It’s the first day of April, and you know what that means… National Poetry Month has begun and there’s a new challenge from my friend, Muri! (And a bunch of practical jokers trying to APRIL FOOL us, so beware.) If you would like to join in, this year’s challenges, involving a variety of “nonce” forms, are outlined in Muri’s WordPress post: https://murisopsis.wordpress.com/2023/03/31/looking-at-nonce-forms-for-npm/
Some of these look enticing, Muri. Others look downright intimidating. I don’t know if I will get through them all. I had a “tall tale” to tell, so I decided to start off with The Tail. I got tripped up by the one-syllable business, and where the thesaurus had no monosyllabic suggestions, I was forced to hyphenate and use homophones. You said loose rhyme was expected, which I took to mean permissible, not mandatory. I did have fun, so I’m claiming bonus points.
I will lead in by saying I love crime dramas, and the characters I’m most intrigued by are the medical examiners. This started with Quincy when I was eight or nine. They are odd ducks, but they are able to determine a person’s cause of death by making a giant Y cut and poking around in their innards. It fascinates me, but I could never do what they do. Not on a person, anyway.
So here goes:
DEATH
OF
A
SAMSUNG
You
are
more
or
less
dead,
S-
6,
but
your
blue
eye
still
blinks;
I
have
new
mail
or
texts
you
lack
the
strength
to
load
or
dis-
play.
A
too-
charged
batt-
tree
has
split
your
sides,
the
way
a
con-
strained
laugh
might,
but
a
lot
less
fun-
nee.
The
A
T
&
T
clerk
says
my
con-
tacts
are
gone.
You
are
use-
less
and
worth
no-
thing
in
trade.
Your
cord
and
case,
of
course,
don’t
fit
my
new
phone,
a
J-
some-
thing
they
had
on
sale.
When
I
get
back
home,
I
leave
“J”
in
my
purse
so
he
won’t
see
what
I
am
a-
bout
to
do.
When
your
eye
stops
blink-
king,
I
pry
you
a-
part
with
a
blunt
knife
and
stare,
awe-
struck,
at
the
net-
work
of
pulse-
less
veins
that
lead
to
your
puffed-
up
gray
heart.
It
looks
like
a
pack-
et
of
ketch-
up
left
in
the
car
on
a
real
hot
day.
Then
I
close
your
chest,
give
you
last
rites,
and
dress
you
in
your
best
out-
fit.
How
weird
is
it
that
you
will
go
to
your
grave
in
the
same
mauve
case
that
once
saved
your
life?
JUST JOAN 42 
In one word–awesome!
And how nice to see you back, with your poetry. Or is this really you? I’m suspicious this is an April Fool’s joke.
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Yes, it is really me. But that’s exactly what an imposter would say, isn’t it? Can you squeeze your comment into one SYLLABLE? Yeah, well, neither could I. Hope all is well with you and Mrs. Gnu.
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Whoops, I forgot to hyphenate.
Awe-
some!
Thanks, we’re doing well. I hope the same with you.
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Ha!
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Hey JRR! Good to hear from you! Even one syllable.
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Joan I love this poem! Thanks you tons for playing along!!! You were thinking outside the box – and it works on all the levels! My deepest sympathy on the passing of your phone. It really is traumatic to lose the contacts…. I’m guessing the new phone has a spiffy case as well – what color??
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Glad you enjoyed my tail of a tale. The blue-eyed phone passed a while back. The J-something that replaced it passed last fall (memory failure) but I got the contacts transferred into my new one before it slid into irreversible dementia. My current phone is a low-end Samsung (with more memory than I should ever need) in a boring black case. The spiffiest cases are for iPhones, which are WAY out of my price range.
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Hi Joan,
So nice to hear from you again!
Yeah, no elegies for planned obsolescence. I just skipped about 5 generations when I bought my last phone. Haven’t got to many Tower Poetry meetings after I moved to Dayton. But plan to go back this summer. You getting beach vacations on Lake Erie? Miss your good cheer.
Carol
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Hey Carol, good to know some of my old poetry buds are still reading my (almost defunct) blog. I got a lot of mileage out of my S-6. By the time it died, Samsung was pushing the S-21. So mine was like the 15 generations behind. I heard from Steve Broidy about our group book, Rhyme and Rune. Advance sales have begun–woo hoo! We don’t spend as much time at the beach or Cedar Point as I’d thought we would. When it gets hot, I’d rather be somewhere with AC–reading a book at the library or sipping an iced mocha at the coffee bar.
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Fun tale 👍
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Well, well, well… if it isn’t the inventor of The Tail! Pleased to make your acquaintance, MMM. This was a fun form. Kind of ironic that my first poem for NPM would be something that sounds like it should be last, like the caboose of the nonce poetry world. I make hard copies of my blog posts for my sister (she keeps them all in a binder) and this one will be, like, 5 pages long, LOL.
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Thought I would drop by 😏
Nice to meet you too, JJ.
You make a good point there. Would have been more appropriate at the tail end.
May ask your sister to stick them together lengthwise so the binder has a tail 😉
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I like the idea of a binder with a tail. FYI, when I made her “Tail” blog page, I did columns. It took FIVE to get the whole poem onto one sheet. I see you have another nonce form in the challenge, The Mouse. Interesting…
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It truly is a sad time when your phone dies – great take 😊
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Thanks. Phones (and many other things) just aren’t made to last.
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