GET SOME TODAY

I tried to send my humble respects
To an empress I know
But my computer feels
Etiquette is its younger brother.
"You mean 'hair mumbles' " it says.
Perhaps I do. At any event,
Whatever hair mumbles are
The empress shall have some.

A BORGES REVIEW

Books I might have written
Haunt me, their well-bound ghosts
Glaring at me from lengthy footnotes
Where I'm not cited or forcing a few words
Into the middle of a quote in some language
I never learned. To quiet them,
I conjured down Jorge Luis Borges
Begging him to write a review

He agreed, after warning me
That it might not be favorable.

SAINT OF EXILES

St. Marina, patron of exiles and peasants,
Is irate that Gelasius called her apocryphal
"So what if I was once a sea goddess?
Next to no one worshipped me.
I admit I was eaten by a dragon; but that
Was such a long time ago. I was young and looked
Delicious. It could have happened to anyone."

TREES

The trees across the street

Are frozen in gestures of denial

And indignation. They reach up

Demanding Heaven witness

Their entire innocence

Or point downwards

Swearing by the Earth itself.

One spreads its branches wide

Shocked that a tree of its age,

Its importance, must defend itself

Against the accusing leaves.

THE PROMOTION

Returning triumphantly to her draft
The Countess discovered her characters
Had decamped while she was out
Leaving behind an old nursemaid
Too feeble to survive the long trek
To a more lurid manuscript.
Originally meant to add some local color
The nursemaid was scheduled to die
Movingly, towards the end of Chapter 6.
Still, necessity knows no law;
A grumbling miracle was performed;
The nursemaid, risen from her deathbed,
(Her disease turning out to be misdiagnosed
Dutch Elm Tree Blight), did her best
As heroine. The hired ghost of Warren Oates
Did yeoman service as the hero, the villain,
The villain's much-betrayed wife,

And a variety of more minor roles
Sales were surprisingly strong.

THINKING OUTSIDE

After a while Schrödinger could no longer bear the suspense
And opened the box to see if his cat, which had been
Neither dead nor not dead, neither alive
Nor not alive, had made up her mind. The box was empty
Save for a note in Sanskrit. Translated it said
"You forgot the other set of alternatives -- in the box
Or out of the box. I am now both in and not in your closet
Where I am and am not taking my revenge
On your best pair of shoes."

GONE

Before I could begin to write
The poem flickered away
Gone, I suppose, to see
If Li Po has returned.