Glenn,
Mark,
Carl--Thank you all so much for your encouragement. I wouldn't have thought to try this form if I hadn't seen Carl's brilliant use of it on this forum. Now that I'm playing with it, I really love it. I think I have made all your edits. I'm still thinking about a better rhyme for sher 2. I don't like throwing in a (barely) slant rhyme so early, but I want to save that sher. I'll come back to that.
Glenn--Thank you for the e.e. cummings reference. I hadn't thought of it but now that you bring it up, I see the connection.
Carl--This is my second go at writing a ghazal for the prompt "write a traditional ghazal referencing another poet". This one was inspired by and references a poem by Ulalume Gonzalez de Leon called )Parentheses( in which there is a line "but the parentheses of love open backwards". See here for her whole magnificent piece:
https://exchanges.uiowa.edu/issues/w...new-article-3/