In an ongoing series, the editors, former contributors, and readers of Eclectica have been invited to write a poem containing four pre-chosen words. The words for this issue are chrysanthemum, flip, dial, and heritage. Below are the resulting selected poems.

If you would like to participate in the next special poetry assignment, the four new words are clerk, furry, chrome, and bleach. Send your poem(s) to editors@eclectica.org by March 1, 2003.

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(Click on the title to view the whole poem!)

 

Surprises
 
You didn't answer, but you braided your wet hair,
fluffed it out dry, and floated it around your bony
shoulders like yellow angel fur.  
 
Julie King

 

Five Word Poems
 
Here in the whimper of dials and gears
and circuitry, where grade-separation
is everything: one perfect jab of light
astonishes the sleep-walkers and it's dawn  
 
Taylor Graham

 

Knowing
 
If afraid, she doesn't say so. Her talk is light,
all talk stays light as the lone skater at the far end
of the frozen television pond, circling in, out  
 
Chris Murray

 

Miniature Rooms
 
I have been
told it is too difficult to make
a believable miniature human  
 
Jennifer Finstrom

 

Flipdihethemum
 
Like a dial that shows the pressure,
the direction, the speed and the warmth
This dream is simple, a monolith to the
certainty that you are by my shoulder  
 
D.W. Hayward

 

The Album of Good
 
We dialed the massive black telephone to talk with Grandma and Grandpa.
I was ten. Their voices crackled like bits of the china plate I broke that October.  
 
Judy Beatse

 

Paging Through
 
I always thought they'd buried all the stillborn
babies on the hill with all the cedars. I'd always
played careful there, especially at night  
 
Tara Gilbert-Brever