A Carousel of Flavors

Anyone hungry?

To my delight, Crayola often uses food names to label their crayons. Not only do the word names themselves inspire, taking me to new places, but....

...all my senses come alive.

Take a color name like Cotton Candy :)

It takes me right to the carnival. I can almost hear the merry-go-round music.

Can't you smell it?

Feel its stickiness between your fingers?

Taste its sweetness?

Words can do that!

If you recall, a while ago I wrote a poem about the Crayola color Macaroni and Cheese (read it here).

This week I chose three new foods to take a bite out of and see what I could come up with.

• Asparagus

• Cotton Candy

• Mango Tango

Asparagus

I have been trying not to focus on the first idea for a poem that comes to mind, but instead to think of other perspectives to make the poem more interesting and surprising.

I have also been paying attention to the closing lines of my poems and am trying to pack a punch, giving the reader an unexpected moment.

I watched several videos about how asparagus grows. Did you know that white asparagus never sees the light of day, growing buried beneath mounds of soil until it is dug out!

Incredible. Somehow I feel sorry for it to never have felt the sun.

Check out the harvesting process in this video. Back-breaking work for sure. This poem dips on the dark side a bit, warning the young stalk what may be in store. The last line popped out and even surprised me. Curious to see what y'all think about this one. Its so different from my others.

Cotton Candy

Immediately sticky fingers, and melting sweetness came to mind with this color. When I think about all the sugar I ate as a child... downing powdery Pixie Stixs, gnawing on X-large Sweet Tarts, endlessly licking oversized lollipops and chocolate. Of course... lots of chocolate! It's a wonder I have any teeth left! Not sure of this form. Can you help me out? Can Acrostic poems have the letters forming the word run down the middle?

Mango Tango

With the word Tango in this Crayola color, I HAD to do something with the tango beat. I thought of an old classic tango song, "Hernando's Hideaway," and had such fun listening to this rendition by Ella Fitzgerald. I studied the lyrics and used them for inspiration. Grab a friend, your castenets and have fun dancing! Then sing my poem to the melody! What fun.

Please stop by Mary Lee's Blog Another Year of Reading where she is hosting this week's round up with a poetry picnic. And everything looks yummy! Click on each link at the bottom of her post and enjoy a delicious bag of poem chips!

See you next week!