The Story of Alcithoe and Her Sisters
I used to walk out to the woods to eat
the blood-berries off of unknown plants;
my maker I never met but I was led
to the thorny side of Bacchus
without much provocation.
Say what you will, the god will
know which of the three sisters
is hoarding dry goods in a dry
basement, while every day people
perish from a lack of Chunky Monkey,
pining for the Brawny lumberjack
who has fled to American Samoa
with Mister Clean;
the sadder but wiser matron
makes the less believable display
of piety in the marketplace yet
hisses with her own profane bromides
as she pockets the last can of ham.
A mirror tilted just the right way
can make even a blind man
piss his pants. Taken upside down,
his grimace is a grin, so keep dangling him
by his ankles. Place a pitcher
beneath him to catch the limpid drainage.
Change the dressings twice daily.
The Story of Pyramus and Thisbe
I always thought of this one as filler,
tedious, brief, the suppression
of a yawn before more tasteless
slapstick. The rest relies on
the impotence of the grimacing
mechanicals. Wild is the wind
passed during intermission.
Don’t fall in love
with a hole, or with a whole
chorus line in the skin
of a lion or a lamb
whose ass is cut for confection.
Not so much as a sword
to fall on but a rake to the face
in the scrapyard of Babylon;
this is a tale
of a cyclops & a grapefruit
or a boy & his dog or just
another Thursday for a falling apart
wall.
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