In an ongoing series, the editors, former contributors, and readers of Eclectica have been invited to write a poem containing four pre-chosen words. The words for this issue are chameleon, liquid, cupboard, and gutter.

If you would like to participate in the next special poetry assignment, the new words are yarn, cushion, attic, and cocoon.

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(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole poem)

Three Word Poems
 
In dream I watch you walking between façade
and gutter to your cheap hotel, considering
the payoff for so many phrases
 
Taylor Graham

 

Chameleon
 
On a shelf, selves stacked like volumes,
pages missing.
 
Ray Templeton

 

Field Trip Through the Conservatory of Flowers, San Francisco
 
I half expect stone age tribesmen
to stare at us between the fronds.
 
Bob Bradshaw

 

Chameleon Moon
 
At night, smoke drifted over the roofs, seeped
into windows and dreams with news of bombed
cities, midnight arsonists, flames that licked slyly
 
Antonia Clark

 

When We Learned To Be Chameleons
 
we learned to creep very slowly in
conversation, to keep the cupboards closed tightly
when company was over
 
Sarah Yost

 

The House on Gypsy Ridge
 
The house held together
with toothpaste spit, the mud from our boots,
the spindly legs of silverfish.
 
Brent Fisk

 

On Etymology
 
But other words hide their pasts,
keep old selves locked in cupboards
 
Jennifer Finstrom