LesleyScoble.com

I wrote The Secret Wheelchair in my newly invented Corridor syllabic poetry form.

Required pattern:
1 / 6 / 6 / 1 / 3 / 6 / 6
plus one flexible 9-syllable line per stanza

I hope it’s okay to submit my made-up form for this week’s Tanka Tuesday Syllabic Poetry Challenge No. 49.
Thank you for highlighting that January is Mental Health Month.

The Secret Wheelchair

A poem to help raise mental health awareness

If
he were an invalid
in a normal wheelchair
you’d be kind
but
in the secret wheelchair
lying unseen, buried
beneath his hair—is a tortured mind

Just
because you cannot see
what’s wrong with him, or her—
they or me
it
doesn’t mean all is well
you can’t know of what they fear to tell
in that secret wheelchair


—Lesley Scoble, January 2026

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THANK YOU
My thanks to this week’s Tanka Tuesday host, Yvette Calleiro, for her Mental Health syllabic poetry prompt.

#TankaTuesday Poetry Challenge No. 49, Mental Health, 1/27/26