Thursday, March 10, 2016

Fifty Precious Words Entry

Sourdough bread and sourdough starter with wild yeast and lactobacilli pulled from the air.

Nice dishwasher in the background! The bananas were a nice touch too, but that brown lump is the inside shot of my sourdough bread and the yucky looking goo in the bottle is the starter we made it from.

I didn't think I could pull it off, but as I was scanning through some old poems I wrote for some reason, I realized I could probably polish one up and turn it into an entry for Vivian Kirkfield's 50 Precious Words Contest (see rules here).

We've been slammed this week with school, and as you can see from the photo above, I finally succeeded in making a real sourdough bread--from a sourdough starter that we cultured from the air. Yeah baby, pioneer style! 

So I figured, if I can pull off a sourdough, I can surefire pull of a kid's story in 50 words or less and shoot, why not do it rhyme, especially since I already had some ... started (insert cheesy drum roll). 

I guess I was still coming off my victorious sourdough glow--or maybe it was just the sourdough starter fumes--but I am not a poet and do not usually write in rhyme so I knew this would be as arduous a task as making bread. (But thank you Vivian for the courage to try!)

My first attempt came in at 71 words! Grrr. The next one came it at 20 and the one I tried after that came it at a whopping 37 words! Woohoo.

So here you have it:


 Susie's Zoozies

I want a pet moose, 
and a pink sparkly goose, 
and a hippo the size of a peanut.

Then give me soft moss 
for my bald albatross 
and an owl who will roost in my tree hut. 

And just because I'm feeling daring, I'll include my other two attempts (Not to be considered as my entry in Vivian's contest):

Storm Clouds

Greedy goblins grasping high,
Stealing sunshine from the sky,
Loud they thunder, stomp and moan,
Raining curses on my home.

And the one I really wanted to enter but couldn't get under 71 (grrrrr) words:

Echo in my Pocket

There’s an echo in my pocket 
trying to reach my ear. 
It scares me, I must say so 
I put it there last year.

I stuck it in the jacket 
I left out in the snow
And must have froze it solid, 
But now the sun’s full glow.

Alas, it’s started melting 
and dripping down my leg.
What’s that the poor thing's saying?
“Help! I’m stuck inside an 
egg…
      egg…
           egg…”

I can't leave this post without sharing something fun from my children. This week it's my baby's turn--with her permission. We did synonym poems on Monday. I'd never heard of them, but I found them in a book I picked up from a library inventory sale. The idea is to form a couplet using synonyms. This was my littlest one's first attempt:

Jumpy

Squirmy wormy
Jumpy, bouncy
My whole body's getting pouncy.

And with that, I will bounce back to tasks of the day. Have a great week and good luck to everyone in the contest.








12 comments:

  1. Wow! A plethora of sparsely worded stories...good going, Johnell! I'm thrilled you are playing along...and I love your entry...lots of great pets...especially the bald albatross. ;) And yes, the Echo in My Pocket is quite engaging...and a bit spooky...maybe keep that one for one of Susanna Hill's Halloweensie contests. ;)

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    1. Ah thanks Vivian, you are very kind. Thanks for hosting this.

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  2. Johnell, I love your stories and your daughter's poem.

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    1. Me too. She was so proud of her little poem. As she should be.

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  3. H, Johnell! I really like your poem/story Storm Clouds. And Jumpy is cute.

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  4. You have been busy! Great entry & love the runners' up, too!

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  5. I love fresh sourdough bread! Yours looks yummy, esp. with an offering of poems. They are all wonderful, but I esp. liked Jumpy and Echo! Nice work.

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  6. Wow, great entry, and the other ones were awesome, too! I really liked Echo, it reminded me of some of the poems on gigglepoetry.com.

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    1. What a fun site. Thanks for the heads up and thank you for the comment.

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  7. Great job! I did a twitter story contest once and won. That was fun. A story in 140 characters is tough!

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