by Iris Herriot

“One woman, an adult actress and model on OnlyFans, said she was a ‘patriot’ after she was
sentenced to 14 days behind bars for a picture showing her buttocks near the Kremlin walls.”
—The Guardian

My patriotic fervor truly dazzles;
I go wherever loyalism calls,
To measure up my breasts against St. Basil’s,
Or air my buttocks near the Kremlin walls.

by Jerome Betts

“English town mourning Derek the Goose to raise statue in her honour. … Watchet harbour
was the inspiration for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and a
striking statue of the sailor and the albatross he shoots is a landmark in the town.”
—The Guardian

Not far from that amazing bird
Which leaves the Coleridge-reader stirred,
Derek, the wrongly-gendered goose
Who sadly suffered fox-abuse
Upon the slipway once her dorm,
May live again, in solid form,
Like regal eagles, royal swans,
And cheer up Watchet, cast in bronze.

by Steve Bremner

“Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen says she’s ‘shocked’ by the scale of Facebook’s ‘metaverse’ plans.
Facebook recently said it would hire 10,000 people to build the metaverse.”
—Business Insider

What the FitzGerald? Are they telling me
That social media’s seizing poetry?
That every Netizen shall rhyme and scan?
Half can’t tell ‘its’ from ‘it’s’ or ‘then’ from ‘than.’
All measured, metered metaphor will go
In fav. of curt abbrev’s, IMHO,
As every bore confusing ‘your’ with ‘you’re’
Becomes the next McGonagall or Moore,
And each Diana, Darren, Dee, and Don
Pounds out vast Cantos WITH THE CAPS LOCK ON.
Ye gods, the vision makes the senses reel!
To arms, my bards! (Merci, Rouget de Lisle).
‘Mid such dank swamps, so ‘yuge’ we’ll never drain them,
Let’s raise our standards—or at least maintain them—
And when we meet a colleague in despair
Console them with a kindly, “There, their, they’re.”

by Julia Griffin

“Spanx chief gives all employees first-class plane tickets and $10,000
Shapewear company founder Sara Blakely surprised employees at a party
to mark Spanx’s new $1.2bn valuation”
—The Guardian

Sara, queen of shapely vesture,
Made a sweetly fitting gesture,
Giving all her employees
First-class tickets overseas,
Letting everyone escape where
They might shed all thoughts of shapewear,
Briefly free from stringent Spanx.
Spanxers, raise a thong of thanx!

by Alex Steelsmith

“A cyclist survived an attack from a 500-pound bear by kicking the animal…”
—CNN

Steadily pedaly
quadriceps femoris,
bicycle-trained to be
powerfully quick,

offers a grizzly a
highly discouraging
unmetaphorical
finishing kick.

by Paul Lander

It’s so damn wet that
The Statue of Liberty’s
Wearing a snorkel.

by Bruce Bennett

“Seneca Falls Voters Weigh Garbage Odors Against Fear of Tax Hikes;
Will Landfill’s Mandated Dec. 2025 Closing Date Stick?”
—Water Front Online blog

The landfill? Let’s face it. It reeks!
No wonder the Town Board now seeks
A date for its closing.
Who wants to be nosing
That mountain of garbage? Its peaks

Tower over and spoil the view.
Who’d want that beside them? Would you?
But wait. Higher taxes?
Perhaps that relaxes
Your outrage and urge to go Pew!

by Chris O’Carroll

“The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.”
—Tweet from Congressman Jim Banks (R-Indiana) commenting on
Rachel Levine’s promotion to four-star admiral

Jim Banks is such a little girl,
Her knickers all a-twist,
Tweeting, “I’ll say what sex you are.
No, sweetie, I insist.”

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

“[Chancellor of the Exchequer] Rishi Sunak uses windfall to boost Whitehall spending
as UK recovers from pandemic”
—The Independent

“Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, branded Sunak’s plans a ‘a classic con game'”
—The Independent’s ‘Inside Politics‘ newsletter

Come listen to the news from my red box:
Low-income earners, you will soon regain
A third of what last month’s reduction docks
Since, as your Chancellor, I feel your pain—
So what if my wife’s richer than the Queen?
If you’re a climate activist … well, I
Cut taxes on domestic flights. That’s green—
COP26 is cheaper now to fly
Off to! … Prosecco drinkers, you will see
New tax relief—though if you’re jobless, you
Get no more cash. But optimism’s free,
And you’ll get lots from me, from Boris too …
My boss distracts, your pocket’s what I pick—
Exchequers play your classic con-game trick!

by Steven Kent

“There Are Nearly 9,000 Craft Breweries In The US—But Big Beer Dominates”
—The Guardian

Time to slay Goliath, boys—
Come on, Davy, let’s get chopping!
When he falls he’ll make a noise—
We’ll be tops in hops, no stopping!

We can’t beat him one on one—
Stick together, we’ll undo him!
Heads up, lads, let’s get it done—
Band of brothers, we’ll outbrew him!

by Nora Jay

“Franz Kafka drawings reveal ‘sunny’ side to bleak Bohemian novelist”
—The Guardian

Here’s Joseph K., in pose serenely fetal,
Chillaxing with a cheerful giant beetle;
The Well-Fed Artist’s feasting, with no hassle,
On fries and popcorn in the Bouncy Castle.
Yes, “Kafkaesque”’s a synonym for “sunny”!
(“Bohemian”’s already strangely funny.)

by Clyde Always

“A federal court order has determined that the offspring of hippos once owned by drug kingpin
Pablo Escabar can be deemed ‘interested persons’ with legal rights in the United States.”
—The Hill

Though El Patrón we may decry,
he’s indirectly done some good
allowing for the personhood
of bloats of hippopotami.

by Julia Griffin

“Roman statues have been found under the site of a Norman church in Stoke Mandeville,
Buckinghamshire, in what experts are calling a ‘once in a lifetime’ find. …
Two of the figures are adults—a man and a woman, both of which have had their head split
from their body—while the third is the head alone of a child.
Statues were often vandalised before being torn down, [archaeologists] explained. …
The final destination for the Roman finds has yet to be determined…”
—UK Today News

Defaced in scorn some thousand years ago,
We lie: man, wife, and child. You find us so.
Though strangers broke us, they did not divide
Our union. You young ones, who have pried
And found us, think: you too may be defiled;
Break not the bond of man and wife and child.

by Dan Campion

“Influential U.S. comedian Mort Sahl dies at age 94”
—Reuters

Mort mesmerized the hungry i,
Ad-libbed on live TV
In sweater, button-down, no tie,
Wrote jokes for Kennedy,

Gave HUAC hell and Johnson gas
And Tricky Dick a fright,
And always had remarks to pass
On every pol in sight.

He didn’t shrink from 45
But zinged him like the rest.
Sharp pupils keep his style alive,
But Mort Sahl did it best.

by Alex Steelsmith

“A German inventor’s unique ultrasound ‘testicle bath’ birth control device for men
took the top prize at the country’s James Dyson Awards.”
—UPI

Spermity-squirmity
testicle ultrasound,
based on a theory that
no one rebuts,

wins over experts on
spermatogenesis,
though it’s opposed by a
couple of nuts.