by Dan Campion
“Is it sus that Merriam-Webster just added pumpkin spice? …
[Merriam-Webster’s] editors aren’t the only ones trying to keep up
with the ever-changing English language.”
—NPR
It isn’t sus, but may be janky,
All this verbal hanky-panky,
Adding pumpkin spice and plushie,
Rendering the language mushy.
So say dumbphone cranks like me,
Still dialing “O” semantically.
by Paul Lander
It’s so damn hot
Listened to AC/DC
Just for the AC
by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
“Goalkeeper sent off in FA Cup qualifier for urinating in hedge”
—The Guardian
Position Number One’s where goalies play
In soccer. Here you needn’t sweat too much,
Defending, if the action’s far away,
Down by the goal of your opponents. Such
Long hours of doing little make you bored.
Intent on killing time, you rehydrate,
Not noticing how fast your water gourd
Gets drained until your urge to urinate
Makes this no piddling matter, though it is,
And forces you to find a hedge at which
To point away from thorns and have a whiz
The ref can’t see, until opponents snitch,
Ejecting you from play—the man in goal
Red-carded doing Number One, your role!
by Philip Kitcher
Proud post-war Britons never would have thought
that decades of decline would strangle us.
Our herniated nation needs support—
but will the right prosthesis be … a Truss?
by Philip Kitcher
“King Charles III reportedly considered changing his regnal name to distance himself from Charles I & II”
—Fox News
Can any Charles enjoy a happy reign?
Do the first two show how the third must fare?
At his ripe age, not many years remain
to lose his head, or die without an heir.
by Dan Campion
“Super Long-Distance NASA Fix Restores [45-Year-Old] Voyager 1,
Roughly 15 Billion Miles Away”
—ScienceAlert.com
Would techs say, I can fix it, why replace?
If our old laptops flew in outer space?
by Claudia Gary
“NIH-funded pediatric COVID-19 testing study finds [children as young as 4] can self-swab”
—National Institutes of Health
It took a lot of funding
to see if they could do it,
but numbers have been trending
that we could not intuit:
Swabbing inside one’s nose,
then seeing that it’s twirled,
are skills we can disclose
to children of this world.
by Clyde Always
“A Nebraska man paddled 38 miles down the Missouri River in an 846-pound pumpkin”
—NBC News
Bibbidi, Bobbidi,
Hansen of Omaha
grew, from a seedling, the
vessel he oared.
One might assume that this
sexagenarian—
snug in a pumpkin—is
out of his gourd.
by Steven Kent
“Sharks are ‘walking’ on land to… escape warming in the Pacific Ocean”
—Daily Mail
I saw Jaws at the mall as a kid.
It was scary; I ran home and hid.
So I don’t care to see
A shark walk, no sirree—
Captain Quint, do that thing you once did!
by Julia Griffin
“A centuries-old cactus survived everything; then summer rains came.”
—The Washington Post
Long have I stood here in old Arizona:
Nobody knows the mirages I’ve seen,
Holding my fingers up high like a loner,
Roping the sunlight and working it green.
Never the heat nor the dryness could hurt me:
Proudly I bore it when others would fry;
Now comes the rain and my tissues desert me;
Broken at last in my spurs I must lie.
Ages I’ve known, though your estimates vary;
Mourn for me now where I made my last stand;
Oh bury me deep in what’s left of the prairie;
Wave your farewell to a faithful Old Hand.
by Chris O’Carroll
“[Researchers] report that some macaques frequently rub or tap stones around their genitals… .
In other words, the monkeys appear to engage in ‘a form of self-directed, tool-assisted masturbation’ …”
—The New York Times
The macaques have been getting their rocks off,
Using tools to help bring their macoques off.
Monkey biology
Thrives on geology.
Rubbing stones on their zones knocks their socks off.
by Steve Bremner
(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)
“[Joseph Henney’s] emotional support animal is an alligator. They sleep in the same bed…
and when Henney takes him to the farmers market, WallyGator gives hugs to shoppers—
as long as they are okay with being that close to a 70-pound, 5½-foot reptile
with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.“
—The Washington Post
How doth this crocodilian,
Who hugs but never bites,
Get followed by a million
On social media sites!
How amiably he seems to grin,
How well controls his jaws,
And folds each Philadelphian in
His gently greeting claws!
by Alex Steelsmith
“Ukrainian officials say [several hundred Chechen soldiers] fight alongside the country’s military…”
—AP
“The model for Putin’s hyper-brutal Ukraine invasion… [is] the style of warfare [Russia] used in Chechnya.”
—Asia Times
Ruthlessly, truthlessly,
Vladimir’s strategy
triumphed; the Chechens were
crushed and perplexed.
Soon the unmerciful
Machiavellian
glared at Ukraine and said,
“You’ll be annext.”
Readily, steadily,
Chechen expatriates
now give Ukrainian
efforts a boost,
pledging their services
militaristically;
Vladimir’s Chechens have
come home to roost.
by Philip Kitcher
Few people praise
the Law’s delays.
A special master
won’t make it faster.
by Steven Urquhart Bell
“What’s so wrong with having long hair when you’re over 50?”
—The Telegraph
My hair is long; I’m fifty-four—
The type of thing that some deplore.
I hope it reaches to the floor
Before I go with Charon.
Well, what’s the point in growing old
If not to not do what you’re told?
So my reply to those who scold
Is—Keep your bloody hair on.