Bruce McGuffin: The Dog Diet
You ate some roadkill on our walk
A squirrel-possum blend.
We're bound to see your snack again.
The question is, which end?
◊ ◊ ◊
Dry Whine: S.O. Fasrus
It's January
going dry
out of shape
from getting high
I'd love a snifter
can't deny
I downed a quick one
on the shhhly.
◊ ◊ ◊
Damian Balassone: Antipodean Romeo
As stars light up the jacaranda
he’s climbing up the back veranda.
◊ ◊ ◊
Julia Griffin: Weeping, Wailing, Ganaching
The cream is whipped to save its soul;
The chocolate's chastened quite;
But ah! what shall it profiterole,
Unless it choux aright?
◊ ◊ ◊
Hannah Gross: Comb Song Of The Mane Woman
My crazy curls cause constant commotion.
Not a comb clasped at home will conquer this dome
Though I rigorously rake all my rioting ringlets,
Those bundles of build-ups in a bursting bun.
Trespassing trees trail leaves in my tresses
And attack with twigs that twiddle in my twirls,
My mangle-tangle mess, my mish-mash of wrangles,
My maddening mane that may not be mastered!
◊ ◊ ◊
Robert West: Rally
I worry less
about his sneering
than I do
about their cheering.
◊ ◊ ◊
Jean L. Kreiling: History of Rock
The gray-haired prof wears blue jeans to teach “History of Rock”;
his thirty blue-jeaned students mostly doze or watch the clock.
If he were well-prepared, he’d do just fine in tie and tweeds,
but he thinks his own history is all the prep he needs.
Like others past their prime, he tends to ramble and repeat,
and so the class pays close attention only to the beat
of paltry progress made by a lethargic minute hand;
they don’t care that he once played in a heavy metal band.
◊ ◊ ◊
Damian Balassone: The Office
The office space is filled with dread and fear
when sycophantic psychopaths appear.
◊ ◊ ◊
Terese Coe: Gender
Gender has bars like a cell
and if you like cages, that’s swell,
but others get out
by losing the pout
and frequently, raising some hell.
◊ ◊ ◊
Liza McAlister Williams: Antique Opera Glasses
Little glasses, made in France –
how they magically enhance!
Bluejays, cardinals and robins
working at their looms and bobbins
little know they’re being spied on
as they preen, or chat, or ride on
currents of the Brooklyn breeze,
back and forth between the trees.
