Posts Tagged ‘Anatomy Of A Limerick’

Limerick Dry Run (The Evolution of a Limerick)

Thursday, November 14th, 2013

When I’m looking for limerick ideas, I sometimes visit idiom list sites, like this one. Then I’ll select an idiom that might work meter-wise and that ends with a common rhyme sound.

And so today, I challenged myself to write a limerick that contains the phrase “dry run.” Unconsciously inspired, perhaps, by the inept roll-out of Obamacare, I wrote these two lines:

A software firm held a dry run
But the coding, alas, wasn’t done…

I swiftly thought up an acceptable “B-rhyme,” but then got stuck at line 5. The best I could come up with was an ending that employed yet another idiom: “under the gun.” But I still couldn’t think of a line 5 that was even slightly clever.

And then I got an idea: create some wordplay by revising another line, adding specificity to the subject matter. Here’s the result:

Limerick Dry Run
By Madeleine Begun Kane

A software firm held a dry run,
But the arms-tracking code wasn’t done.
It failed test after test,
Till the owner confessed:
“I’m too stressed to work under the gun.”