Fibonacci

“It’s cold. A man’s got to do something to keep warm!” – Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

I’m often looking for new ways to keep my writing muscles warm and limber. Sometimes I get bogged down in a work-in-progress and can’t see much light at the end of the tunnel. Or I get antsy waiting to hear back from an editor in possession of my latest short story. So, just to keep my creative energy flowing, I have been submitting flashes of inspiration to micro-fiction sites like Six Sentences, 365 Tomorrows, and Paragraph Planet.

AlienSkin Magazine is closed to fiction submissions but open to a unique genre: “Fibonacci Poetry” based on the Fibonacci sequence (0,1,1,2,3,5,8…discovered in nature by a 12th century mathematician) where each line’s syllable count is the sum of the two lines prior. AlienSkin accepts Fibonacci poems of exactly 20 syllables.

I’ve never been into writing poetry, but I thought I’d give this Fibonacci thing a shot. Below are 3 of the 6 submissions I sent to AlienSkin, along with the story behind each one:

“Hell Hath No Fury” (A gang of seedy gents discover their female victim is not exactly human.)

Fangs

In

Her mouth

Eat their way

Out of his stunned face

And move on to devour his pals

“Proletariat” (Reverse Battlefield Earth; the humans have subjugated their alien conquerors.)

They

Break

Their backs

While we watch,

Knowing that they are

Less than anything humanoid

“Casanova” (This was just an excuse to use Hermann as a character again.)

Zits

And

Sweaty

Yellow pits

Make poor Hermann’s chance

Of finding an Earthling wife slim

You’ll find my other 3 Fibonacci poems published in AlienSkin’s current June/July issue. (They’re on the left margin of each page, along with submissions by other contributors.) I look forward to your brutal critiques!