What we did on our summer vacations: one-line poems

Line at the Restroom

They canoe across the lake to take a leak.

*

Seasick

He lies flat on the pitching deck among the humpbacks.

*

Unemployed Railfan

An appreciative grunt for the SD40-2s hauling Chinese shipping containers up the mountain.

*

State Forest

We drive through a small rainstorm that seems lost, too.

*

Outhouse Race

The occupant’s role is to sit still & look urgent.

*

In the Heel of Italy

Too hot to sleep, they call a friend in the U.S. & listen to him drink a cold beer.

43 Replies to “What we did on our summer vacations: one-line poems”

  1. You always give these such breadth. It’s as if you set an alarm and compose each one-line poem an hour or two or three after the last previous one. So spacious, taken together.

    My favorite is “Seasick.” It’s almost Eliot (whom I love).

    My second favorites: “Line at the Restroom.” I love saying, “the lake to take a leak.” (And lovely iambic meter, all the way through!) “State Forest” ties for second.

    1. Thanks for the generous evaluations, Peter. “Seasick” was the first one I wrote, posted to Identica and Twitter on Friday as a three-line haiku. I think the challenge with this sort of poem is to keep the conception as simple as possible. “Unemployed Railfan” for example tries to say too much, I think, and ends up feeling labored. I must’ve played with alternate wordings there for half an hour or more. “State Forest,” by contrast, came out fully formed after just a couple minutes’ thought.

  2. I love ‘State Forest’.

    I’ll have a go:

    The Forever Beach

    We lay on all the white sand, pinned flat like starfish between two vanishing points.

  3. BAGUIO SUMMER ON MY MIND

    Skating, sailing at Burnham Park, I stole my first kiss, and carved her name on a pine tree’s lustrous bark.

    SUMMER SUNDOWNS

    Now we watch summer sunsets on porches while we play our waiting game, wondering if her name is still among the branches.

  4. Hotel California

    Driving out into the unknown along an unpaved, dusty, desert highway cursing those who sent us and returning along that same road mocking those that didn’t follow.

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