by Stephen Gold

“Claim: U.S. President Joe Biden farted while meeting with the Duchess
of Cornwall [at COP26 in Glasgow].
Rating: Unproven”
—Snopes

(with apologies to Bob Dylan)

How many farts must a POTUS suppress,
Before he can let one fly free?
How many toots? Can you hazard a guess?
Is it one, is it two, is it three?
And how do we know that it flew out of Joe,
As he squawked, “Who did that? Wasn’t me!”
The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind,
The answer is blowing in the wind.

by Geoffrey Basking

“Steve Scalise, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, said last week that …
‘carbon emissions have been around from when before man walked the Earth …
the idea that hurricanes or wildfires were caused in just the last few years is just fallacy.'”
—The Guardian

“This scam,” said Scalise, “is a scandal:
A hurricane’s easy to handle!
What’s carbon emission?
A normal condition
Since man first stepped out with a candle.”

by Dan Campion

“The U.S. and China announce surprise climate agreement at COP26 summit”
—NPR

Friends, let’s surprise the climate!
Let’s show we really care,
Although we tend to slime it
And foul both sea and air.

The world’s expression’s priceless
As we exclaim, “Surprise!”
Though icecaps tip toward iceless
And ocean levels rise.

The climate, far more gracious,
Won’t stand outside the door
But enter in and thank us,
While hinting we do more.

by Julia Griffin

“Rare ‘cotton candy lobster’ … rescue[d] by Maine fisherman”
—The Guardian

My Candy-Colored Lobster,
Pursued by every mobster
And bounty-hunting robster:
What obstacles she’s faced:

No soup-and-salad jobster
Or boil-upon-the-hobster
Is she, my heart’s own throbster,
So exquisite of taste!

I am no snoozy slobster,
No unambitious blobster:
I’ll lobby for my Lobster
All decapods above,

Because she is my lodestar,
My indigo-and-woad-star,
My worthy-of-an-ode-star,
My lustrous Lobster Love!

by Chris O’Carroll

Again she’s been fined for not wearing a mask.
She’s Marjorie Greene, of course. Why would you ask?
Fine after fine, she continues rebating
The money we pay her for not legislating.
Where Trump dodges taxes, she takes up the slack.
A few more offenses, we’ll be in the black.

by Ruth S. Baker

“Girl, 6, With ‘Heavy Menstrual Bleeding’ After COVID Vaccine Was Actually 41”
—Newsweek

A menstruating girl of six
Is proof of Fauci’s sneaky tricks:
Just see what vaccination’s done!
But now it seems she’s forty-one.
It’s moot how much these numbers mean:
I’m rather gray for seventeen;
By contrast, as it seems to me,
I’m learnèd for the age of three.
My health and wellness correlate
With what you’d hope at sixty-eight;
For eighty-four I’m looking fine!
(Admittedly, I’m fifty-nine).

by Steven Kent

“N.F.L. Fines Aaron Rodgers, Packers for Covid-19 Protocol Violations”
—The New York Times

Vaccinate, schmaccinate,
A. Rodgers, quarterback
Faked on a vax play—he’s
Nobody’s mensch.

N.F.L. defense then
Unsympathetically
Shut down his offense with
Fines and the bench.

by Pat D’Amico

An old lady seeks out a booster
Cause the CDC constantly goosed her,
So she calls up the regional spots
In charge of dispensing the shots.

They all say that’s perfectly fine,
But first you must journey online.
She enters the hideous web
Where reason can trickle and ebb.

Then she’s pointing and clicking away,
Which swallows the bulk of the day.
Appointments, she finds, always tend
To result in a woeful dead end.

by Clyde Always

Some cook’s been shaken to the core—
a dozen wings he fried
went on to be the motive for
attempted patricide!

by Nora Jay

Donald Trump once described Mitch McConnell as his ‘ace in the hole’ …
in a foreword to [McConnell’s] autobiography …
[But] speaking to the Washington Post … Trump said he told McConnell:
“‘Why don’t you write it for me and I’ll put it in, Mitch?’ Because that’s the way life works.”
—The Guardian

A blurb by TRUMP! You made your pitch;
I classed it with the perks
You earned when Garland hit the ditch;
But those were different circs,

And non-self-praise is something which
I grudge to two-faced jerks;
So now I say you wrote it, Mitch,
’Cause that’s how my life works.

by Paul Lander

Texas is so bad
The Lone Star State now stands for
Its review on Yelp.

by Alex Steelsmith

“ABBA is back… featuring digital 3-D avatars of the band as it looked back in 1979.
The avatars will sing the group’s recorded vocal tracks, with a live band accompanying them.”
—NPR

“Among music critics, however, opinion was more divided.”
—CNN

Abbaca dabraca,
ABBA the supergroup
hopes that its members still
dazzle (despite

taking a 40-year
mega-sabbatical);
maybe they won’t, but their
Abbatars might.

by Bruce Bennett

Wrinkle, Wrinkle, you’re the best!
Surely you have aced the test!
Tearing up the street so fast,
Where’s the duck who could get past?

Wrinkle, Wrinkle, Duck Sublime,
Who’s the duck who’ll match your time?
Setting such a torrid pace,
Where’s the duck who’ll take your place?

Quacking, waddling, bound for Glory,
Ducks will revel in your story!
Runners will from this time on
Want to run a Duckathon.

by Julia Griffin

“Bat named ‘Bird of the Year 2021’ in controversial decision”
—The New York Post

Batty results have made the birders’ cluB
Indignant: Bats should not invade our areA!
Raggedy brutes—they’ll quickly wish they hadn’T;
Don’t try denying, it’s a birdy snuB;
But somehow—though they have no alibI,
And bats (v. birds) are uglier and scarieR—
Their win leaves many hearts bizarrely gladdeneD.

by Catherine Chandler

“NASA: SpaceX Toilet Still Broken…”
—Futurism

It was Dumb, or perhaps it was Dumber
who was hired as SpaceX’s plumber.
The crew’s none too happy
as each dons a nappy
and hopes the trip home’s not a bummer.