Bluffing
A gambler who cheated at poker
Was exceptionally mediocre.
He said, “Bluffing’s not hard.
After all, I’m a card!”
And the players just stared at the joker.
I Knew a Man
I knew a man who always spanked
His son. The little laddie
Grew up and learned his lesson well.
And now he spanks his daddy.
J. Patrick Lewis‘s first book of poems, Gulls Hold Up the Sky (Laughing Fire Press), appeared in October 2010. He has published over 130 verses in Light, as well as poems in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, New Letters, Southern Humanities Review, new renaissance, Kansas Quarterly, Fine Madness, and many others. In May 2011 the Poetry Foundation named him the third U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate (2011-2013). He has published 85 children’s picture books to date with Knopf, Atheneum, Dial, Harcourt, Little, Brown, National Geographic, Creative Editions, Chronicle, Candlewick, Scholastic, and others.