Last week on Next Line, Please we saw risks, perils, bad titles, and numbers on parade.
Christine Rhein's “Occupational Hazards,” moves from one to 12 and back in the course of a work day:
One coffee after another. Two bosses. Three days
to corporate reorg, worldwide meetings, four
or five hundred PowerPoint slides you need
to start drafting. That smile—6 p.m., at your desk—
Boss A stopping by while buttoning his coat:
“remember, it’s all about moving the goalposts.”
At 7, Boss B: “remember, it’s all about moving
up the ladder … we’re counting on you to work
your magic.” Eight times nine columns, rows,
ways a spreadsheet can be skewed. Ten o’clock =
dinner deleted. 11:30 = bedtime = your pillows
propping the laptop + its steady overheating +
your nightstand printer running out of black.
Twelve years and counting. One life. One life.
There’s so much to like here: the way the opening draws you in, the business jargon (“reorg”), the movement of numbers mixed with breaks like "worldwide meetings" and the bosses "counting on you."
Pamela Joyce S did fine things with a couple of titles on David's “bad titles” list. Pamela used the “one to 10” option and took desirable liberties with some of the numbers (“Wonderland,” “create,” “benign,” “tension”):
Welcome to Wonderland, where your sublimation
is our pleasure. We too desire your secret dreams,
always très discreet, like damselflies dining in
delphinium. Those damn selfies for Tinder will
never be reviled by five angels of redemption,
nor deep-sixed to protect the innocent. We at
Wonderland understand the seven virtues and sins,
the sheer weight of them and how you long to create
something of nothing, transform dangerous to benign,
illicit to inspired, explicit tension to tender lines.
Please explore our Psychomachia room where you
will find a willing muse, music, art, and words to mine.
Truly sublime.
Another title on the “bad” list sparked Steve Belin-Oka’s surprising apicultural adventure, “Self-Portrait in a Side-View Mirror”:
This dying bee—a wonder it’s lived
until this late in the year, last week’s snowan insulin shock dose to the raving leaves,
which lift and swirl in whirlpoolsof wind. The November sun’s mad buzz
through the gauze of clouds. I watcha hawk veer west, clasp a dove
in its talons. Say as a child I believedsugar water in eyedroppers would save
vulnerable creatures. Now I knowmalarial sepsis will hatch in the blood
of the weak. Despite pity, despite quinine.
Click here to read the full post, with even more hazards and brawls.
As for next week, it's time to tee up! We have a brand new prompt to play with, and the name of the game is word golf. In this exercise, poets focus in on the words at the end of each line, changing that word one letter at a time until the first end word has morphed into its opposite. For example, good to evil, or, white to black. It's a really fun and interesting endeavor, and you'd be quite tickled by how well the tension builds. Can you do it in 11 lines? 14?
Visit the American Scholar's page to see an example of a successful game of word gold (I mean, golf!) and to enter your candidate!
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