Wordsworth

Gabe Atkinson

This week’s challenge was to write a romantic quatrain containing at least one of the following inelegant words: Ointment, bulbous, succulent, turgid, moist. Judy Watson and Lynne Kohen of Palmerston North write: His bulbous nose and sleazy wink,/Her henna hair and op-shop mink,/ The gauzy glow of candles, wine,/Is this The One? Your place or mine? From Sybil Gregson of Kilbirnie: I judged you fierce and truculent/Until your gift appeared:/A mango moist and succulent./ My broken heart was cheered.

Philip Lynch of Upper Hutt: She said to bring plenty of ointment/ To their short after-hours appointment/But a pain in his principal joint meant/ Their tryst was a great disappointment. Auckland’s Susan McIntosh: Late in life, a love affair!/ But things were arid way down there./

The ointment made it so much moister,/ Enabling them, at last, to roister.

Rex McGregor of Auckland on the dangers of cosmetic augmentation:

Your lips, once moist and succulent/

Like soothing balm or ointment,/Are bulbous, turgid, hard as flint/Since that collagen appointment. Kaiapoi’s Barbara Matthews: Our house is now a baby shrine/With ointment jars and nappies moist/And babygros when the day is fine/A-flapping on the rotary hoist.

Colleen Scott of Upper Hutt wins this week’s prize with poignant verse for a surly Frenchman: Dear Depardieu, my darling heart,/From gay Montmartre thou must depart./ Too short our time of wedded bliss/O how thy bulbous schnoz I miss.

The next contest is to write a short poem including this line from Love and Hate by Elizabeth Siddal: Ope not thy lips, thou foolish one. Entries, for the prize below, close at noon on Thursday, February 2.