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My friends and I occasionally engage in a form of madness known as Penkwe. The name “penkwe” is the reconstructed proto-Indo-European root word meaning “five.” This name refers to the extreme fiveness of the practice, in ways that will become apparent below.

I cannot tell you where this…let’s call it a “game”…comes from. It came to me from a dear friend of a dear friend, but if you can enlighten as to the origin or history of this particular form, please let me know.

But I can tell you what it is, at least as we play it. In the game of Penkwe, five people write five things each, using each time a given list of five words. The written pieces can be any piece of creative writing, either poetry or prose. Each can be a novella, a sonnet, a limerick, a haiku (if you happened to get five rather short words, a recipie, a catalog entry, a travel brochure, a short story, a eulogy, or indeed any of 308,358,830 other genres and forms.

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Boo: Put out your hands like this.
Daddy: Like this?
Boo: Yes. Now play this.
Boo: [chanting and slapping hands semi-rhythmically]
Lemonade.
Crunchy ice.
Beat it once.
Beat it twice.
Turn around.
Touch the ground.
Kick your boyfriend out of town.

[a pause as she stares at me intently]

I win. Now let’s play cards.