by Julia Griffin
“Fossil of Neanderthal child with Down’s syndrome hints at early humans’ compassion
Skull anatomy shows the boy or girl would have been severely disabled, yet survived until the age of six”
—The Guardian
They were our infancy. They died quite young:
Their lives were painful, as our own would be
Without the legacies we thrive among.
Their ordinary rate of injury
To us looks catastrophic. We assume,
Between all this and long, non-globose brains,
That they were lacking every kind of room
For finer feelings: for the joys and pains
Of kindly love. A much-disabled child;
To waste on this the strength required to care
For other offspring, fit to face the wild:
The cold, the dark, the hunger of the bear?
It must have been impossible, all told!
And yet this child survived to six years old.
by Chris O’Carroll
You say I cooked and ate a dog? You lie!
I deny it. I’m in shock about it.
You say I did a sexual assault?
I’m no church boy. Let’s not talk about it.
by Steven Kent
“‘You’re the sucker, you’re the loser’: 90 miserable minutes of Biden v. Trump”
—The Guardian
If I were to devise a drinking game,
We’d take another shot with each new claim
From candidates who lie or change their tune,
Though clearly we’d be very drunk too soon
And miss debate, perhaps, that weirdly wraps
With flaps regarding golfing handicaps.
by Ellen Hawley McWhirter
(With apologies to the Everly Brothers)
Buy buy gifts!
Buy buy influence!
Six-to-three, it’s a cinch.
And now it’s not a bribe!
Buy buy more gifts, buy buy!
Let’s give them vacays, let’s give them cash,
Expensive dinners, a birthday bash.
They’ll do our bidding, it’s like a dream.
We’ll court their favor, oh how supreme!
Buy buy jewels!
Bibles in public schools
We’ll change all the rules.
There’s nothing we can’t try!
Buy buy more gifts, buy buy!
No more obstruction, you’re free to go.
No women’s healthcare, Wade conquered Roe,
Mugshots are trending, and just you wait!
A few more months and we’ll make things great!
Buy buy gifts!
Buy buy influence!
Six-to-three, it’s a cinch.
And now it’s not a bribe!
Buy buy more gifts, buy buy!
by Julia Griffin
“Mysterious shiny monolith removed from Nevada desert…
“MYSTERIOUS MONOLITH!” a police department post on X said.”
—The Guardian
Hurrah for the shining, itinerant post,
The Monolith, ever mysterious,
Appearing wherever we thirst for it most
(And thirst in Nevada is serious).
Three cheers for the eerie one, mirroring back
The loneliest spots you can grab it at,
In Spain, Wales, Romania (who can keep track?)—
But desert’s its natural habitat.
We’re told that it’s plural—believe if you choose;
We’re told it’s manmade—is that probable?
Of course it’s the line the conventional news
Fobs anyone off with who’s fobbable;
But when you’ve considered its sheerness and sheen,
The luck you’ll require to achieve a view,
The fact its arrivals have never been seen—
You’ll find those beliefs quite naïve of you;
And though I concede that there isn’t a word
That offers a rhyme for or on or with,
I’ll say it again—let the echo be heard:
All hail, the Mysterious Monolith!
by Steven Urquhart Bell
“MP candidates give view on assisted dying at election hustings.”
—Southern Daily Echo
You can’t let people give in to despair.
Wait for the vote—don’t do it then and there.
by Nora Jay
“Rishi Sunak is facing a growing clamour to come clean about the betting scandal engulfing Westminster …
[T]he prime minister was urged to get a grip on the drip-drip of revelations.”
—The Guardian
(After Cole Porter)
Like the drip-drip-drip of the talk-talk
As the polling numbers fall;
Like the tee-tee-hee of the BBC
As the Starmerati maul;
Like the tut-tut-tut of the party
With the case on public view,
The voice of Rishi keeps repeating “Boo, boo, boo!”—
Day and night, why is it so
That the party Whip keeps calling me up to say “Go!”
When the only thing I did
Was bet a trifling hundred quid
About a day—
One, OK?
Night and day, tempers are high,
As the temperature is likely to be in July;
Which is also when we’ll set
The date for our Election Day, you can bet—
So you see,
Why not me?
by Ruth S. Baker
“Eight-year-old pekingese Wild Thang wins World’s Ugliest Dog contest”
—The Guardian
A dog, with anomalous legs or skin,
Unseen by an orthodontist,
Has just won something which ought to win
World’s Ugliest Contest Contest.
by Dan Campion
“NASA Advances Research to Grow Habitats in Space from Fungi”
—NASA
One day the earthbound homeless may
Gaze skyward on clear nights
And know that on some Martian bay
Space tourists see the sights
And Moon-based colonists sleep snug
In cozy mushroom huts.
Earth gravity at work, they’ll shrug,
Aware this world is nuts.
by Bruce Bennett
A marble statue of the Roman Goddess of Wisdom “that greeted students at Wells College
for more than 150 years was accidentally decapitated in the scramble to close the institution
forever… an unavoidable metaphor for the angst surrounding the institution’s sudden closure.”
—The New York Times
A Lady is missing her head.
You’d think she’d be mercifully dead.
But no, She’s alive
and mad as a hive
of hornets, so you should feel Dread!
—Email from “Bird of the Week”
by Iris Herriot
But, when you’re hunting, it’s mute as a stone!
Fan of the bunting? Obsessed with the lazuli?
Soften your grunting and smile at it, cazuli.
by Julia Griffin
For Jack, the Walrus Muse, with apologies to Lewis Carroll
“[M]eet Jill, Australia’s heaviest oyster… [which] now weighs more than 3kg and is about to enter the record books.”
—The Guardian
The Walrus and the Carpenter,
Renowned for charm and skill,
Were luring guileless oysters out
With great success until
They found themselves encountering
A giant known as Jill.
“O mammals!” said this prodigy,
“How nice to see you here!
How healthy, large, and fresh you look!
My children, push me near—
I have, like many of our kind,
Myopia, I fear.”
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Stood frozen, side by side,
Renouncing silently a plan
They wished they’d never tried.
And saw too late that massive shell
Gape very, very wide …
“O Walrus!” grinned the oysterbed,
“O Carpenter! come, come:
Where are your bread and butter now?
Your vinegar? What, dumb?”
And all the answer was a belch
And deep, molluscan “Yum!”
by Paul Lander
Spank. Spank. Spank. Spank. Spank.
Spank. Spank. Spank. Spank. Spank. Spank. Spank.
Spank. Spank. Spank. Spank. Spank.
(a quadruple dactyl*)
by Alex Steelsmith
“[A] dummy passenger… earned several citations for a carpool lane driver… [An officer] discovered
something unusual about the sole passenger. ‘The [plastic] goatee was sharp… just a little too sharp.’”
—UPI
Higgledy-piggledy, jiggery-pokery,
someone who drove with a counterfeit passenger
gave the legitimate, principled drivers who
honestly carpool a reason to carp.
Reading the story, we notice a curious
semi-ironical interrelationship;
though the duplicitous driver undoubtedly
looked like a dummy, the dummy looked sharp.
* For more on this new verse form and other variations on the double dactyl, click here.
by Stephen Gold
“Woman ‘defrauded US company to buy Scottish kilt and gift cards’.”
—The Times
She took the cash, then made a dash
For Scotland’s chilly clime
(Allegedly, although her plea
Is there has been no crime).
The moral’s clear, so listen here:
When thievery’s asserted,
Don’t don the kilt, it may prove guilt—
Our laws must not be skirted.
