My Smelly Telephone
My telephone is smelly.
It’s a smelly telephone.
I wish it didn’t stink but
it’s the only one I own.
I thought I bought a smartphone
that was also cellular.
It seems that’s not exactly what
they meant by “smellular.”
And so, I learned the hard way
what I didn’t know before…
They don’t sell normal cellphones
when you’re at the smellphone store.
— Kenn Nesbitt
Copyright © 2025. All Rights Reserved.
Reading Level: Grade 3
Topics: Science and Technology Poems
Poetic Techniques: Assonance, Descriptive Poems, Pun Poems, Wordplay
Word Count: 66
About This Poem
This poem started, like many of mine do, with a silly idea and a funny-sounding word. I love playing with language and seeing what happens when you twist a familiar word just a little to create something new—and a little absurd. In this case, I was thinking about phones, smells, and what might happen if you accidentally got the wrong kind of “smart” device.
A poem like this is also a great example of something called a portmanteau (pronounced “port-man-TOE”) word—that’s when two words are combined to create a brand-new one! You’ve probably heard some classic portmanteaus before, like “brunch” (from breakfast and lunch) or “smog” (from smoke and fog). In this poem, I made up the words “smellular” (from smelly and cellular) and “smellphone” (from smell and telephone). Making up silly portmanteaus is one of my favorite ways to play with language—and a great way to make people laugh!
Sometimes the silliest ideas come from just asking “What if?” And that’s exactly how this poem was born. If you like this sort of wordplay, here are a few more you might enjoy:
Worksheet
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