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WEEK OF JUNE 22

by Steven Urquhart Bell

“British ‘trad wife’ charges women £25K for courses on how to ‘ditch modern feminist thinking’”
—Daily Mail

As long as you’re happy
To live with the scar,
Lobotomy’s quicker
And cheaper by far.

by Steven Kent

“Gee, whiz: Elephant relieves itself on floor at Texas Republican convention”
—The Guardian

Poor Paige didn’t know as the people were screaming
The flow state she’d reach when she started live-streaming.
As metaphors go, well, you simply can’t miss ‘er:
The trickle-down party sure picked a real pisser!

by Julia Griffin

“‘Most famous tree in the world’: Sherwood Forest’s 1,000-year-old Major oak dies … In the winter of 2010, when snow fell on the tree, it traced an eerily precise image of Friar Tuck on the trunk. In other winters, when snow fell all around, none appeared on the tree’s limbs.”
—The Guardian

We robbed and gave to you: both made you poor,
And turned you to your own dry monument.
Weighted with lead, cement-stuffed, your old core
Struggled to meet our needs: where you’d have bent,
We forced you up, refused to let you age
As oak trees do; each decade, a new team
Subjected you to kindness, built a cage
Around you to support our ancient dream:
Dream of a merry life of derring-do,
Beyond the law, the freedom and the chase;
And don’t imagine that will die with you.
We’ll keep your body standing in your place,
And yearly in your bark we’ll scan the snow
For Friar Tuck. We’ll never let you go.

by Dan Campion

“ICE Spent $700 Million on 7 Warehouses. Now It Wants to Get Rid of Them. The agency plans to sell or give away most of the 11 warehouses it bought to detain migrants, reversing course on a signature initiative.”
—The New York Times

Before it lavished all that dough
On dumps out at the edge of town
And plans that go where daft plans go,
ICE should, like DOGE, have melted down.

by Philip Kitcher

Come, celebrate with UFC
dominant masculinity.
Hear, in the crunch of bone on bone,
the triumph of testosterone.
Join hoarse male voices, as they strain
to urge displays of greater pain.
Pummel the feeble and pathetic
who contradict our true aesthetic.

Why, you might wonder, does our King
maintain his place outside the ring?
Surely the leader of our age
should be a star within the cage?
Do those old bone spurs still prevent
his proper part in this event?
This spectacle so titillates,
he sits … and sits … and salivates …

The true elite, we men of brawn
don’t fuss about a patch of lawn:
the rucked-up, bloodied mud should stay,
reminder of a great man’s day.

by David J. Rothman

Graham Platner
Says of Susan Collins, “I’m going to flatten her,
Just as soon as I figure out what to do
About this tattoo…”

by Steven Kent

“Huge ‘8647’ etched into grass on the National Mall”
—CNN

A “threat” was made,
And risk was weighed—
Do those afraid
Of Evening Shade
See every blade
As weapons-grade?

by Marshall Begel

“Mailman arrested on suspicion of DUI”
—The Sun

The postal service creed expounds:
not rain nor heat nor gloom of night
can keep the mailman from his rounds
(including rounds of Miller Light).

by Bruce Rogowski

“Iran Says Strait of Hormuz Won’t Have ‘Tolls’ but it Will Have ‘Fees’”
—The New York Times

Potato, potahto,
Which is righter?
Once you’re through,
Your wallet’s lighter.

by Frank Osen

In a happier time, some astute future chronicler
May look back on the day when the Donald Trump moniker—
Which for some hundred-seventy days had defaced
The poor Kennedy Center—was finally erased,
And then note the event drew a festival crowd
Who were mildly dismayed when a blue-and-white shroud
Was left blocking the site, in a last fit of pique—
But observe how the tyrant’s vindictive-me streak,
Like the rest of his faculties, seemed on the wane.

Since he clearly intended the sheet to remain,
Had the tottering dotard still been on his game,
He’d have slathered that tarp with gold leaf and his name.

by Steven Kent

“Huge American Flag Flies Into Power Lines, Knocking Out Power for Thousands”
—The New York Times

Old Glory twines,
The current arcs,
Electric lines
Erupt in sparks.

So what went wrong?
Says one report:
The flag was long,
But came up short.

“SpaceX Sets Milestone With World’s Largest I.P.O., Furthering Musk’s Power”
—The New York Times

by Dan Campion

I say it’s Tulipmania,
The South Sea BubbleX,
Titanic, Lusitania—
The Wall Street zoo’s T. Rex.
A “milestone” or a millstone? We
Shall see. I could be wrong.
But gamble on AI? Not me.
It’s big. So was King Kong.