://www.ethicalela.com for the first day of our five-day October Open Write, wrote one of my favorite forms of poetry – found poetry – in an art museum using the artists’ statements about the works! You can read her poem here – it surely captures the essence of departure by someone, leaving us to feel the loneliness that comes, almost missing them before they get fully out of sight. I feel I have been on an art exhibit tour today. Erica invited us to find poems in artists’ statements about paintings as well. I have a framed print of a painting that my parents gave me for Christmas in 1984, after I fell in love with the landscapes of the English countryside painted by John Constable following a visit to the National Gallery in London. My favorite Constable work: The White Horse, kept at the Frick Collection in New York. Here is the art link: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1146.html

The White Horse

six-foot wide space
a new technique
spanning canvas
no longer overshadowed

The White Horse
crosses
the River Stour
to the other side
on a barge

full-size sketch
with broad brushstrokes
thus crossing a new
career threshold

The White Horse painting appears at 2:37 and at 2:49 in the video
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September Poetry Marathon – Day 5 of 5

Today’s host for the final day of our September Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Glenda Funk of Idaho, who inspires us to write Barbie poems. You can read Glenda’s full prompt and her poem here. I can’t wait to see all of the poems born into the world on this topic, so please hop over to the site and take a read. I chose a reverse nonet today, crafting nine lines with each numbered line’s syllable count on each in descending order as if going back in time, seeking Fountain of Youth Barbie.

Turning Back the Years Reverse Nonet

We’d line them up like kickball players

at recess, then pick one by one,

taking turns to get the best

looking Barbies. Next, we’d

choose accessories ~

whip worlds to life

narrating

stories

dreamed.

As part of this post today, I’m sharing the remaining poems from the poetry marathon last Friday, where a poem and hour was written either by someone in my family, a friend, or me. Here they are:

12 a.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Hashtag Haiku

#meanness

Fruit of the Spirit

my tree needs fertilizer

nothing much blooming…..

1 a.m. hour – Tanka – a five line poem with a syllable count of 5-7-5-7-7

Cinnamon apples

sliced, wax-sealed in Mason jars

cane sugar syrup

for Thanksgiving dessert pies

prepped-ahead ingredients!

2 a.m. hour – Naani – a poem consisting of four lines, with twenty to twenty-five syllables on any topic

Pumpkin Harvest!

Pumpkin Spice!

Pumpkin jack-o-lanterns ~

glowing face with the slice of a knife!

3 a.m. hour – Senryu – a three line unrhymed poem similar to Haiku, about nature

Midland water snake

basking in Gibbs Gardens grass

misunderstood

4 a.m. hour – Tricubes – three stanzas of three lines with 3 syllables per line 

Poetry

Wings to Fly

Words to heal

Poetry

Weatherproof

Warmth for cold

Poetry

What if prompts

Why not now?

5 a.m hour – Cinquain – a poem that has two syllables in the first line, four in the second, six in the third, eight in the fourth, and two in the fifth (it was early, and I was watching my Honey Nut Cheerios dance in my plain Greek yogurt)…..

mOrning

cOffee hOp!

cheeriO’ed yOgurt prOm

O’s d-Osi-dO  with pOetry

hOedOwn!

6 a.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Ode – a poem of praise, often written directly to a person or object 

Memories of Miriam 

Dear Mom,
you come to me
in the missing
with tingly spots that
turn warm
in the heart,
help me exhale~ my
fingers circling my temples
bringing back
all the whens

of this Bernina
your fingers guiding
mine under the
foot, stitch by stitch
learning to sew
a lime green terrycloth
bathcover, now
sewing quilts
for your great grands
on your fine
Swiss machine

of hawks,
talons clutching wires
checking that
my seatbelt
is fastened
as I drive past,
shaking your pointing finger
if I forgot,
knowing that
whatever I’m
thinking at
that moment,
you’re there
in it

of strawberry figs,
last summer wave
just picked, my own
weakening fingers twisting
tender fruits free ~
canned this very
week, Mason jars
sealed tight
with summer’s
sweetened warmth
for coming winter

of spiced Russian tea,
the Tangy orange
and lemonade mixed
with clove, sugar
cinnamon and tea ~
a medicinal brush
of your invisible fingers
through my hair
in sore throat season

of rippled milkglass
with resurrection fern
springing to life
unfurling its brown
dry fingers
into open arms

green again

7 a.m. hour – grand finale recap poem

A coffee stir stick

started a 24-hour 

poem marathon! 

we stirred up writing

gave wings to what if ideas

preserved memories

called love to action

resurrected ancestors

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September Poetry Marathon – Day 4 of 5

Photo by Szabu00f3 Viktor on Pexels.com

Barb Edler of Iowa is our host today for the 4th day of our September Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com, and she’s encouraging us to write poems of inspiration and victory after reading Ada Limon’s How to Triumph Like a Girl. I chose a Haiku as my form and impulse response as my topic. You can read Barb’s full prompt and Limon’s poem here.

How to Triumph Over Impulse

do nothing but this:
turn your eyes in squint wonder
toward the heavens

I’m continuing to share the poems written during Friday’s poetry marathon with a poem written every hour.

11 pm hour – Kim Johnson – Heart poem – a poem having anything to do with a heart, love, bravery, or admiration

September’s Song

from the depths

of her heart ~

Summer Tanager 

singing summer’s end

from a low branch

near Auchumpkee Creek Bridge

sad September serenade ~

fall flight farewell 

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September 2023 Poetry Marathon – Day 3 of 5

The host for September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com today is Barb Edler of Iowa. She inspires us to write poems about favorite childhood books or poems. You can read her full prompt here. I chose to write about my favorite childhood book – Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes.

By The Light of the Moon

back in the 70s, the

World Book Encyclopedia

and Childcraft salesmen came

door to door

selling sets

ecru-colored hardbacks

gold-embossed lettering

the only one that

mattered to me

had a pink-banded

spine ~ Volume 1

Poems and Rhymes

that I read so much

I’m surprised I didn’t

read the ink clean off

the pages

I had a closet-and-flashlight

fixation with Volume 1

I’d crawl in and read for hours

staring at the illustrations,

memorizing the words

Overheard on a Salt Marsh

my favorite of all time

but Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee

and The Purple Cow

and The Raggedy Man

and every.other.page

were my best friends

so much that today,

I have a framed copy

of Harold Monro’s

masterpiece

by my bed, draped

with green glass beads

to remind me

I was steeped

in reading

by the light

of

the

moon

Last Friday, I had a poetry writing marathon, where I invited family and some friends to write poems that I would feature on the blog this week. Each hour, a new poem was born. I began sharing these on Saturday, and today is Day 3 of 5 days of our shared poems, continued below.

6 p.m. hour – Kim Johnson – List poem – – a poem that contains a list or inventory of things, people, places, or ideas

Signs Seen on a Drive Between Counties in Rural Georgia

Do not be lukewarm

Be the light!

Slower traffic keep right

Speed checked by detection devices

The compassion of the Lord never fails

Sad to see summer go. NOT.

Where will you spend eternity?

Don’t be the dealer…..be the difference!

Wrong Way

Don’t scroll. Stay in control.

Everything is hotter in the south!

Fall: When God displays his finest artistry. 

7 p.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Etheree – A ten line poem in which each numbered line contains that number of syllables, written in ascending or descending order. 

Norris’s Fine Foods

catfish, hush puppies, coleslaw and crawfish

green beans, cabbage, and corn on the cob

fried shrimp, baked cod, barbecue beans

shrimp scampi, rice and cornbread

peach and apple cobblers

Norris’s Fine Foods

chocolate cake

banana

pudding

…..full!

8 p.m. hour – my grandson Aidan – Concrete Poem – a poem in the shape of an object of the poem, or where the arrangement of words looks like the poem’s subject.  These are also called shape poems.  

My grandson writes about a covered bridge by the bridge

9 p.m. hour – Ken Haynes and Jennifer Butler – Renga Poem – a poem in which the first poet writes the first three lines in seventeen syllables, then the second poet writes two lines containing seven syllables. 

Gracie and JoJo are mine

Kasa is his

We are one family

    loving our dogs

    please love yours! 

10 p.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Nonet – poem with nine lines, with each numbered line containing that many syllables and can be written in ascending or descending order

Cemetery Slap Fight

they got in a slap fight, those 3, right

in the cemetery over 

their mother’s grave ~ she’d once said, 

“over my dead body”

turns out she was right

……believing truth

was never

her strong

suit