I have done it. I've written a sestina.

I don't enjoy rhythm or rhyme, as the writer has to conform to the limits of both. You can't say "photograph research" in iambic pentameter. But I'm taking a class that is forcing me to attempt confined writing. First, the sonnet (which, so far, is a fail) and now a sestina.

A sestina is poetry written that is six stanzas with six lines in each, and then the seventh stanza with only three lines. The first stanza can be numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. The last word in each line needs to be repeated in every stanza. So if the ending words are 1. thesis 2. bird 3. that 4. study 5. write 6. fridge, the second stanza has to end with the words in this order: 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3. However, the third stanza repeats this method to the second stanza: 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5. This continues. The seventh stanza uses these words twice in each line: Line 1: 6 and 5, Line 2: 2 and 4, and Line 3: 3 and 1.

Here is my example:


Impending Divorce

The wasp climbs the glass. But glass
doesn't look like glass to a wasp. And wasps
hate getting confused with bees. Wasps would never indulge
so much to morph to that fat split between abdomen
and thorax. The fuzzy, playful honeybee – cute, harmless, dead
with one sting. The wasp is late

for a meeting. Opened and closed and – too late –
the wasp was in, behind the glass
he used to climb from the other side. I'll be dead
before morning, thinks the wasp,
from disgust at this blob of giant abdomen
sitting on the couch right there. To indulge

to that point, is to indulge
beyond worth. The wasp, as of late,
had spent his evenings admiring his curve of abdomen
into tiny waist, smiling. He peers into the glass
for his reflection: envy of all the wasps –
especially sterile females, starved dead

before looking anything like him. Dead
and stupid, thinks the wasp. They may as well indulge
in what they like, but wasps
will be wasps. It's late, too late
for the wasp to make the meeting. He stares at tiny glass
bubbles beneath his reflection. He raises his abdomen,

click clicking his stinger against bubbles beneath. My abdomen
is long, and thin, thinks the wasp. When I am dead
they will make a statue of me, out of glass,
and even those in trash cans will not indulge
to catch a glimpse of me. Too long and late
the wasp had stared and stood. With a crunch the wasp's

body burst against the glass. The wasp's
body split to atoms. His abdomen
now thorax and head mashed with legs, the late
wasp was no longer a wasp but a dead
bunch of black squished by the blob of indulge
formerly on the couch. The blob looked at the glass,

annoyed at the not-wasp's black dead
spot erring the glass. Thank God the bee is dead, it thought. Now, to indulge
in a late afternoon snack to quench my abdomen.