The Renku Sessions: Cotton Clouds – Week 13

Welcome to the current renku session. I am John Stevenson and I’ll be your guide for a twenty verse, nijûin renku.

We will be using an on-line list of season words and phrases (kigo) for those verses that require a seasonal reference:  https://yths.org/season-word-list/

Here is my short list of verse 13 offerings:

from pen pals
to lovebirds at
war’s end

Richard Straw

smoke-scented
love letters
from the trenches

Orense Nicod

racing to take
wedding vows
as the Titanic sinks

Debbie Feller

falling in love
as the Earth spins faster
and faster

Lorin Ford

sexting
their anniversary
again

Anne Fox

rumor of their love
blazes through
the elder hostel

John Daleiden

he accepts me
not being good at love
verses

Sharon Ferrante

bantering
about how Orion
takes his belt off

Clysta Seney

falling in love again
as the country
falls apart

Laurie Greer

is she in a sack
or is it a rug that rolls
out before Caesar

madeleine kavanagh

Kelce
rises to the occasion
by proposing to Swift

madeleine kavanagh

she knows it’s true love
when he burns
his MAGA hat

Tracy Davidson

you include
my lingerie
in our grab-and-go bag

Margaret Anderson

linking arms
with their lovers
at the Pride rally

Nancy Brady

proposal plans
on Mount Fuji
backfire

Wendy C. Bialek

the love-struck billionaire
also signs up for a ticket
to Mars

Marion Clarke

I asked for a lot of things last time and you collectively checked all the boxes.

Here is my choice for the thirteenth verse:

is she in a sack
or is it a rug that rolls
out before Caesar

madeleine kavanagh

This is both early love (the beginning of what became a historic coupling) and ancient history. It names a person and suggests another name, linked with it. It is also a question. And I read it as gossip (ancient gossip). This may have just happened and already is subject to revision in the telling.

I also like the way it links with the baking pan sledding of the previous verse. It transforms that image to a dream, in which the downward motion is resolved in a change of scene.

So, here is what we have, so far:

Cotton Clouds (working title)

a pinto colt
canters the meadow
cotton clouds

John Stevenson

muddied boots
on the welcome mat

Jennifer Sutherland

a bounty
of tulips spilling
over the vase

Eavonka Ettinger

the comfort of song
sung together

Anne Fox

the hermit crab’s
new shell glistens
in the moonlight

Sally Biggar

he fell for the sundress
on bare shoulders

Debbie Scheving

sweet nothings
with a hint
of Bengay

Diana Ming Jeong

we tip the busker
for attempting ‘teen spirit’

Margaret Anderson

everyone dies
at the end but
we keep reading

Devin Wilson

paper cuts
not withstanding

Michael Henry Lee

the stoic grin
on the cooling face
of the gingerbread man

Laurie Greer

downhill like a rocket
on a baking pan

rob barkan

is she in a sack
or is it a rug that rolls
out before Caesar

madeleine kavanagh

This week, we will be working on the fourteenth verse. This will be two lines. It will be a love verse. It will be set in autumn, so it must contain a word or phrase from our list of autumn season words (but not the moon because that is reserved for the next verse). It will be the first in a series of three autumn verses.

Please enter a maximum of five verse-fourteen offers. The deadline for submission will be midnight, eastern US time on Monday, July 21.

Looking forward to your autumn love offers!

John

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