As my Three Children Tidy Up their Rooms
This is an anagrammatic poem, in which the first half of the poem, in prose, rearranges itself letter-by-letter into the second half, which is a rectangular monospace sonnet. The prose part describes the scene in which the sonnet was written. The sonnet is a self-describing, self-enumerating, truthful sonnet.
The Foxes
As my Three Children Tidy Up their Rooms
My sons, Daniel, Julien, and Gabriel, resident sportsmen, daze through sorry rooms while I write a strict, stern paragraph. One of them stutters, protests injustice; another struts testily; the third pets our nineteen stuffed foxes. It’s easier to find warm coffee than mild peace. I kick a bad ball, ever peeved. Quick, I strain to see the end of this before they’re done. They attempt to fit in unusual stuff: a cactus, really? Such a stormy view from orbit on high, I see abstruse structures, unmade beds, and avidly stretch toward the even sonnet, a tactical cannon of sorts.
This sonnet has been crafted to comprise
five hundred sixty characters precisely,
but filler as its ink may be (surprise),
it fits its witty argument quite nicely.
Four hundred fifty-five letters as loom,
one hundred five non-letters in between,
it sings about the structure of its room
and, even as it does so, paints a scene.
Four sentences that gather thus to jell—
four stanzas that would rather be apart—
strain, as a service crew at some hotel,
to pick up the debris and make it smart.
One hundred words come joyfully together