Huuklyeand Cinquor on Poets Sick to Death of the Muse

Ma chérie, I know

You’re dying to tell us a story,

But before you do, please

Please don’t tell us

It ends adieu.

Moderator’s comments: In all seriousness, could this indecorously punning poem be a veiled allusion to Graves’ Good-bye to All That? If so, it would serve to reinforce the opinion—shared by many seasoned and decorated veterans of the poetry wars—that Cinquor has finally crossed the thin, hazy line separating poetic decency from crass stupidity; he should therefore be declared persona non grata in La República Musa and dispatched to No Man’s Land with no further ado.

Frank Samperi's A Remotis

A Remotis, published by Querencia Books, Seattle, 1979. Cover photograph by Mona Nagai. See Claudia Samperi-Warren at poetfranksamperi to read some of her father’s poems from this beautiful little book edited by John Levy.

The Three Stages of the World According to Monsanto

Where we find our indefatigable poetic muckraker plowing through the once-fruitful, now seedy lower forty only to find nothing out there standing but the husks of sodbusters stalked to death by a transmogrified jolly Green Giant.

A Spell of Evil

To all of us who have noticed that

Evil is live spelled backwards,

And to those who have not,

May we all live for the day

Evil becomes nothing

So much as its pale

Reflection in the mirror,

Duplicated to the letter,

Save for that most common

Ultimate one which insists

On remaining with its head

Twisted curiously

Looking the other way.

Mulberry Trees Taken by Storm in Winter

Startled

By a tremendous

Wave of starlings alighting,

Assuming shimmering myriad

Leaf-like shapes clinging to branches

Unnoticed because they were bare—

Now a thrumming insistence

Too wondrous to bear.