Lost
The quick pick ticket
Selected lotto numbers and
Waited for drawing
Ticket
Won.
$ $ $ $ $ $
Author's notes: Had fun writing my second reverse poem. Winning and losing, it's a gambler's risk.
The Prompt
Write a poem that takes on a different meaning when you read the lines from bottom to top.
Your task is to create a reverse poem—an enchanting composition that unfolds with one meaning when reading the lines from top to bottom, and an entirely different meaning when reading the lines in reverse from bottom to top. Carefully choose words to construct lines that reveal hidden depths and unexpected twists in both directions. Your poem does not need to start and end with repeated lines.
This challenge invites you to explore the creative boundaries of expression, playing with the reader's expectations and delivering a unique linguistic experience. Craft a poem that seamlessly transitions between two distinct perspectives, offering a literary dance where the verses gracefully pivot to convey contrasting meanings. This dual-layered exploration in form can be tricky, but when it works, it's magical.
Mahalo!
About the Creator
Babs Iverson
Barbara J Iversen, also known as Babs Iverson, lives in Texas and loves her grandkids to the moon and back. After writing one story, she found that writing has many benefits especially during a pandemic and a Texas-size Arctic Blast.
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More stories from Babs Iverson and writers in Poets and other communities.
At the Sheltering Doors
The doors, they always scrambled for the doors first. When they arrive and always by night it was a race to desperately bar the creatures entry to the house in the slow crawl of numb feet that the dream would impose upon him. He never seemed fast enough and the creatures uninhibited by the same constraints always made the doors first. The houses in his dream-scapes vary night to night - Some are mansions, others shacks and some are distorted contortions of his childhood home which burned down when he was ten. But the doors are always the same – frail, loose hinged and never could be fully shut. The creatures too vary – twisted and corrupted forms of animals and people familiar to him: family dogs preternaturally swollen to twice their size with rotting coats of mange and slicked damp with dark liquids of decay. The people too were bloated vestiges of ones vaguely familiar to him but whose names escape him. Their eyes gorged wide with dark blood which streaked their mottled faces in crusted trails like lost rivers which hung from their chins swinging in ropy columns beneath paling yellowed teeth. To let them break through would mean death. This he knew with grave certainty. At the door was desperation and panic as their stench emanated forth, sickly and pungent like vomit and mold and ending in a gruesome exhalation like cancer, the stench sticky and clinging invading his nostrils and lungs never to be expunged. Then in the sudden waking he never knew if he repelled them or not.
By Kevin Rolly3 days ago in Horror
Comments (18)
Your content and execution: 5 Stars!!! Great job, Babs!
A great poem!!
Oh, clever one, Babs!!
Nicely done Babs! And works wonderfully both ways!
Great inverse Babs!😊💕
What a great topic for this form!
This is really well done, Babs 💜
I love how it gives two very distinct meanings when read forwards and in reverse! Well done!
Love this as it’s all too relatable Babs 😊
Brilliant!!! Topsy-turvy, just like gambling, too!
I loved the idea for this piece. It’s very relatable and a fun to read! Nice work, Babs! ❤️
Ouuu, very nicely done, Babs. 💓💓
Nicely done, Babs.
Nice! Keep playing and writing!
Good luck in the challenge Babs! I still haven't finished one of these!
Nice take on the challenge
nice
Very clever. Well done, my friend.