Gimme That Ole-Time Religion Needy ancients were aggrieved If prayers’s goals were not achiev… And beat the god in stone or tree For what they thought its treacher…

Two Little Ironies* Suggest an early death deserves our envy, *Hardy wrote a book of short...

The Inmate (a sestina) My parents, souls revering freedom… took turns at serving as my jailer to show me how constraints are rig…

Poesy’s Progress My rhymes are gone, at least quite… my lines are stop– ped just anywhere. The meter is, no doubt, unconscion…

Anthropomorphism Two pigs copulate above The legend “Makin’ Bacon”; A lobster sports a chef’s cap, beckons with big red claw;

God’s antelopes have eyes placed f… And horizontal pupils, features th… Employ to see wide spans and speed… From lurking predators they’ve eas… But carnivores, with eyes in front…

Midwest Opera The local mogul, tall, horse-jawed… machine-tool king, accompanied by his grim chic wife, strolls down the aisle,

A Wake In Florida’s woods there stands a… Still silo-girthed but leaning now… The trunk bone-white, stripped of… The spectral limbs shattered, gone…

A Dumb Waiter in a Heavenly res… (Lou’s Cafe: Fontvielle, France) Our voices hushed, we slip into the narrow, gloomy room, a taper on the back-wall bar

A big brown dog, gray around the muzzle, lay in the front yard of an old h… between his front paws a tennis ba… As we walked by,

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…

(News Item:Scientists photographed men’s faces, then measured their testosterone levels. They showed these photos to women, asking them which men they would prefer for sex and which ...

Polyphemus Hurt by Schtick (Apologies to Abbot and Costello) When Ulysses poked out Polyphemus… The giant ran to friends, who hear… “Nobody blinded me!” —but then he…

Kings once favored beheadings; and when it was their turn, so did angry peasants America chose a different tableau: Black hoods, elaborate nooses