I wasn’t going to do an April writing challenge. I had many reasons not to commit to more daily writing. Don’t we all? And truly, the daily poem challenge last year was HARD. I write an occasional poemish thing when I’m slicing, but I don’t think of myself as someone who writes poetry. Another good reason not to tackle a daily poetry writing challenge!
But then the very first thing I saw this morning when I got online was Christie’s Paint Chip Poem. And all my writing antennae tingled. I tried to be firm with myself. But… PAINT CHIPS. I love paint chips. And before I knew it, I was ordering a set of haikubes and metaphor dice and making a plan to raid Ace Hardware for all the paint chips. (Also, there is an actual Paint Chip Poetry Game!)
As a serious person who struggles with play AND with poetry, this won’t necessarily be an easy month of writing. But I think there will be daily wonder and surprise as well as plenty of silly and weird, at least the way I will do it. Plus, lots and lots of paint chips!
The idea for a list poem of possible cat nicknames came to me as I was collecting paint chips and marveling over the names (and also calling across the store for my husband to guess what color “Au Contraire” was). I knew I didn’t want to add any of my own words to this first poem; mostly I just wanted to celebrate the weird wonder of these paint chip names. Even the title of my poem is a paint chip color.
My own cats have many nicknames, and a couple of the cleverer ones respond as quickly to their nicknames as to their real names. Well, inasmuch as they respond at all. They are cats after all.
Tabby Cat
love junkie
old soul
cat woman
cuddle bug
pretty rascal
navy bean
frisky whiskers
brown hen
fickle pickle
thyme flower
lady ophelia
friendly frog
puka shell
the dirigible plum 
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