Quiddler Poem: a single 7-round game of playing-card word-game Quiddler used as random generator for poem development. The final round of 10-card hands begins the poem, moving backward through to the first round of 3-card hands. Quiddler words are all-caps.
Thanksgiving 2021. Game #2.
Slung over the table lamp, an UNCLEAN PEEL
Held a heady memory of TIP-TOE SEX.
Over the chairback a CLEAN FROCK
Gestured toward an ebony BRAID, seeming
Disembodied from the slumbering blankets, yet
Somehow SEXY in its foreignness,
Allowing a HINT of SIN that NO amount
of WIT could allay his urge to EAT.
His hand began to ROAM under the cover, sightless
And a real GOER, in the elements
Without a GLOVE, to SET
upon what felt a PERM with an
unset EPOXY, seaming smooth a languid QUAD.
Where could his hand GO next and not
BE THINE, heraldic HEN?
though yesterday’s spent appetite had turned to ROT.
Thanksgiving 2021. Game #4
WHY, as
His OLDER eye would LUGE against
the slow LUG of his dying eye,
a SQUINTER would shudder his vision
to a STEAMY SEA
and a WIFEY shape
a HINEY contour
JAM through is mind’s eye with a thought of “OUR”
and for every NINTH breathe GREW a SOB.
In his vision of “our” is a LAD,
A himself that could DINE over
SAGE conversation where THE ANSWER was
never offered, and luminous TATA beckoned
as a dessert following dessert.
His hand of thinning bones under parchment skin, a sudden
sense of metallic FOIL wrapped around
her still-warm course, that he promises
not to pick at or BUG as they GET ON
the trolley; long since dismantled: to their apartment;
long since dismantled: and a sense of warmth
in his hand that is hers; long since dismantled.
Thanksgiving 2021. Game #3
Spying It, his brother had tagged It
“a rude little DITZ-PETER”,
Opening an inopportune door, a sister’s friend cast It
“SQUINGE-BURIER”
To his shrieked “no-knock CHANER-QUIFE!”
He was ever an OGLER of EARTHY bits
Of VOGUE. a WAN offspring
of effete WRITERS
who would DINE on words by the TON.
He was a stranded JINX-PUBE;
he never could DOUBT the TRUTH of IT,
never SALVE the HEATY
animal NORM that seemed his only GOAL:
to stow away to the CAN
and resurrect his CLOD.
Thanksgiving 2021. Game #1
THE NINTH DAZE
convinced her of a BOAT
beached in a GAUZE of mist,
a scrim of misremembered QUOTE.
Her mind; a wretched VOYUER-EYE,
a myopic WAIF’s HOPE searching
for a KEY that in memory
had opened a SEAL to YOU.
a PANG at A TRACE, a glimpse
of a TOE.
SOW NOW RAIN. SOW NO RAIN. SO NO RAIN.
FLOATING on JUNK, RID of passengers
she sensed a GIST of some dark thing that forever
ATE,
and her hand cut water like an OAR.
DangerHart 