ROUND ONE: 1-bruise vs. 16-androgynous

^{[click image to view matchup in full screen in a new window.]}

The Poets’ Challenge: Each poet is assigned a single word based on their bracket seed, ranging from 1 (intuitive) to 16 (seemingly impossible). Poets must write a kid-appropriate poem using the prompted word in under 36 hours. Once both final poems have been received, they will be pasted into the body of this post, and then the reader poll will be open for voting.

Voter Instructions: Read each poem as many times as you’d like. Then use the poll to express your preference. Votes are counted in real time and cannot be changed once entered. As a guideline for voting, consider the criteria on which the contestants on the cooking show “Chopped” are evaluated: presentation, taste, and creativity. Translated roughly into poetry terms, presentation might include technical aspects such as meter, rhyme, form/shape, etc.; taste might be the net effect — did the poem move you to laugh, cry, think, kill, etc.; and creativity might include the poet’s approach toward a certain subject, image evocation, clever wordplay, etc.

“This is awesome, where can I find more?”: All results and scheduled matchups, including a glance at the round-by-round writing windows and voting windows, are visible from the Live Scoreboard page. In addition, results will be tweeted from @edecaria as they become final.

Here are the poems:

1-bruise
peaches, pears… and egos, too
by Julie Krantz

soft things bruise—a fruit, a limb—
but most of all, the flesh within—
the veins, the pulp, the under-skin.
a gathering of blood and bile,
a yellowing of youthful fire.
sweet and sour, tender, blue—
the vast tattoo of losing you.

vs.

16-androgynous
The Dragonologist
by Katya Czaja

Dr. Elvis Prosser needs a chapter for his thesis, 
Wants to know if dragons are a mister or a missus. 
Dr. Elvis Prosser, though a noted dragonologist, 
Comes up with a plan, that is utterly ri-di-cu-lous. 
Dr. Elvis Prosser sneaks into a dragon’s cavern 
Cautiously he strikes a match to light his miner’s lantern. 
Prosser learns, alas, that they are hazardous and ravenous 
Silly Prosser, don’t you know that dragons are androgynous. 

 VOTE NOW!

 Loading ...

Did you like this matchup? Show these poets your support by sharing this post now (see buttons below).