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 well, dissolve, present, and bed.

If you would like to participate in the next special poetry assignment, the new words are arm, patch, center, strike.

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

I Don't Remember
 
I don't remember this blinding whiteness
the well familiar turned otherworldly
 

Alina Hansen
 

As One
 
I will plant them as closely
as we were once.
 

Steven Deutsch
 

A Well
 
I hold your hand and wonder what this room
will be like without you present.
 

Karen Shepherd
 

Temozolomide
 
Down the dark
well of my stomach, it would
dissolve, releasing prayer
 

Cameron Morse
 

EMT: Ambulance Bed in Winter (With Each Line's Final Word from Robert Louis Stevenson's "Bed in Summer")
 
The fastest way
to die is smoking, especially if the mattress catches fire
 

Ron Riekki
 

Taking Care of Dad, After Mom
 
This wasn't the plan,
he will tell you, over and over
 

Kathleen Latham
 

there's always a goodbye
 
Faraway, but not foreign
I was all too familiar with sporadic leaking.
 

Tracie Marie
 

Strange Waters
 
Hungry tongues
track a thirsty squall,
heat settles upon well-oiled skin.
 

Barbara De Franceschi
 

once we were a house on fire on salt spring island
 
watching a fire isn't a team sport, even though we cluster like the Pleiades
most of us mourn, enough tears to fill a well, for the fried family dog
 

Mala Rai
 

I Don't Look Good in Orange, Mother
 
My sister prays to gods that I don't know
          But I don't know any, so
 

Jay Mendell
 

Petra Lay Awake All Night
 
 quiet
path before her
threshold behind her
 

Floyd Cheung
 

3 a.m. in the Orthodontist's Diner
 
I dream in technicolor, chubby shapes unfolding vividly
I see lupine succulents atop the window sill
 

Meghana Lily Shenoy
 

The Present Dissolves on the Bed at the Bottom of a Well
 
In the cotton candy of dreams
where the present lives
like a flower surrounded by bees
 

José Enrique Medina
 

Dreamscape
 
The harder I clutch
at the chimera,
the faster it fades
 

Lisa McMonagle