by Claudia Gary
“‘Crunchy, earthy, grassy’ cicada tacos back on menu in Leesburg restaurant”
—WTOP News
No need to wail and sigh
for our cicada taco.
We’ve sourced bugs from Dubai,
where they solidify.
Our health department’s wacko,
but don’t you wail and sigh
for warm cicada fry—
so tender, pre-imago!
We found it in Dubai,
knew it was worth a try
for meals, desserts, a snack—oh,
no need to wail and sigh!
Cicadas amplify
our summer treats, muchacho.
But here, as in Dubai,
you can still DIY:
in trees, there is no lack o’
their yammer, wail, and sigh.
(Louder than from Dubai.)
by Julia Griffin
“Teenage Girl Fights Off Bear to Rescue Dogs”
—CBSN
A bear’s been toppled from a fence!—
An unforeseen experience,
Much more impressive than it sounds:
The toppler weighed some hundred pounds,
The bear some thousand (I expect).
But there were young ones to protect!
The human heroine rushed up,
Lunged out, and grabbed one cherished pup,
Two others running in her wake.
That bear had made a big mistake
In failing here to recognize
What YouTube proves to all our eyes,
A fact which should both cheer and scare:
Not every Mama Bear’s a bear.
by Alex Steelsmith
“Beloved TV Actor Gavin MacLeod Dies At Age 90”
—CBS
Fatefully, gratefully,
Gavin the thespian
reached the finale and
graciously bowed;
now we imagine him
winning applause on a
paradisiacal
cumulus cLeod.
by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
“The statue of [colonialist] Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, should be turned to face the
wall in shame, the sculptor Antony Gormley has proposed.”
—The Guardian
“Revere old Cecil Rhodes! It’s not his fault
He helped apartheid prosper!” That’s one view …
“Offload his statue to some distant vault!
Don’t overlook his guilt, he surely knew!”
Encapsulates the view the others take …
Supporters on each Oxford side dig in:
No Rhodes defender wants the bank to break,
Opponents feel besmirched by Cecil’s sin …
The sculptor Gormley, who’s a Cambridge man,
Thinks he knows how to quell this battleground:
Allowing Rhodes on Oxford’s High Street can
Keep both sides happy if he’s turned around,
Exposing his behind to shame and pain—
Now till forever lashed by Oxford rain!
by Iris Herriot
“Artist sells invisible sculpture for over 18K
The 67-year-old explained in a video that ‘you don’t see it but it exists;
it is made of air and spirit.’”
—New York Post
The sculpture I acquired this week
Is necessarily unique:
No empty auction-room caprice,
But true, unspotted masterpiece.
All day I proudly, vainly gaze,
While music ambiently plays
Whose aptitude you’ll quickly gauge:
That famous oeuvre by John Cage.
I’ve done my best to guarantee
My purchase’s pristinity;
Accordingly, there’s not a speck
Of signature upon the cheque.
by Bruce Bennett
“Putting pen to paper at the world’s first-ever silent town crier competition, Britain’s loudest citizens
[were] judged not on the volume and clarity of their shouted cries, but on the content of their
written words.”
—Atlas Obscura
Town criers in silence
With never a shout?
That seems simply dotty.
What is that about?
Well, Jolly Old England
Has just found a way
To judge how well criers
Cry silence today.
Don’t take it from me, folks.
Just read the report.
They’ve gone to extremes
In this “extreme sport.”
The lesson is one
That may serve us all well.
Just say what you have to.
You don’t have to yell.
by Julia Griffin
“Magawa the rat, who was awarded a gold medal for his heroism, is retiring from his job detecting landmines
In a five-year career, the rodent sniffed out 71 landmines and dozens more unexploded items in Cambodia.
But his handler Malen says the seven-year-old African giant pouched rat is ‘slowing down’ as he
reaches old age and she wants to “respect his needs.” …
‘Magawa’s performance has been unbeaten, and I have been proud to work side-by-side with him,’
Malen said.”
—BBC News
All hail to MAGAWA, the star of the fields,
Who sniffs out the worst poor Cambodia yields:
The resolute rodent, found second to none,
Whose tally of landmines is seventy-one.
His regular colleague expresses her pride
At working five years with him, side against side;
But now he’s begun to slow down, she concedes,
And hence she’s concerned with respecting his needs.
So let us applaud as his medal’s conferred
(Each throat is constricted, each eye somewhat blurred):
He’s truly a hero, and evidence that
There is a good MAGA: two-thirds of a rat.
by Alex Steelsmith
“Researchers at Duke University are developing a Smart Toilet to help gastroenterologists diagnose chronic digestive issues… Data is collected with each flush.”
—WBTV
Hickory dickory
Duke University
claims its intelligent
toilet can test
multifactorial
gastrointestinal
ills, though the data seems
hard to digest.
by Julia Griffin
“Argentinian TV reports death of Shakespeare after Covid jab …
[A] newsreader on Canal 26, mixed up the Bard with William ‘Bill’ Shakespeare,
an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who became the second person in the world
to get the Pfizer vaccine.”
—The Guardian
Reflect, ye poets light or weighty,
Upon a year surpassed by none:
Bob Dylan’s reached the age of eighty,
And Shakespeare’s died, aged eighty-one.
by Nina Parmenter
An English drug dealer has been caught after posting a photo on social media of his hand
holding his favorite stilton cheese. Police were able to extract his fingerprints from the photograph.
If your business is handfuls of E’s,
jump on board social media, please,
for our case can be built on
a photo of stilton—
hey, hold up your fingers! Say cheese!
by Bethany Mootsey
“Simone Biles… became the first woman to compete a Yurchenko double pike, a vault so difficult
few men even attempt it. She is pushing the boundaries of her sport… . Yet, based on guidance
from the [International Gymnastics Federation], judges at the U.S. Classic gave her new vault a start
value—the measure of its difficulty—of just 6.6 points. Pretty much everyone agrees that woefully
undervalues the skill.”
—Opinion in USA Today
Simone, all alone in a league of her own,
The goat who can float like a boat in the bay
While the sheep stand and weep, for the water’s too deep,
Simone, rhinestones sewn, braves the waves, sets the tone.
Simone in the zone is a queen on a throne.
Why vote to demote Biley Goat’s deft display?
“We must keep all the sheep from attempting the leap,”
Herders drone in the tone of a dull chaperone.
by Nora Jay
John Cena, who plays a deadly assassin in The Fast and the Furious 9,
“apologised for calling Taiwan ‘a country’ in an interview he gave to a Taiwanese broadcaster early
this month, saying that it was not appropriate.
‘I made a mistake, I must say right now. It’s so so so so so so important, I love and respect Chinese
people,’ Cena said to his 600,000 fans on his Chinese Weibo account. ‘I’m very sorry for my mistakes.
Sorry. Sorry. I’m really sorry. You have to understand that I love and respect China and Chinese people.’”
—The Guardian
His abdomen rustles,
His pectorals shine;
With so many muscles,
There’s no room for spine.
by Alex Steelsmith
“A Waymo minivan also made an aggressive turn at a green light that we would have never taken.
Another failed to go the requested location, dropping us off about a four-minute walk away.”
—ABC News
Heltery-skeltery
self-driving vehicles
will, though their prototypes
keep us entranced,
rattle our faith in their
practicability
till the technology’s
way mo’ advanced.
by Dan Campion
“Who’s an astronaut as private spaceflight picks up speed?”
—AP
I asked my teacher, as a lad
(A ’50s sci-fi nerd),
How “astronaut” was spelled. My bad.
She said, “There’s no such word.”
Imagine! Well, I had to punt.
“A space cadet,” I guess
I wrote. Now scribes again must hunt,
Like me under duress,
For alternates to “astronaut,”
Which rose to honorific
That many claim should not be bought,
But earned by trials terrific
Mere ticket holders have not passed.
“Space tourists”? “Loads that pay”?
When first-stage engines start to blast,
Let’s say, “shipmates who pray.”
by Eddie Aderne
“English dictionary of ancient Greek ‘spares no blushes’ …
The verb χέζω (chezo), translated by Liddell and Scott as ‘ease oneself, do one’s need’,
is defined in the new dictionary as ‘to defecate’ and translated as ‘to shit’; …
βίνέω (bineo) is no longer ‘inire, coire, of illicit intercourse’, but ‘fuck’; λαικάζω (laikazo),
in the 19th-century dictionary translated as ‘to wench’, is now defined as ‘perform fellatio’
and translated as ‘suck cocks’. …[One of the editors, Professor James] Diggle said.
‘We use contemporary English.’”
—The Guardian
Professor James Diggle refuses to niggle:
The verb represented as chezo
He scorns to misread as mere “doing one’s need,”
Just because the Victorians said so.
For Diggle’s not wary but contemporary;
So leave those old tomes on the shelf,
Unless you still blench at words stronger than “wench,”
In which case, pray binei yourself.
