The Bagel Bird, by all accounts,
is said to lunch on large amounts
of sticks and twigs and sand and stones
and plastic parts from broken phones.
He’ll nibble bits of copper wires
and rubber from discarded tires.
He’ll chomp on tops of cuckoo clocks
and swallow shorts and stinky socks.
He’ll chew your shoes and eat your hat.
He’ll bite your books and baseball bat.
He’ll stuff his lips with poker chips
and snack on sails from sailing ships
and gobble poles and bowling balls
and pick at bricks from fallen walls
and graze on grass and feed on weeds
and dine on twine and strings of beads.
But bagels… whether white or wheat,
or salted, savory, or sweet,
or topped with lox or luncheon meat,
are something he will never eat.
At least that’s what I’ve always heard
about the crazy Bagel Bird.
But I don’t mind because, you see,
that leaves more bagels just for me.
My mother makes prickly pear pastries.
My mother makes prickly pear pies.
She’s known for her prickly pear donuts
and flavorful prickly pear fries.
She sometimes makes prickly pear muffins
or prickly pear cookies and cakes.
She likes making prickly pear pizzas
and prickly pear smoothies and shakes.
I’ll bet she could write a whole cookbook
with all kinds of prickly pear food.
I’m sure you’d have no trouble guessing
what every last page would include.
I might even like her concoctions,
and wouldn’t just snicker and scoff,
if once in a while she’d remember
to take all the prickly parts off.
If you ever meet an elephant who wants to join your band,
it’s the sort of situation that will never go as planned,
so you’d better tell him “No” and try to make him understand,
before he starts to play.
First he’ll stumble and go crashing.
Then your stuff will take a bashing.
He’ll be dancing as he’s smashing.
He’ll act like this all day.
Then you’ll never make him leave because he’s happy as a clam
and it doesn’t make a difference if you yell at him to scram
when the only thing he wants to do is jump around and jam
and never go away.
He’ll be walloping and whacking.
Then you’ll need financial backing.
So you’d better send him packing
before he starts to play.
When Daniel went dancing that night at the fair
he leapt on the stage with his arms in the air.
He ran back and forth at a neck-breaking pace,
then back-flipped and cartwheeled all over the place.
He jumped like a jumping bean, bounced like a ball,
careened off the ceiling, and ran down the wall.
He flew through the room with an ear-splitting scream
till, shaking and sobbing, he ran out of steam.
The witnesses watching could see at a glance
that Dan had invented some new kind of dance.
They cheered and applauded. They gave him First Prize.
They cried, “You’re a genius in all of our eyes!”
So now, just like Daniel, from Finland to France
they sit on a cactus to start every dance.
These are not the only list poems, though. Many children’s poets have written fun list poems, and you can even write your own. This lesson will show you how.
The structure of a list poem
List poems usually have a list in the middle, plus a few lines at the beginning and a few lines at the end. You can think of the beginning and end of a list poem like the top and bottom slices of bread in a sandwich. The list is like the meat or peanut butter or whatever else is between the bread. Picture it like this:
Beginning
List
List
List
List
Ending
List poems often rhyme, and they are usually funny. If you look at poems like Shel Silverstein’s “Sick” or Jack Prelutsky’s “Bleezer’s Ice Cream” you will notice that the lists also include very unusual items. Putting strange, unexpected, or exaggerated things on your list is a good way to make your poem funny.
Getting started
Here are two easy ways to start writing a list poem:
Start with someone else’s beginning and end, but make your own list in the middle.
Start by writing a list of your own, and then write your own beginning and end to go with the list.
You can decide for yourself whether it will be easier to write your own list poem from scratch, or to use someone else’s poem as a starting point.
Starting with someone else’s poem
It’s okay to use someone else’s list poem as the starting point for your own poem. (Just be sure to say your creation was “Based on…” the poem you used.) For example, here is my poem “That Explains It!”:
That Explains It!
I went to the doctor. He x-rayed my head.
He stared for a moment and here’s what he said.
“It looks like you’ve got a banana in there,
an apple, an orange, a peach, and a pear.
I also see something that looks like a shoe, a plate of spaghetti, some fake doggy doo, an airplane, an arrow, a barrel, a chair, a salmon, a camera, some old underwear, a penny, a pickle, a pencil, a pen, a hairy canary, a hammer, a hen, a whistle, a thistle, a missile, a duck, an icicle, bicycle, tricycle, truck.
with all of the junk that you have in your head
it’s kind of amazing you got out of bed.
The good news, at least, is you shouldn’t feel pain.
From what I can see here you don’t have a brain.”
Notice that this poem begins with the four lines that set up the story, and ends with four lines that make it even funnier. You can use the same beginning and end, if you like, while putting your own list in the middle.
For example, what would the doctor find in your head? Since this list has rhymes at the end of each line, you can start with a few rhymes, like this:
house
mouse
cat
hat
Once you’ve got a few rhymes, you can add as many items as you want, like this:
“I also see something that looks like a house,
a monkey, a meerkat, a mink, and a mouse,
a laptop computer, a boat, and a cat,
an old pair of glasses, a coat, and a hat,
Of course, you don’t have to use my poem; you can use any list poem you like to create your own new list poem, or you can even create one from scratch.
Starting with your own list
If you prefer to write your own list poem from scratch, one easy way is to figure out what you’re going to make a list of. For example, you could make a grocery list, a list of things in your backpack, a list of your favorite sweets, a list of things you want for Christmas, and so on.
Let’s try it with a list of sweets. First let’s try to think of candies and sweets that rhyme.
Now that you’ve got some rhymes, put them into a list, adding a few more items to make the lines each about the same length:
A half a dozen Nestle’s Crunch.
A gallon of Hawaiian Punch.
Some Cracker Jacks. A box of Dots.
Some Pop Rocks and a jar of Zotz.
Reese’s Pieces. Tootsie Pops.
Hershey Kisses. Lemon drops.
Candy Corn, Milk Duds, and Whoppers.
Skittles, Snickers, and Gobstoppers.
Once your rhyming list is done, give it a beginning, an end, and a title and you’re all done.
My Shopping List
My mother said, “Go buy some bread,”
but this is what I got instead.
A half a dozen Nestle’s Crunch.
A gallon of Hawaiian Punch.
Some Cracker Jacks. A box of Dots.
Some Pop Rocks and a jar of Zotz.
Reese’s Pieces. Tootsie Pops.
Hershey Kisses. Lemon drops.
Candy Corn, Milk Duds, and Whoppers.
Skittles, Snickers, and Gobstoppers. When mother needs things from the store
She never sends me anymore.
And that’s all there is to it. Now it’s your turn. Make a list of animals, friends, monsters, games, foods, places you’d like to go on vacation, or anything else you like, and see if you can turn it into a funny list poem of your own!
Kenn Nesbitt, former U.S. Children's Poet Laureate, is celebrated for blending humor and heart in his poetry for children. Known for books such as "My Cat Knows Karate" and "Revenge of the Lunch Ladies," he captivates young readers globally.
While poking around on YouTube this morning, I came across three new videos that readers had made of my poems. What struck me as most interested about these three videos is how different they all are from one another. I am always impressed at the creativity kids put into creating videos. Watch these and you’ll see what I mean.
This first one, using my poem Today I Wrote this Poem (from My Hippo Has the Hiccups), displays the poem one line at a time, while also showing lines from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to demonstrate the particular poetic technique mentioned in my poem.
The second video is a young girl rapping my poem Beavers in the Bathroom from my book The Tighty-Whitey Spider. She has apparently practiced quite a bit with this poem, as she recites it quickly and with no mistakes.
The final poem is an animation of the poem Gerbil, Gerbil, On the Run, also from The Tighty-Whitey Spider. I was so impressed with this animation. I’d love to find out how it was created because it has such fun text animation effects.
There are so many different ways to create videos from poems. If you happen to create a video of one of my poems, please drop me a line and let me know about it. I would love to see what you have done.
The Bagel Bird
My Mother Makes Prickly Pear Pastries
I Raised My Hand in Class
Auntie Gravity
If You Ever Meet an Elephant
When Daniel Went Dancing
Electronic Christmas