I won the Desert Moon Review workshop challenge this week where Sarah Sloat asked poets to write a “Cento” Poem.
After learning what a Cento was, I grabbed my favorite Norton Anthology and took on the task of organizing a poem.
What great fun! It was a scavenger hunt, or even perhaps a poetic soup.

What I came up with left me feeling a bit inadequate, which is always a good thing for an Aries type personality. I ended up wishing I had written those lines, those thoughts, those descriptions. I wished that all of the actual line inventors were really there at my fantasy poet party where I was the hostess managing, directing, and, assigning seat placements.

Ah, what a dream!

Here’s my winning CENTO:

All Today I Lie in the Bottom of the Wardrobe (Cento)

The spotlights had you covered.
My diadem grew carious.

I am so dumb-looking. And you are so beautiful.

The pig, though I am inoffensive, coughs
with orange laughter lines and nostrils flared.

I know he carries bovine TB;
the bodies of children
marked with D.

I grow into my death,
you hover loyally above my head. I close

two rafters and a cross-tie on the slat.
There is a faint pop, a sizzle.

This is sadness I tell myself.

***
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (2nd edition)
Title “Yoko” Thom Gunn / “A poem about Poems About Vietnam” Jon Stallworthy / “Bog Queen” Seamus Heaney / “To Marina” Kenneth Koch / “Autobiography of a Lungworm” Roy Fuller / “The Kingfisher’s Boxing Gloves” James Fenton/ “Brock” Paul Muldoon / “The Lilies” Richard Emil Braun / “Marked with D” Tony Harrison / “My Life” Mark Strand / “The Wound” Louise Gluck / “Alphabets” Seamus Heaney / “They Eat Out” Margaret Atwood / “Water Wings” Cathy Song


Would have been a great party— don’t you think?

The next challenge is to write a PROSE POEM. Desert Moon Review's Weekly Challenge
I'm the judge. (((smile)))