Word Ladder

A poem using the device of mutating a word by changing one letter at a time.  Ideally the word will retain its length and become its opposite.

By itself this device is not literary, but works very well if the mutating word is the last word in the line - it makes rhyming possible - or the first word in a line.

Source

According to Wikipedia, Lewis Carroll says that he invented the game on Christmas in 1877.

Examples

changing
clanging
clinging poetry

THE PRINCIPLE OF LEAST ANIMOSITY

Black, jackbooted and otherwise clad in white,
slack jawed: enemy of my enemy, who for a while
slank into my idiotic alliance, why braise the whole
shank when hot marrow makes the point: a whale
shan't blow the sea unless in it, surfacing, ditto shale
shalt not resist our bulimic frack water. Enemy', shalt
shale plays stage a wildcatter play of can't v. shan't?
Whalebone yoked into corset: proof. Prison shank,
whole from parts, drawing blood: proof. You slank
while our enemy's yin yang beat us both slack.
White: relation is fugitive in assessments of black.

- Ted Mathys, from Null Set

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