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The Empress on this week’s Style Invitational micro-drone contest and advice-poem results
By Pat MyersJune 11, 2015
Jeff Brechlin used to enter The Style Invitational every single week, even when he didn’t have much of an affinity for that week’s contest — and he has the 382 blots of ink to prove it, most famously Ye Olde Hokey Pokey Sonnet , which he sometimes even gets credit for (but usually not ). But lately Jeff, who moved back to his native Minnesota after a few years in the D.C. suburbs, has dropped us a line only sporadically.

But he’d recently read an article about the CICADA mini-drones shown off to the public at a recent Defense Department open house, and was inspired to suggest the contest that became Week 1128 , offering a deluge of ideas for how someone (especially an immature someone) might use them.

I’ll let Jeff expand on his own ideas and enter the contest himself (suggesters are always welcome to do so), but what I think will be funniest — this is, remember, our goal — are colorful scenarios, not just the jotting of a vague idea. That’s why I gave a 75-word limit for an entry, a large one for the Invite. It certainly may be shorter, and I’ll most likely intersperse “long” and pithy entries.

Masticating over the advice poems of Week 1124
Indeed, I got 21 poems about chewing with one’s mouth open that included some form of “masticate.” And while perhaps that’s a word no one should encounter more than once in a sitting, I gave ink to three of them anyway, including an uncharacteristically juvenile contribution from the World Court muckamuck Hugh Thirlway.


It’s no surprise that many of the entries took a common tack; that was inevitable since the Loserbards could use one of only five themes of advice, and their poems couldn’t run longer than eight lines. But duplication of ideas isn’t a problem — on my side — for a contest like Week 1124 , because I can simply choose my favorite poem among the variations; they’re distinctive enough not to cancel one another out, as opposed to half a dozen of the same horse name or neologism definition.

On the other hand, lots of inkworthy poems among the 600 or so entries were too similar to more fortunate entries to get ink among the 16 poems that will appear in the print Invite or the 11 others added to the online version .

The main reason I didn’t ask for advice poems on any topic at all was that this way, I can run the contest again next year (or earlier). Suggestions welcome for new topics! (Write me at losers@washpost.com, with something in your subject line to tip me off.)


The entry pool included verses in a Poetry 101’s worth of genres, tailored to the eight-line limit. There were, among others, limericks, haiku, double dactyls, cinquains, truncated sonnets (sonnetinas?) and a short version of a rondeau by Marcus Bales, who earns his FirStink for his first ink but is a prolific poet in various genres, appearing in journals and sharing poems frequently (daily?) on Facebook.

Speaking of prolific poets: Yet again the Inkin’ Memorial goes to newly garlanded Loser of the Year Frank Osen, who found all too much inspiration about airplane seats on his flight back to Pasadena after visiting here for the Losers’ Flushies extravaganza (well, maybe it was just a regular vaganza).

Jon Gearhart is better known in the Loser Community for his savant-like facility with anagrams — every time someone joins the Style Invitational Devotees , various Devs greet the new member by anagramming the person’s name ... and then Jon shows up with a little paragraph containg half a dozen more permutations. But Jon has gotten ink with song parodies, along with a variety of other contests, so I think it’s time to dub him a Real True Loserbard with his twist on the meaning of “parking brake” (as well as “accident’).


Nan Reiner, as usual, inked up the joint with four poems, hitting the 250-blot milestone (including 34 inks “above the fold”), and Mike Gips is also no stranger to the Losers’ Circle, with 21 wins or runners-up among 194 inks.

The warning to the passenger in front of you not to recline your airplane seat drew some pretty nasty threats-in-verse; while Beverley Sharp merely promised to slap the recliner’s face, several other Losers warned of nose-breaking, strangulation, skull-bashing, garroting and beheading. Honestly, people. No wonder they serve wine on every flight. (I won’t identify or quote their authors, but they’re free to post their “noinks” on the Devotees page along with everyone else.)

If Ogden Nash had had no propriety ...
He might have coined a “Natchez” limerick like the following one by Brendan Beary, re “Close Cover Before Striking,” along Nash’s own famous one :
A naturist nympho from Natchez,
Who’d always been careless with matchez –
Not closing the covers –
Now sickens her lovers
With burn marks around where her snatchez.

That’s our Scarlet Letter winner this week, for sure.

Next Losers With Forks sighting: Old Town Alexandria, June 28
I should be able to make it to Chadwicks, right near the river, at noon. If the weather is nice, maybe some of us can walk around Old Town before or after. RSVP here .