(1994)
Republished by permission from "Lyric," Vol. 74, No. 3
descriptive humorous quatrain
. (George Meredith advised Thomas… Dear Publisher: I’ve joined a fiction writing grou… Techniques that writing experts ha…
Verse now slain by latest dogma, down the cobbled street come mourn… trundling Verse’s coffin forward, charging all to note the corpus, garroted for disregarding
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…
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…
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…
I hate Shaw with his absurd postu… who want to get in his pants to ca… I hate Henry James for writing se… it takes a cryptologist to figure… I hate Hemingway for his drunken…
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… (Some skeptics say she could have…
Above the stores medieval grimness… stones coffin-sized in high gray w… exuding dampness of tombs, lichene… towering inward, threatening Gothi… across the twisting cart-wide lane…
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…
My Last Trophy-Wife (Apologies to Robert Browning) That photo of my ex there on the… Is one I took before we split las… Yeah, people always ask me how I…
Anthropomorphism Two pigs copulate above The legend “Makin’ Bacon”; A lobster sports a chef’s cap, beckons with big red claw;
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…
Our voices hushed, we slip into the narrow, gloomy room, a taper on the back-wall bar the only source of light. Lou leads us to the wooden chairs,
At breakfast my microwave appears to heat, electrons clearly humming; container, though, remaining cold, oatmeal cooling rapidly.
Mystical Garbage Believing garbage cans are scandal… When battered, making us seem decl… My wife delivered firm commands, a… I threw away a garbage can today.