In this week’s Invitational contest, Week 92:
Write a witty haiku about anything in the news right now, as in the examples in the Oct. 3, 2024, Invitational at GeneWeingarten.substack.com or directly here.
Listen up, pedants! We’re defining a haiku as any three-line poem with five syllables in Lines 1 and 3, seven syllables in Line 2. It can have a rhyme. It can be funny (uh, we like funny). It doesn’t have to concern nature etc. etc, etc. etc. You may add a title, and if it’s referring to a specific news item, we could link to it in the title, if you’ll include the URL.
HOW TO FORMAT YOUR ENTRIES:
While of course we’ll run each inking haiku as three lines, please submit each haiku in one long line, separated by slashes. So don't push Enter anywhere in the middle of the entry, including the title. Like this one by the late Mae Scanlan:
Springtime in D.C.!/ Two things ruin outdoor fun: / Mosquitoes and Nats.
Include as many as 25 entries in the area below where it says "Your answer." It's best to copy them in from another document so you'll have them if your computer suddenly dies or something, or if you click to submit the form and something goes wonky.
Note: Your auto-reply confirmation might be missing formatting, with everything squished into one big blob of text, but it seems that it's nothing to worry about; the entries have been coming out fine on this end.
If you don't get a confirmation within a few minutes that you've sent your entry -- you've searched your email filters (e.g., Updates or Promotions in Gmail; and good ol' Spam) and there's nothing -- don't just send it over and over! Feel free to contact the Empress at myerspat@gmail.com and she can check if it got through (put something in the subject line that refers to The Invitational). She might not get back to you immediately but promises that you won't miss the deadline.