by Rusty Canyon
Royals: what we’ll never be!
We wake up late, don’t watch TV,
don’t give a damn for history.
No magic and no mystery
pervades the spaces we decree
the bastions of our liberty.
(It’s time for lunch? It won’t be free.)
The traffic stretches to the sea.
by Chris O’Carroll
Electric Kool-Aid acid tested prose—
A pyrotechnic style that zings, bursts, glows,
Word spasms, verbal throes and lava flows—
Dressed up the prim tsk-tsk outlook he chose
In cranky volumes written to expose
The trends he tagged as fast as they arose.
His kandy-kolored tangerine-flake prose
And dude-with-razzmatazz-aplenty clothes
Might sometimes tempt a reader to suppose
That his persona—showboat wiz who knows
More than most others how the story goes—
Is semi-right stuff, semi-desperate pose.
by Bruce Bennett
“Annabelle Lee ’18 Named Student Commencement Speaker”—Wells College memo to faculty
It was just a little while ago
In a college by a lake
When a maiden was picked whom you may know
For a speech, for Heaven’s sake.
I’m sure that speech will be mighty fine,
As such speeches always are,
But honestly, Mr. Poe and I
Think that’s pretty damn bizarre!
by Barbara Loots
No one frightens
more than Greitens.
Ethics? Sleazy.
Morals? Easy.
Ego: swollen.
Donors: stolen.
Law defier.
Smarmy liar.
Campaign cheater.
Girlfriend beater.
Blackmail, honey?
Don’t be funny!
Greitens’ buddies
slip him money.
Secret texts.
Lawyers vexed.
Oh, Missouri,
please, please hurry!
Just impeach him.
That’ll teach him!
(Maybe not–
the little snot
aims hell-bent
for President.)
by Bruce Bennett
Bright yellow heads, upstanding in the green,
dispensing cheer and gladdening the scene,
a part of me now wishes you were gone,
because it’s clearly time to mow the lawn!
by Brendan Beary
“Canadian zoo faces charges after taking bear out for ice cream at Dairy Queen“—The Guardian
Those zoo folks in Alberta,
They really are the worst—
To take their bear out on the town,
But go for ice cream first!
For Mr. Kodiak, et al.,
Had plans to get some chow
At that Moroccan place downtown;
He won’t be hungry now!
They’ve dined out many times before—
Tandoori, tacos, Thai—
But saved dessert for last; that’s been
The rule they’ve traveled by.
He’s got a massive appetite,
As one can understand,
And thus he’s apt to gorge upon
Whatever’s first at hand,
But now they’re at the Dairy Queen
Before they realize—Oops!
He’s asking for a sundae with
One hundred sixty scoops!
And now the whole town’s mad at you;
Sometimes you just can’t win.
Zookeepers, heed the lesson here,
And next time, order in.
by Robert Schechter
Colluded?
Who did?
I didn’t.
You did.
by Dan Campion
With Avenatti on the case
The Trump defenders hurried
To catch him in a paper chase
And keep the bodies buried.
He had more paper, though, than they,
More air time, quicker wits.
Can’t say, yet, who’ll get put away.
Here’s where the matter sits:
In medias, where Rudi raves
And Cohen slams cab doors
While Michael Avenatti paves
The way to two-to-fours.
by Mae Scanlan
Whickery whackery,
Columnist George F. Will
Said awful things about
VP Mike Pence.
Called him a toady,
And soooo oleaginous;
Unhesitatingly,
That makes good sense.
by Dan Campion
His lawyers leave, advise in vain,
Or steer him toward the pillory;
Poor Donald might as well retain
His old friends Bill and Hillary.
by David Smith
Good riddance to that snarling showman
ICE director Thomas Homan.
He himself now steals away
Who stole away the children of
Asylum seekers to display
An iron fist in iron glove.
Fearing for his confirmation
(Or causing fear in those above),
He puts this face on abdication:
Says, with irony sublime,
He’s off to spend more family time.
Once, this prince of brutal hacks
Told immigrants to watch their backs.
Now they, and I, will find it is
A deal more pleasant watching his.
by Jerome Betts
(The secretary general of the United Kingdom
Independence Party (UKIP*) compared it to
the Black Death after its vote collapsed in the
English council elections held on May 3, 2018. )
The analogy’s crude, but quite just.
Though UKIP has bitten the dust
Its toxin remains
And infects Tory brains
So they think leaving Europe’s a must.
*Pronounced “YOU-kip.”
by Brendan Beary
“‘My whole life has been a lie’: Sweden admits meatballs are Turkish”—The Guardian
A shout-out to our brethren to the south—it’s time we brought ’em in;
What we’ve been calling “Swedish meatballs” actually are Ottoman.
Three hundred years ago, they reached the Baltic from the Bosporus
(But no, we don’t intend to give them back—don’t be preposberous!)
by Chris O’Carroll
We’ve made a great bid for the World Cup
And we fully expect to be backed
By countries that value our friendship
And want to avoid getting whacked.
Our bid for the World Cup’s the best one
By far. We expect strong support
From all of the best friends we count on
And are doing our best to extort.
by Jay Rogoff
(After Yeats’s “For Anne Gregory”)
Never could a nation,
Writhing in despair
At “sad” and “fake” pronouncements
Shot tweeting through the air,
Love you for your governing
And not your orange hair.
“But taking my Propecia,
I’ll over-comb with care
And go and bully Kim and Moon,
Giving them such a scare
They’ll opt for strolling arm in arm,
And not my orange hair.”
I met five prior Presidents
Who solemnly did swear
That they had read the Bill of Rights
And could as one declare
That Nobels go for bringing peace,
And not your orange hair.