Practically everyone has seen those poetry fridge magnets - a set of little strip magnets with words printed on them and you can rearrange them on your fridge or what have you and write poetry, leave messages, etc.  

They're something of a cultural cliche by now, but still tons of fun.  When I was in college and living in the dorm, they gave us free sets promoting the university IT department.  You'd be amazed how much sexual innuendo you can create with computer terms!  We had a lot of fun leaving sentences for our roomates and friends to "discover," most ideally when their families were visiting on parents' weekend! Mwahahaha...

Anyway.  A year ago for my birthday, my parents gave me a set labelled "haiku."  And though I'm no longer experiencing the joys of communal living, and even though my fridge is rather awkwardly placed in my kitchen, I've been getting suprisingly a lot of use out of those magnets.  I don't actually write haiku with them, or 5-7-5, but the word set is kind of zen and lends itself to a lot of lovely images.

It's a fascinatingly challenging exercise to try to write using such a limited vocabulary, and I have been known to spend a half hour and more staring at my fridge trying to make it work.  I love sensing my mind at work, feeling myself glance across the words I have availabe and witnessing phrases and lines taking shape.  It forces me to work without worrying about meaning  - only the sensate elements of words, the flavor, feel, pronunciation.  My goal is just to make a sentence that makes grammatical sense and that sounds, that feels good.  And a lot of the time it ends up with a certain significance anyway.  I should really play with limited word sets more often - it pushes me in directions I would never go otherwise!

Yesterday, I decided to write something new while waiting on my spaghetti to boil, and I had to cannibalize a few of my older ones (they NEVER give you enough "s" pieces!).  I didn't want to lose them, though, so I wrote them all down to share.  So, in order of my personal preference (least to most)...enjoy! (this is my original work; all rights reserved, as usual)


cat   see   dog
trickle          investigate
through                     cicada creak a
window                                            sad
                                                         mushroom
                                                         song


television commercials are like
dead fish in the evening
when only the refrigerator
and the purple crab
can still be happy


dandelion blossoms rise,
a whisper of yellow summer
from black concrete
every leaf & petal a child
who could never dream of ice


beneath some full morning
we walk on wet blue shore.
through rusted raindrops
our thunder is blooming,
a shiver of thought
that leaves no sound