Here's my version of the 5 word exercise from my current muse, red_sea_rose. The challenge ? To write a poem using five assigned words. This week: Sing, Apple, Tin, Forty, Matchstick. 

MATCH GIRL

This time of night, who’s buying matches? No one

Who has the cash to burn—they’re all at home

With fires new-lit in glowing iron stoves

Fat bellies apple-red and satisfied

The cold of morning still nine hours away

When they give birth to ashes, sleep and dream.

I pass a clutch of men, their tin can stove

Of pigeon stew, too meager for them all

(Just six of them but might as well be forty)

That bubbles with the promise of a brawl

And makes my stomach sing in tomcat lust.

There are no cats here since the winter came.

This story ends in ways you’ve always known:

How each flare of a matchstick’s sulphur breath

Brings with it dreams of plenty, cruel visions

Of family, of the life that’s yet to come

And leaves behind dark heads on bright white wood--