I've been intrigued by the sestina and the concept of building narratives around preselected words. Yesterday, I designed a new form utilizing six words like the sestina, but shorter. My form is six stanzas of three lines where each of the six words are used in a different order in each set of three lines. I used a table to diagram out the word ordering (see below). Further, in the previous post, I did something similar with the Reverse Crossout (also a form of my own devising maybe or at least, I've never encountered it before. After all there is nothing new under the sun).
The six words (rainbow, smut, bus, kitties, engage, and dark) were selected early this morning by an ex-coworker. He sent them at 3:04 AM via text. Here is the poem:
Rainbow Smut Bus drives while Kitties Engage the Dark
A rainbow appeared over the Smut Palace; the driver of the Jet City Bus
Co. couldn't believe it was a double D. He clipped a tree maiming two kitties
engaged in the act of creating something never seen before in the dark.
The dark was smothering when Kitty woke in a booth at Ben Dover's Smut
Palace. She was confused. Guilt churned the insides of the bus driver
as he engaged the machine. He had never seen such a dazzling rainbow
Engaged! It happened on the bus, their trust was sealed by a rainbow.
At first she was rattled but then something enthused in her by the smut
Kitty was reading on their new bed. Spinning, she made the room dark.
"Kitty's" she throated, my dark warm place aches. I want your lust to engage
magic in my body. I want to gaze into your green eyes ecstatic with rainbows.
"Bus six-nine," she whimpered repeatedly, “I knew you; I inhaled your smut.”
Bus sixty was graffitied with a rainbow badly smeared on the back covering a darkly
painted advertisement of a dorky Captain Picard fingering the word, "engage."
Smut Palace also requested an ad; but the CEO decided instead on yarn & kitties.
Smuttly slathered jam on his toast. He engaged his fingers petting his kitties.
They purred in delight by his touch. Sensing mice, they darted into the dark
A rainbow appeared over the stop as he waited too long for a number nine bus.
I'm sure the form is clear as mud, but here are the word orders in each line per stanza set in a table (Word 1: rainbow; word 2: smut; word 3: bus; word 4: kitties; word 5: engage; word 6: dark).
Stanza 1 | Stanza 4 | |||||
Word 1 | Word 2 | Word 3 | Word 4 | Word 6 | Word 5 | |
Word 4 | Word 1 | |||||
Word 6 | Word 5 | Word 3 | Word 2 | |||
Stanza 2 | Stanza 5 | |||||
Word 6 | Word 4 | Word 2 | Word 3 | Word 1 | Word 6 | |
Word 3 | Word 5 | |||||
Word 5 | Word 1 | Word 2 | Word 4 | |||
Stanza 3 | Stanza 6 | |||||
Word 5 | Word 3 | Word 1 | Word 2 | Word 5 | Word 4 | |
Word 2 | Word 6 | |||||
Word 4 | Word 6 | Word 1 | Word 3 |
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