Moon, June, Garbo, hobo

Thank goodness for writing group. Among other things, one of our exercises tonight was a bouts-rimés, or rhymed-end poem. There’s a whole history to this form that goes back to the 17th century. One person rights a list of rhyming words and gives it to another who is then obligated to write a poem with lines ending with those rhymes in the order given. We were handed a list of words, terrible words I might add, and told to write a sonnet. Well, none of us really knew how to write a sonnet, but I came up with something that wasn’t actually all that bad. I did fudge one of the rhymes, though, exchanging the words for homonyms (sort of). I won’t tell you which. Here is my effort:

Do you know a girl named June
Whose bodice quivers under stress,
Each breast so like a waxing moon?
The village boys can’t but obsess;
They’ve no reign o’er the hissing snake
As June’s attractions make them mute
And dumb, desiring forbidden cake,
Gazing upon each trembling butte.
The silver screen knows Greta Garbo
Wants to be alone, not play
The cinematic tramp, but a hobo
Wand’ring in solitude by day.
Greta is diamond to June’s rhinestone,
And boys can afford but cheap cologne.

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