by Paul Lander

“Vaccine Refusal May Put Herd Immunity At Risk, Researchers Warn”
—NPR

Johnson and Johnson
Pfizer, Moderna, too. Don’t
Throw away your shot!

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

“Dominic Cummings has launched a blistering attack on his old boss Boris Johnson,
questioning his ‘competence and integrity.'”
—BBC

My wish in boyhood was to be world king—
Rex Alexander Boris sounded cool.
Buoyed up by Eton, steeped in Oxford bling,
One knew one’s path to kingship: play the fool!
Real choice is hard, so I distract and duck.
I‘d rather do a photo op or two.
Since I have mastered how to pass the buck,
Jokes reign. You’d never know I have no clue! …
Oh, damn! The Dom has dropped his bomb! He leaks
His evidence I’m shiftily inept.
No holds are barred: Revenge means Tory cliques
Should know what Boris wrecks—no secrets kept! …
One should be careful what one wishes for.
Now I am Boris Wrex forevermore!

by Dan Campion

“I said ‘Hey, Houston, I’ve got the world in my window.’”
—Michael Collins, Astronaut

“I love a window. . . . The whole of life already framed. Right there.”
—Maude Lewis, Folk Artist

When Michael Collins orbited
Above Tranquility
It seems he felt unlimited,
Like Maudie: Whole. Calm. Free.

With Neil and Buzz encamped below,
Mike Collins ruled the sky.
He saw, in thumbnail size, a glow:
Our whole world flitting by.

He took up painting later on,
Got tranquil scenes just so.
The light is right, and then is gone.
A window’s opened, though.

by Julia Griffin

“My Octopus Teacher, heartwarming nature film, wins best documentary Oscar”
—The Guardian

O Octopus, my Octopus, how well you played your part:
You warmed each bivalve mollusk of the audience’s heart!
But some declared it—I don’t know—I fear the word was “gross,”
To see you on the dance floor bumping bottoms with Glenn Close.

It wasn’t lack of rhythm (they’ll have witnessed that before),
Or even the distracting squelch of suckers on the floor;
The problem was your timing: your panache is out of date;
Now Hollywood respects MeToo (and equally MeEight).

by Alex Steelsmith

“A turtle crashed through the windshield of a car on Interstate 95 near Port Orange, Florida. …
What may surprise you though, is this bizarre accident has happened around here before.”
—CNN

Hurtledy turtledy
Florida’s Interstate,
putting its motorists’
nerves to the test,

shatters their windshields with
testudinarious
missiles, which renders them
shell-shocked at best.

by Michael Calvert

“Amazon… is unveiling a new way to pay at select Whole Foods stores: a biometric technology
called Amazon One that allows shoppers to pay by placing their palm over a scanning device
when they check out.”
—Vox

Forget your wallet? Please stay calm.
Just cross this sensor with your palm.
You’re in a hurry? Got to dash?
Just give us five—no need for cash.
Relax! We know it’s awfully hard
To lift that heavy credit card.

Meantime, don’t worry what we’ll do
With all the data we accrue—
It’s just your palm print, nothing more,
We’re adding to our data store.
For now, that is. Don’t get us wrong—
We’ll get the rest before too long.

by Eddie Aderne

“… plans to limit tourists at Juliet’s balcony are blocked”
—The Guardian

A rose by any other name
Can hardly hope to smell the same;
Likewise, the balcony that gets
The lover’s vote is Juliet’s.
If any try to come between,
There’ll be a foul Verona scene;
For no two lovers ever scored
Like Juliet and the Tourist Board.

by Chris O’Carroll

“Ohio Republicans want to rename Mosquito Lake state park after Donald Trump”
—The Vindicator (Youngstown, OH)

The park’s named now for parasites
Who super-spread disease.
The new name and the old will be
Like, in a pod, two peas.

They’ve got parks pre-named for him
In many another state.
Hell’s Creek and Devil’s Hole are good,
And Russian Gulch is great.

by Julia Griffin

“Oligarch’s son told to pay mother £75m after world’s biggest divorce case
[The judge] compared the breakdown of relations in the Akhmedov family to Leo Tolstoy’s
classic Russian novel Anna Karenina.”
—The Guardian

” … every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”
—Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

If Anna, Oblonsky, and all of their set,
Abandoning anguish, desire, and regret,
Decided on trading all that for the cares
Of money-maniacal billionaires,
The story would be less distinctive to read;
Most unhappy families may be indeed
Uniquely unhappy, as Tolstoy would claim;
But super-rich sorrows seem all much the same.

by Jesse Anna Bornemann

“Attendees of the infamous Fyre Festival didn’t exactly get what they paid for in 2017, when they arrived in the Bahamas for a luxury music festival only to find themselves stranded without basic provisions, let alone first-class accommodations. Some four years later, hundreds of ticket holders are poised to receive more than $7,000 each after settling a class-action lawsuit with event organizers.”
—NPR

Celebrities too cool to name
Were lured by Fyre’s exotic flame.
Yet, partygoers quickly learned:
Play with Fyre, you’ll get burned.
Though dreams of grandeur turned to ash,
At least the duped got cold, hard cash.
A #dumpsterfyre? There’s no doubt,
But litigation sorts things out,
And fizzled Fyre gave fun galore
To fans of puns and metaphor.

by Alex Steelsmith

“These mammoth bills do more than move mountains of money. …
FDR altered the workings of capital and labor in ways that are still very much with us today. Biden may be trying to do some of the same, but [his] work has just begun.”
—NPR

President precedent
Franklin D. Roosevelt
spent by the zillions, as
Joe also will;

what better place for an
incomprehensible
mountain of money than
Capital Hill?

by Dan Campion

“Watch NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity kick up dust on its 1st flight”
—Space.com

“After Ingenuity’s successful Mars flight, NASA plans to fly a huge rotorcraft on Saturn’s moon”
—Salon

We’re kicking up the dust on Mars
Through Ingenuity.
Our next stop’s Titan, then the stars!
Our theme’s mobility

In quest of—well, we’re not quite sure.
We just know that we must,
And, seeking out our itch’s cure,
We’ll kick up lots of dust.

by Julia Griffin

“Tyrannosaurus rex walked surprisingly slowly, new study finds”
—CNN

They say that T. Rex walked surprisingly slowly.
Does this declaration convince me? Not wholly.
I’d want to know something of ageing or sizing
Before I’d call any statistic surprising.
Imagine this moment, out walking before us,
A rickety Rex and an adolesaurus:
I’d reckon the second was more of a goer;
The former, I’d guess, would be notably slower—
Though were I to guess, and the beast should walk faster,
I’d probably think not surprise! but disaster.

by Ruth S. Baker

“Florida couple invites wedding guests to ‘dream home’ they thought was vacant”
—New York Post

The house was dreamy. It was evident
We needed go in, so in we went.
We dreamed we’d have our wedding there. We knew
You’d all enjoy it, and the house would, too.
We asked you to our dream house. Now it seems
You’ll have to skip the house. Admire the dreams.

by Alex Steelsmith

“‘Hillbilly’ to Capitol Hill? Author eyes Senate bid in Ohio… Vance says he’s ‘thinking seriously’ about running for the Senate… [His] success is likely to hinge on whether the state’s white working-class voters embrace him as a home-state hero or an opportunist… Part of the Appalachian code warns against getting ‘too big for your britches.’”
—ABC News

Willity nillity,
Hillbilly Elegy
author eyes Senate, and
might have a chance,

though if they find that he
opportunistically
outgrows his pants, maybe
Vance won’t advance.