by Nora Jay

“Manchin’s $1.8 trillion spending offer is reportedly no longer on the table.”
—CNBC

Don’t mention Joe Manchin,
That meanest of menschen,
That prime avalanche in
The path of subvention.

by Bruce Bennett

“Elmo’s Petty Hatred For A Pet Rock Is The Best Thing About 2022 So Far”
—HuffPost

“Rocco’s just a rock!
Rocco’s not alive!”

Elmo shouts his shock,
shrill in overdrive.

Millions now applaud.
Twitter’s gone berserk.

Watch him diss a fraud.
Sock it to the jerk!

by Dan Campion

“Earth is at the center of a 1,000-light-year-wide ‘Swiss cheese’ bubble carved out by supernovas”
—Live Science

Although la lune is not Swiss cheese,
Le clair’s a cheesy bubble!
Well, quel soufflé! (For recipes,
See books by Edwin Hubble.)

by Alex Steelsmith

The ten phrases chosen for Lake Superior State University’s 2022 Banished Words List include
“Wait,what?”, “No worries,” “New normal,” “That being said,” “Circle back,” and
“At the end of the day.”

Wait-ily, what-ily?
Overused verbiage
banished? “No worries, new
normal,” we say.

That being said, we may
phraseologically
still circle back, at the
end of the day.

by Dan Campion

“Venomous snake found lurking in family’s Christmas tree”
—CNN

This boomslang had the decency
To slither up the Christmas tree,
Much better than, though somewhat shocking,
Hiding in a Christmas stocking.
The serpent, readily beguiled,
Was caught and taken to the wild;
Presumably, with righteous calm,
It hisses there “O Tannenbaum.”

by Alex Steelsmith

“Britain moves to ban big-game hunters from bringing trophies back into country”
—The Washington Post

Jittery crittery
threatened wild animals
greet the decision with
fervent acclaim;

those who don’t see the world
anthropocentrically
feel their extinction is
not a big game.

by Bruce Bennett

“Collapse of doomsday glacier in Antarctica could begin within a decade”
—New Scientist

The “Doomsday” glacier’s breaking up!
Our time is running out!
The seas will rise and flood the coasts!
There is no room for doubt.

What’s that? You have to pare your nails
and do your hair by 3:00?
I’m busy too till almost 4:00,
but then, let’s meet for tea.

by Julia Griffin

“Group of women asks US supreme court to overturn topless sunbathing ban”
—The Guardian

Bathing without our tops on
Is simply a woman’s right.
It’s nothing to call the cops on;
No need for distress or fright.

To tan like a man, or more so,
Is something our sex has earned—
This law’s like a too-browned torso:
Time it was overturned.

by Jerome Betts

“The Conservatives have lost the North Shropshire seat they
held for nearly 200 years to the Liberal Democrats in a by-election blow to Boris Johnson.
Winner Helen Morgan overturned a Tory majority of almost 23,000…”
—BBC News

(with apologies to A.E. Housman)

When all the votes were reckoned
In Oswestry and Wem
The Tory limped in second,
The winner was Lib Dem.
From Durham now to Dover,
One question rules the day:
His party over,
It’s curtains for BJ?

by Susan McLean

“‘[Sex and the City] fans, like me, are saddened by the news that Mr. Big dies of a heart attack,”
Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, a member of Peloton’s health and wellness advisory council and a
preventative cardiologist told the LA Times. “Mr. Big lived what many would call an extravagant
lifestyle… . Riding his Peloton Bike may have even helped delay his cardiac event.”
—CNN

When Mr. Big collapsed onscreen,
our shares went in the tank.
Though we’d be sorry to sound mean,
he had himself to thank.

Cocktails, cigars, high risks, big steaks—
the list goes on and on.
Those were his lifestyle-choice mistakes,
and not his Peloton.

by Dan Campion

“The iPhone Feature to Turn On Before You Die”
—The Wall Street Journal

I would respectfully suggest,
Jobs willing, that it might be best
To turn on, or at least to try,
All iPhone tricks before you die,
As, even with an eSIM card,
To do it later may prove hard.

by Bruce Bennett

… “[Oreos] are being used in new high-tech rat traps, which have been spotted around the city.”
—The New York Times

Oreos have met the test:
Peanut butter is the best.
Rats get hooked on easy bait,
then are tricked and meet their fate.

PETA, though, is not a fan.
It objects, and if it can,
it will protest and subvert.
Rats, like people, shouldn’t be hurt.

They’re just trying to get by.
That shouldn’t mean they have to die.
Clean the garbage up instead.
No New Yorker should be dead.

Spend the money and the time.
Being hungry’s not a crime.
No one should condemn their foes
just for craving Oreos!

by Ruth S. Baker

“Kyoto—A team of scientists at a university in western Japan has developed masks that glow
when exposed to ultraviolet light if they contain traces of the coronavirus,
using antibodies extracted from ostrich eggs.”
—Kyodo News

The eggs of these ostriches
Come at a cost which is
Worth it. The virus
Itself is admirous:
It glows! See the photo,
From beaming Kyoto.

by Clyde Always

“Okay it’s done: We’re ‘fully vaxxed’
and begging on our knees:
Can all restrictions be relaxed?
Oh, pretty-pretty-please?”

“Of course they can, and bless your heart;
so glad you understand…
Go out and play (two yards apart)
with vax cards close at hand.

No, wait! Come back! Oh me, oh my!
It’s COVID’s newest spawn:
the Omi-sigma-theta-pi-
omega-delta-cron!

The cases are about to rise!
This variant’s our doom!
Go cover all beneath your eyes
and gather via ZOOM!

How well behaved you’ve been—you bet!
But ‘fully vaxxed’ you’re not…
So, run along now. Go and get
your latest booster shot.”

“Okay it’s done: We’re ‘fully vaxxed’
and begging on our knees:
Can all restrictions be relaxed?
Oh, pretty-pretty-please?”

by Alex Steelsmith

“CNN fires Chris Cuomo Amid Inquiry Into His Efforts to Aid His Brother…
The spectacle of a high-profile anchor advising his powerful politician brother amid scandal
was a longstanding headache for many CNN journalists… It also emerged that Andrew Cuomo
had arranged for his brother’s Covid tests to receive priority treatment by the state.”
—The New York Times

Doubledy dippledy,
Cuomo the journalist
helped, and was helped by, his
governor bro.

Both were accustomed to
interdependently
give and receive; every
quid was pro-Cuo.