Republished with permission of Midwest Poetry Review, 1997
#RhymedSatirical
Drama 101 Belief in righteousness began the… Fanaticism breeds most violence: See Beowulf remove poor Grendel’s… To conquer (from his view) malevol…
Suggest an early death deserves our envy, *Hardy wrote a book of short stories called “Life’s Little Ironies.” **Hardy was often cr...
I will not wear shorts, wing-tip s… I will continue to be grateful tha… I will not listen to any salesman… I will quit telling people how I… I will not say, “I don’t know wha…
The Skaters Nothing is less of the earth than couples skating: the woman in her white raiment clean, clean, and full of light,
The Jacaranda in Spring (Near Rhyme) What discount art inspired this ta… Eleven months a year you’re quite… Too dark and gaunt, we thought, to…
The Pathetic Fallacy Mitigated (An exercise in near-rhyme) To liken buying blue-chip stocks To squirrels hoarding nuts is bosh… As wrong as claiming dogs can blus…
Midwest Opera The local mogul, tall, horse-jawed… machine-tool king, accompanied by his grim chic wife, strolls down the aisle,
(George Meredith advised Thomas Hardy to fill his novels with bizarre and exciting people and events. Subsequently, Hardy in an early novel had a person following a person following a ...
He could not paint a world that g… For his shimmered softly. His cliffs, cathedrals, seas appe… congenial things of liquid light; and even locomotives seem
American Ethics An ancient joke tells how a kid wh… his parents out of rage or just fo… Then cons the judge by citing all… He’ll surely suffer as a lonely or…
///Channel-Surfing Segued The score now even after Jordan’s… up yours, you punk, confess before… she’d deceived you, Lance, her pre… see the Bible, frayunds, Isaiah f…
A raptor’s visage, Assyrian bas relief; yet in the eyes, the poise, a stately acquiescence; opulence carved
Higher Powers From birth to death some others mu… You see, as infant, round-faced, g… Above the crib, to serve you, need… Precluded by efficacy of sobs.
At breakfast my microwave appears to heat, electrons clearly humming; container, though, remaining cold, oatmeal cooling rapidly.
Florida, 2000 A.D. A panting tongue of a tiring natio… lapping a tawdry cornucopia poured like broken baubles down th… through the northern end of Southe…