by Dan Campion
“Kevin McCarthy Wants You to Believe He Has No Idea What QAnon Is”
—Vice News
Let’s seed the Senate and the House
With Laggard, Lunatick, & Louse,
And someone in cross-garter’d Hose,
To keep the Others on their Toes;
Plant boors who love Conspiracy,
Hate, Mayhem, & Contumely—
To prick their Fellows toward Good-Sense
& Virtu! Surely, Ages Hence
Shall take from us Example fit,
Their Congresses, Assemblies split
’Twixt Saint, Knave, Sage, & Tangle-Wit.
by Ruth S. Baker
“In the search for Covid protection, Cormac the ‘extremely charismatic’ llama may hold a key
The llama has provided nanobodies that effectively prevent infection…”
—The Guardian
“In a high security laboratory in Sydney …, virologist Stuart Turville found …
‘A beautiful, immunological unicorn …
[with] the most amazing Covid response I’ve ever seen.’
The unicorn is a 50-year-old father of three named Damian…”
—The Guardian
Immunological Unicorn
And Charismatic Llama:
Sweet blessings for a world forlorn!
Their nanobodies have been shorn
With no to-do or drama,
For bipeds lacking hoof or horn.
“What luck for them that we were born!”
Sighs Damian, Immunicorn,
To Cormac, Llama-Charma.
by Pat D’Amico
(in a state in Washington State)
At the crack of dawn, my ride, I’m hitching.
My trigger finger’s poised and itching.
I can’t afford another miss.
I do not need the stress of this.
Who could have known; who could have guessed
The vaccine rollout’s Wild, Wild West?
I scroll and click but all for naught—
There is no spot to take a shot.
by Bruce Bennett
I sit around and eat.
What else is there to do?
I rarely leave my seat.
I sit around and eat,
an act that I repeat
each time as if it’s new.
I sit around and eat.
What else is there to do?
Sometimes I stand and sigh
and walk around the room.
It helps the time go by.
Sometimes I stand and sigh,
then I remember why:
it’s time for one more Zoom.
Sometimes I stand and sigh,
but I don’t leave my room.
What else is there to do?
I sit around and eat.
I look for something new,
but can’t think what to do.
There’s always Zoom it’s true,
but that feels like defeat!
Yet, what else can I do?
I sit around. I eat.
by Kevin Ahern
O whither goest, minimoon?
We hardly got to know ya.
We’re sure you’ve been surveying all
The crap down here below ya.
You’re flying off before we’ve had
The chance to even name ya—
But given what you’ve seen on Earth
No one down here could blame ya.
by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
“Leeds ferret survives 100 minutes in washing machine”
—BBC
Old clothes make such a cozy place to doss,
Next to my humans’ reassuring scents—
Especially before a wash and toss:
That’s when inviting scents are most intense! …
One cycle starts. Door closing stops a draught.
Unfazed by wash and spin, I fall asleep,
Gyrating in a dream of shipwrecked craft
Hurled mightily upon the ocean deep …
Bent over me, a doctor shakes his head:
“A lung collapsed,” says he, “so I can give
No more than one per cent you’re not soon dead” …
Don’t underrate this ferret’s will to live!
I‘m one tough Bandit, and I know that I’m
The cleanest living ferret of all time!
by Eddie Aderne
“The Great Gatsby is out of US copyright and fans of Fitzgerald’s novel have rushed to pay tribute
with new books and fanfiction. What does it mean for the novel’s legacy?”
—The Guardian
Yes, Gatsby has turned out all right:
Released from the copyright blight,
More Daisy, more Jay
Are flowing our way;
We rush to this longed-for green light,
And so we beat on, every mast
Submerged by the current at last:
However we mourn,
We’re sure to be borne
Back ceaselessly into the past.
by Dan Campion
“Discoveries at the edge of the periodic table: First ever measurements of einsteinium”
—Phys.org
While politicians haw and hem
And talking heads lace into them
As [bleep] fan ups in rpm,
Some chemists make, far from that scrum,
New measures of einsteinium:
E.g., “bond distance,” which may yield
Yet further breakthroughs in the field.
We ought to celebrate, I’d say,
The scientists who spend their day
Sequestered from the common fray
And hearken to the different drum
Of measuring einsteinium.
by Julia Griffin
“Dante’s descendant to take part in ‘retrial’ of poet’s 1302 corruption case
Seven centuries after guilty verdict in Florence,
Sperello di Serego Alighieri [noted astrophysicist]
to help test whether poet’s conviction would stand today”
—The Guardian
At slightly more than midway through man’s life
(I’m sixty-nine), I feel it time to clear
My forebear’s honor, smeared through Guelphic strife.
Ah, probably the journalists will sneer,
But Alighieris don’t forget a wrong.
This now has passed its seven hundredth year:
The Empire’s gone (alas, the Pope’s still strong),
And still that vile conviction shames and brands—
And Florence the Ungrateful goes along.
Well, his descendant, as of now, demands
That right be done. It isn’t hard to parse:
Judges, great Dante’s name is in your hands!
Fighters, he wrote, find Paradise on Mars:
At least a heaven-gazer understands
That cosmic stubbornness that moves the stars.
by Bruce McGuffin
It’s Valentine’s Day, should I buy you more flowers?
Red roses can cost quite a lot.
A poetry book? Stolen kisses in bowers?
Or something that grows in a pot?
If you weren’t on a diet then candy would do.
Yes, candy’s the best, it would be
The perfect expression of my love for you,
Because then you would share it with me.
by Nina Parmenter
As Boris Johnson reveals that the new “made in the UK” strain of coronavirus “may be”
30% more deadly, the nation wonders what to do with that information.
Should I tighten my mask by three notches
and scrub til my palms are gone?
Should I cut down my frivolous outings
by a third of precisely none?
Should I distance by eight foot, not six foot
and then firmly resolve to be
more scared in the still before sunrise
by a factor of 1.3?
Should I ramp up the size of my sourdough?
Go from three mugs of wine to four?
As I juggle the schooling and Zooming,
should I shrivel inside some more?
Should I work more at missing my mother
and then firmly resolve to be
more cross with the wankers of Whitehall
by a factor of 1.3?
by Chris O’Carroll
(To the tune of “C Is for Cookie”)
G is for geode
That look a lot like me.
Googly-eyed and grinning,
It look a lot like me.
Me like eating cookie,
And cookie start with C,
But Cookie Monster geode start with G.
Oh, Cookie Monster geode start with G.
by Julia Griffin
for Tam
“Goat Attacks Man, Lurks in Background As Paramedics Help Victim in Video
Footage of the incident … showed ambulance staff attempting to get the man
onto a stretcher, as the goat quietly lurked in the background. …
It remains unclear whether the goat was provoked.”
—Newsweek
I find, when human beings irk,
It’s best to lunge and then to lurk.
I butt them, yes; don’t think I shirk;
But lurking too is vital work.
So was this incident a quirk,
Or automatic fetlock-jerk?
Was I provoked, or just berserk?
Here’s all you need to know: I lurk.
by Alex Steelsmith
Biggledy-wiggledy
Biden the President
finally, after a
50-year climb,
summits, though nearly an
octogenarian.
Was he, till now, only
Biden his time?
by Ruth S. Baker
“Crochet artist turns viral Bernie Sanders image into a doll that sells for $20,000”
—The Guardian
Since the viewing public loves
Bernie Sanders’ woolly gloves,
Surely more than mere glad-handers
Would enjoy a woolly Sanders?
It’s the finest gift purveyed:
Crotchety Old Man, Crocheted.