April 10 Poetry Prompt: Summarize

What is one of your favorite stories or novels?

Take one of your favorites and turn a summary of that piece into a poem, preferably with a tongue-in-cheek tone.

Before you go, read the wonderful poem below. It is a great example of this prompt; it uses a well-known story, has the perfect tone, speeds up and slows down for maximum effect, uses rhyme to enhance the tone, and has a killer (literally and metaphorically) last line.

Enjoy it, get inspired, and write your own!

The Fall of the House of Usher

by Reed Whittemore

It was a big boxy wreck of a house

Owned by a classmate of mine named Rod Usher,

Who lived in the thing with his twin sister.

He was a louse and she was a souse.

While I was visiting them one wet summer, she died.

We buried her,

Or rather we stuck her in a back room for a bit, meaning to bury her

When the graveyard dried.

But the weather got wetter.

One night we were both waked by a twister,

Plus a screeching and howling outside that turned out to be sister

Up and dying again, making it hard for Rod to forget her.

He didn’t. He and she died in a heap, and I left quick,

Which was lucky since the house fell in right after,

Like a ton of brick.