(1994)
Republished by permission from "Lyric," Vol. 74, No. 3
descriptive humorous quatrain
Poetry Editors To Poets Don’t send us dull pentameters; That stuff’s for Keats and other… Submit no rhyme, but heaven knows We hate a poem that sounds like pr…
Savage Customs Dakota Indians placed a seed insi… The mouths of those they buried, a… A small but sturdy seedling gratif… The tribe, new life ascending from…
“Saint Chris’s statue on my dash Will surely keep me safe,” he said… But then one day he struck a pole And hit the dashboard with his hea… Oh, woe! Six-inch Saint Christop…
Constructing a Cathedral: St. Etienne, France, 1350 A.D. Arms and legs a jumble of moving s… the workers swarm like flies aroun… hardly heeding screams of those wh…
Kinkade Faces Reality* To coda played by lonely whippoorw… A tiny cottage dons its dusk-dark… And snuggles into undulating hills… Its chimney twisting just a curl o…
Leda Lays an Egg One morning Leda, sitting on the… Saw Zeus appear transmogrified to… She heard too late the honks and w… And so with godly force he conquer…
Kings once favored beheadings; and when it was their turn, so did angry peasants America chose a different tableau: Black hoods, elaborate nooses
One day when Richard’s brother, R… Had heard enough of “such a terrib… He chucked his poise and turned wi… the gleeful mourners gathered on t… And said, “Your tears, my friends…
The Rest Home Bus Arrives at th… I love these ladies. No, I’m not a new kind of pervert… I love them because they persevere… because they have guts.
Ms. Dickinson’s TV Western for… A cone of force, perspective sharp… pricked with gleams from sabers si… moves out at dawn to cross the pla… and save the souls at the distant…
An Abomination* Ice-gleamed streets, sky an ebony… and a girl accordions her tiny car into the back of mine. She, carmine-streamed, head throug…
Pasiphae, like any ancient Greek, Was avid fan of bestiality And lusted for the Cretan bull’s… But he, bull-headed, snubbed her u… For this bovine disliked a human f…
Aesop as Existentialist They’d suffered through a devasta… And many larvae died from lack of… The queen, as well, grew thin for… Thus forcing all the workers to co…
1951: Ice-varnished streets, the s… as a young woman accordions her an… into the back of my treasured blac… She, head through glass, carmine-s… while the cops look over the two c…