Oddquains

The oddquain is a modern 5-line, syllabic form developed by Glenda L. Hand. It's essentially a Crapsey cinquain with 1 fewer syllable on each line: 1/3/5/7/1 syllables. This pattern of syllables prevents easy use of meter (e.g. iambic or trochaic, or even the three-syllable feet like amphibrach or dactyl) on the line level.

Notes

I try to stick to a trochaic meter, which, given the odd number of syllables, means the poem starts and ends with stressed syllables. This makes more sense to me given that the first and last lines are just one syllable each.

Poems

1. 2025-12-04

   Grasp
   Your decades
   Rigor mortis tight,
   Abandoning your present
   Days.

   ---

   Some similar wording and a vaguely similar idea to a Crapsey cinquain from the same day.

2. 2025-09-21
   Weapons/Spines

   Cops
   Make weapons
   Out of hard-but-fair
   Defenestrated lawbook
   Spines.

3. 2025-09-13

   Dark
   At sundown—
   Cloudprows breach the sky,
   Bombarding us with laughter-
   Light.

   ---

   I thought about starting this one off with “Grim” instead of “Dark”, but I wanted the poem to be an explosion of action out of passivity, a void, and “Grim” was a bit too emotive. Also, this whole poem went through so many revisions so quickly, including one Crapsey cinquain version with a different bent.

4. 2025-09-10
   Driftwood Eden

   Build
   A driftwood
   Eden here anew—
   But first pull up the selfish
   Weeds.

   ---

   Thought about adding a more explicit second half-ish to make it a butterfly oddquain, but I figured I should just trust that people who get the poem will get the poem.

5. 2025-09-05

   Rush
   And pull up
   All the tent pegs down—
   Our skies must fall or else we
   Burn.

6. 2025-08-25

   Soft
   Abandoned
   Spiderwebs hang limp,
   Museums packed with empty
   Lives.

7. 2025-08-06
   Canniballistics

   Men
   Who practice
   Canniballistics
   Load corpses into cannons
   Chewed.

8. 2025-07-13
   Sole Survivors

   Sole
   Survivors
   Gather now to slay
   The slasher-loving public
   Beasts.

9. 2025-05-23

   Game
   The world in
   Golf club politics,
   Where dunes of teeth eat courage
   Whole.

10. 2025-05-12

    Drive
    These snarled-up
    Criss-crossroads of lies
    Where angels can't remember
    Skies.

11. 2025-05-10

    No
    More engines
    Blazing on the wings,
    And in the cockpit, no more
    Plans.

12. 2025-05-10

    Doom
    Comes crawling
    Up through paper skies,
    The office-blocks now roaring
    Dead.

13. 2025-05-10

    Break
    The moonbeam
    On our anvil black
    And stamp fluorescents from its
    Hopes.

14. 2025-05-01

    Still
    And silent
    Watch the meadow deer—
    Suddenly, a symmetry.
    Ah,

    ---

    I tried to use the weird, halting structure (due to fitting even-sized feet to odd-syllabled lines) for effect here.