ROUND ONE: 2-gesture vs. 15-meretricious

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Things to Consider in Making a Choice:

• How well the poem incorporates the authlete’s assigned word.
• Technical elements: meter, rhyme, form, shape, and other poetic standards.
• Creativity: wordplay, imagery, unusual approach, etc.
• Subtle elements that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
• Your overall response: emotional reaction such as admiration, tears, laughter, terror, or some indefinable feeling.

Here are the poems:

2-gesture
Farm Friendly
By Damon Dean

I tell my chicken to stop pickin’ feathers from his friends,
because it isn’t nice to bare fine fowls to breezy winds.

I tell my goat he should not bloat, for pride is a great sin;
instead to bleat, a way more sweet to speak with his goat kin.

I tell my pig so round and big to grunt a bit more quietly,
and not to flop his tasty slop, to eat somewhat politely.

I tell my kitten not to spit—a gesture nasty, crude;
but he tells me, “I spit because the mice are mean and rude.”

vs.

15-meretricious
The Meretricious Red Delicious
By J. J. Close

The suspicious, meretricious, inauspicious, Red Delicious,
Looked absolutely edible and even quite nutritious.
You’d think that you could pick it up and have yourself a bite,
But don’t let it deceive you, ‘cause there’s something just not right.
You see, my friend, its inner parts have something rather wrong,
Yes, deep inside, there live some things that really don’t belong.
Two worker ants, three apple flies, will truly make you squirm,
But not as much as Meretrick, the apple eating worm!

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