(1994)
Republished by permission from "Lyric," Vol. 74, No. 3
#DescriptiveHumorousQuatrain
Ask Not Whom the Toll Bails A Grecian corpse’s mouth containe… Placed there by kin who thought he… To pay the toll required to cross… (A job that Charon got through po…
Give Me More Light Give me more light I’m getting desperate here, you kn… show me what you’ve got is Ann Landers still around?
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…
A raptor’s visage, Assyrian bas relief; yet in the eyes, the poise, a stately acquiescence; opulence carved
Kings once favored beheadings; and when it was their turn, so did angry peasants America chose a different tableau: Black hoods, elaborate nooses
M. The Old Widower’s Effluvium His cachet evolves from subtleties… as he is groomed for an ever small… He doesn’t sweat for he cannot toi… so baths now seem superfluous,
Intelligent Design? Verbalizer of finest thoughts, A soft, vulnerable thumb of flesh is rooted in the floor of a fetid… edged above and below the ingress
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…
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…
///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…
Sports News from Mudville (Thanks to “Casey at the Bat”) The outlook’s great for all you fo… Linebacker Doakes was just picked… Then football’s finest running bac…
She believes in doing things right… She would do anything for anyone i… it helped a person be closer to he… She would never eat a lamb chop wi… just as pork hocks must accompany…
Tracing writhing streams, circling alpine wastes, tickling out a finger nudged between two behemoths, the crooked ring completed at last
A scarlet glint across a forest fl… Though distant, lured me from a la… To find what seemed a solitary fl… But proved instead a garish cola c… The brazen glare against the sprin…
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.