Light Quarterly

from Light: A Quarterly of Light Verse (Editor: John Mella) — Autumn 2001 issue

IN DEFENSE OF POWER Oh, give me a boat with a motor, As opposed to one with a sail. Let me glide on the sea perpendicularly I hate hanging off of a rail!

FAIRY SONG Gather, fairy dames and debs: Dew hath spangled spider webs! Take t'others' hands while yet 'tis dawn And tiptoe lightly o'er the lawn. Merrily, merrily Sing ding-dong! —TOM DISCH

WINTER/SPRING Holly saber-toothed with ice: A man's hearth is his paradise. Azaleas blazing in a row: Blood clots: time to pack and go. —RICHARD O'CONNELL

Let me breathe in the salt scented air O.K., so there might be a fume, But I won't cavort from starboard to port Being constantly chased by a boom. Let me pick out a destination And actually get where I'm going Any time that I say, to the hour and the day, And to heck with the way the wind's blowing. —PAT D'AMICO

BOSWELL'S TRIP TO THE HEBRIDES There's no excuse For this mad ruse Or none that I can think of Please God, I'm happy When the Ale's nappy, And there's plenty I can drink of! —AUGUST HUMBER


MRS. MALAPROP'S HUSBAND

SWANN The affair with Swann lasted a week. When he appeared, scrounging around bushes, I courted him with common rituals: dog questions, hand out, liverwurst. Cautious, he pondered my gestures like one peering over bifocals. He approached the open door as if hushed by the mystery of a chapel. I took him in. Hell, I was lonely too. Physiologus would have been inspired by Swann's reserve of excitement, his ecstasy, days later, racing to greet me around the course of parlor to kitchen and back and, then, his dithyrambics done, crouching still as a possum, waiting. He was in bliss clowning or lying on the sofa, one eye on me to make sure I was in for the evening Swann belonged to someone else, some troglodyte in leather cap and T-shirt, who grendeled out of his jeep, leash in hand, just as Swann came flying across the street, eyes animated with the prospect of another evening with me. —FRANCIS J. SMITH

I once met a man Whose patois was quaint, But not through such usage As nohow and ain't. He'd say, "Run for your wife Or the double to pay!" "Screw up your porridge." "Every hog has its hay." At times I could grasp him: "That's cake in the sky." But then I'd get lost: "Let sleeping logs die." One woman could make out The sense his words carried, And I wasn't surprised To learn they were married, Or, as they both claimed, "Despite what one hears, We enjoy weeded blitz We've been stitched for ten years!" —DAVID GALEF


THE GOOD LIFE Finding she couldn't win with just her violin (its F key and its G key both either flat or squeaky, she managed a reversal, went braless to rehearsal. Said teachers, drooling, "Hey! Let's market her that way. She'll soon be all the rage: sex on the concert stage where you don't often find it. She'll bump it and she'll grind it. Sonata, fugue, and raga, everyone will go ga-ga." So it's occurred in fact. The last bush has been whacked. Sleep, wit, without a care; wake, sex, rule everywhere! —RICHARD MOORE This poem first appeared in Poultry.

ABELARD, or LOVE GONE WRONG My altered cat runs out the door and rackets round the yard. Because he'll be a stud no more, I call him Abelard. But when he meets a lady cat with soft and yielding paws, he doesn't quite remember that he's not the man he was. He climbs her back and bites her neck he recollects the game. But still he meets a fatal check results are not the same. (How often, when romances end, it puzzles cats and men to know why last night's lady friend will not step out again.) Now other cats cry eagerly their raucous mating song, while Abelard sits home with me and wonders what went wrong. —GAIL WHITE

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