Cinquain

I took a creative writing course during my senior year of high school, which was geared more toward poetry - specifically, poems with a certain format. Although we covered sonnets, the poems I remembered and most enjoyed writing were cinquains. In the traditional style, cinquains are five-line poems that follow a syllable pattern - two syllables in the first line, four in the second line, then six, then eight, and then two syllables again. I haven't seen anyone write one in the four years since then, so I've always felt kind of bad for the neglected cinquain and favor them. I haven't written many, but this one is the only one that I halfway like.

"Picnic"

In the
road you meet it.
The bite of three choices,
sharp to the stab, not silver, but
plastic.


~Nicole Bartow