Being a true & faithful account of the birth of the form,
compiled from the testimony of witnesses of diminishing sobriety

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History records, in the loose way these things get recorded, that a challenger once stepped to El Colonel Ernesto in writing, charging that his stories ran always too short. The Colonel downed his whiskey — which the annals mark as the challenger’s first mistake; never challenge the boss once on fire. Mr Hemingway fixed the punk straight in the eye, or a shade off it, the accounts differing by roughly four whiskys, and pronounced: “Luckily enough for you, your shrimp, it ain’t about length”.

The bar, the chronicle insists, broke into wild applause, and two ladies threw their bras at him (this detail still awaits proper fact-checking). The punk, feeling now the heat of the Dragon, attempted what scholars agree was history’s first uno reverse: “Well then, since you’re so sure, give the shortest story you can then, you drunk.”

Mistake the second, and let the record show it: Ernest was not a drunk. He was a top-tier professional alcoholic. He bade the shrimp pick a number between one and ten. The challenger spat out: six.

The Colonel drew the last drop of whiskey from his glass, cleared his throat, and spoke the six words now carved above the door of every honest bar:

For sale:
baby shoes,
never worn.

The bar erupted in ecstasy, one girl orgasmed right there on the spot, and the art of the Six Word Poem was born.

Source: mostly stories, and a vague Wikipedia entry we’d rather not reference. The scholarship, like the Colonel, remains unsteady but standing.