In January, I will explore the style of the Villanelle. This form of poetry has a lot of rules. I am normally a rule-breaker, so I take up the challenge of pirouetting across this restrictive dance floor with a degree of trepidation. Villanelle # 10 I will call Junk Man.
My first love is poetry. I played with rhythms as a child as a favorite toy, writing line after line and verse upon verse down in a notebook my mama gave me. The words became undecipherable squiggly lines dancing across the page. I remember sitting on my Uncle Harvey’s porch, making up poems only I could read. I learned to write real letters after I started school. That’s when my adventure with poetry started. I found myself in a dance with a fickle dancer. As soon as I got the steps right, the beat changed, and the singer sang a different tune. COVID-19 and retirement have given me the gift of time to explore, study, and capture the essence of poetry, making all its different moved on the page.
The rules I followed writing Villanelle # 10
The rules for creating a Villanelle are simple and straight forward. This style of poetry must have 19 lines and five stanzas. The closing stanza has four lines. Also, line 1 gets repeated in lines 6, 12, and 18. Thus, line 3 gets repeated in lines 9, 15, and 19. There are so many rules and so little time.
Junk Man
Junk man, junk man please stop for awhile
Bringing truckloads of your disgusting trash
Your abandoned tarnished treasures in a gigantic pile
I know you live away for a healthy mile
But we here on the block think it’s balderdash
Junk man, junk man please stop for awhile
The way you go about depositing your junk is very vile
Depositing it in the middle of the night is rash
Your abandoned tarnished treasures in a gigantic pile
We know junking is part of your hillbilly lifestyle
A way for you to make a little extra cash
Junk man, junk man please stop for awhile
I know arguing about the eyesore is futile
You dump your scavenging without batting an eyelash
Your abandoned tarnished treasures in a gigantic pile
I gaze out my window at your horrid stockpile
Staring long and hard at your disorganized cache
Junk man, junk man please stop for awhile
Your abandoned tarnished treasures in a gigantic pile
Who is Molly Shea?
Molly Shea is an accomplished fictional short story writer from Indiana who writes short stories and novels about a fictional town called Tecumseh. To read more of her short stories and adventures, click here.
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