Oh heaven help me, here we are again! Some of you may know that last year I completed ‘National Poetry Writing Month’ or NaPoWriMo for the very first time, not by following the official prompts but by combining them with a personal imperative to feature otters in every poem. No-one was more surprised than me at the success of this gambit. So, this year…..
FOXES!!
Again, I have every expectation of abject failure.
The first official prompt is inspired by Kay Ryan, sometimes known as a ‘poet of compression’, and looks for short lines, tightly-woven rhymes and an animal. An animal, you say? Riddle me this…
Compressed Fox
Squeeze ‘fox’,
out pops the ‘o’,
a slippery pip,
leaving behind ‘fx’,
shorthand for tricks
cinematic, pixels
magicked to Orcs.
Reduce by ‘f’ and
fleet-foot bloats
to a lumbering
cart-hauling beast;
oxen-free, an ‘f’
will play louder
than pianissimo.
‘X’-less, it leaves
back-street, after-hours
border disputes
for international
corridors of power,
but tell the F.O.
to f.o., it’ll leave you
with a vote on
a treasure map,
a perfect kiss. Press
‘fox’ if you must,
it will be the greater,
no less.
Kirsten Luckins 