Bat Haunts

Text again, for text to speech readers:

Bat
haunts
dark trees
in leaf costume, hunting.
The full silver moon hides its eyes.

Note: This is offered for the 5th Annual Halloweensie Writing Contest at Susanna Leonard Hill’s blog. Susanna is a children’s book writer, and she is offering awesome prizes for contest winners: critiques, magazines and books, oh my! I imagine mine is too short to be taken seriously, but if you have a 100 word or less story or poem, done by midnight tonight (I know, right? But I just found out about it half an hour ago!) with some form of the words dark, haunt and costume, then throw your hat in the ring.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

October 30, 2015

Posted under

Photography, Poetry

Comments

31 Comments

Squashed Sonnet

Freckle Goblin wriggles under gourds,
tired by a night’s divine carousing.
Freckle dreams of youthful fun in fjords.
After chasing ghosts, he can’t help drowsing.
Boom! He wakes to sulfur scents and peril.
Freckle peeks. He spots fair Glisten Rue.
“Enemy!” he hisses, turning feral.
“Flee, you witch!” he snarls. She pouts: “Listen, you
ruined parties, chased a lovely spirit.
This will be your Halloween goodnight!”
“No, my lady,” Freckle shouts, “I fear it
will be you destroyed!” He swings his right.
Acorn squash, gourds and pumpkins tumble.
Mashed and bashed, she flees. Trip and stumble!
Goblins rule on Halloween night —
even scary witches flee with fright.

Pumpkins

Notes:

Happy Halloween!

The first 14 lines of this is a sonnet, rhyming ABABCDCDEFEFGG. It didn’t feel quite finished to me, so I threw in a bonus couplet for those trick-or-treaters reading to the end. For the meter nerds in the crowd, it’s written in trochaic pentameter. In plain English, each line has ten syllables, alternately stressed and unstressed, with maybe a few variations. It took DAYS to write!! Now that’s frightening!

This is linked to the Third Annual Spooky Writing Challenge at the Writing Works in Progress Blog. Also, this is my entry for Poetry Friday (if a bit late in the day), hosted this week by Check it Out. Yeah for poetry! Thanks to all the great poetry writers and fans in Poetry Friday’s crowd!