Not a Duet But a Duel
(title after a tweet by David Galef)
“Duet?” I read. He’s heeded my appeal!
(The ink was smudged.) I made out “twelve o’clock.”
I polished, tuned, and brought my glockenspiel;
He brought a Glock.
Lot’s Wife
Little What’s-Her-Name (Lot’s bride)
Always clung to hubby’s side.
—Bob McKenty, “Lot’s Wife,” Light
Ado, the wife of Lot, looked back
To see the destruction of the cities.
—Book of Jasher 19:52
Take it with a grain of salt.
—Pliny, Naturalis Historia 23.LXXVII.49
Famously nameless,
The woman of salt:
Probably blameless,
What was she call’t?
The Book of Jasher
Lists one or two
(The scriptures rehash her,
Without much Ado).
She thought her love
Would grant impunity
To a pillar of
Her old community.
So sadly Orphean
A fate she got.
Her elegy paean:
O unhappy lot!
Though she has no name,
Her story’s iconic
For she became
A column ionic.
She looked back at the valley—
Poor, petrified gal!
Her name had been Sally;
She went by Sal.
Daniel Galef drifted from Mississippi to Montreal and drifts from poetry (The Lyric, Measure) to humor (National Lampoon, American Bystander) to short fiction (Sein und Werden, Defenestration Magazine) to VERY short fiction (Nanoism, Seven by Twenty). He’s also written sketch comedy, crossword puzzles, a science column, and a musical. He is fresh from McGill University, where he was a Student Journalism Award finalist for his column in the McGill Tribune, served as editor-in-chief of The Plumber’s Faucet humor magazine, and won the Krivy Prize for Excellence in Playwriting.