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 celery, cistern, target, agate. Below are the selected results.

If you would like to participate in the next special poetry assignment, the new words are delve, audible, demand, undone.

---

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

 

Engineering
 
He's only safe at night, when mother
draws him up with rope
 
Greta Bolger

 

Two Word Poems
 
Old sailors should know better
than trying to impress a girl with talk of plates of gold,
strings of pearls and agate brooches.
 
Ray Templeton

 

June, sweet peas climbing the wires
 
I am the youngest brother who plays
with metal cars beneath the yews,
cries over broken blue eggs on the walk.
 
Brent Fisk

 

Lottie
 
She had a quick hand, kept
a willow switch by the door
 
Antonia Clark

 

In Hospital
 
Cistern of the Fates, where they serve
breakfast of lab-results, eggs
scrambled with doubt.
 
Taylor Graham

 

Two Word Poems
 
I stayed behind in an alien landscape,
a few agates strewn among dusty stones.
 
Bob Bradshaw

 

Three Word Poems
 
We were all targets then, even without knowing
what was bearing down on us.
 
Jayne Pupek

 

Cistern
 
Interior accumulation,
memory-cistern, if only I could
hold you high, like a lamp.
 
Ellen Kombiyil

 

Woman Before an Aquarium
 
They know something, these fish,
some secret she has yet to devise
 
Jennifer Finstrom