icad extra: chopped sonnets

It is 5:42 PM on Monday, July 22, 2019. I have finished the drawing above but I have not written the sonnet that goes with the image. I haven’t even conceived the sonnet, except for the acrostic and the vague notion that since the title is “Chopped Sonnets” there should be some disjointedness to it. So my challenge, and what I’ll devote the rest of the post to, is to write the sonnet in such a way that the image enhances it, while following the sonnet form of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter, Shakespearean rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. (May have to settle for near-rhymes since there will be different end-letters.) But if I ever calligraph the sonnet it won’t be in the image. I may try to make the calligraphy work with the image as the second panel of a diptych.

chopped sonnets

consolidating dance and thought is chess
conquistadores shifting ebbs and flows

hop, skip, and capture, give the king distress–o
hung royalty thrills groundlings ever so

our couple wants to dance the checkered plain
own conquests of dexterity and sheen

push pawnlike through the midground yet unslain
promoted on the eighth rank to a queen

perhaps they’ll then diagonally bite
pawns of the enemy, then pirhouette

en pointe across and check and bait and sleight
entangling lesser talents in a net

disdain and competition mongst the pieces
define the omnivores with exegesis

It’s now 6:32 PM, Mountain Standard Time. Not sure I’m happy with the sonnet, but am 100% sure I’m happy it is done. 🙂