by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

“This beer pump lets you pour a pint by reading your brain”
—Metro

To pour the perfect pint of beer, you need
Heroic mental focus, nothing more:
Electric signals from your cortex feed
Perceptions of the pint you hope to pour,
Encoded, to the reader of your mind—
Robotic barman Homer, who works out,
For you, how low the glass should be inclined,
Exactly, and how fast the beer should spout,
Correctly … but beware of drinking late:
The pint of bitter with a perfect head
Pours only if you fully concentrate.
If you’re half-plastered when your mind is read,
Neuronal signals from your EEG
Turn beer to froth—and brew catastrophe!

By Steve Bremner

“As in previous years, the Perfect Bracket intelligently selects upsets by projecting each
individual matchup from the ground up … Of course, you could also fill out 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 brackets
and guarantee a win in your pool by accounting for every possible outcome…”
—The Washington Post

Hackety brackety
March Madness analysts
Spin calculations till
They—and we?—drop.

Then again, many might
Find the alternative
Bracketologically
Over-the-top.

by Marshall Begel

“[World Wrestling Entertainment] in talks to legalize betting on scripted matches”
—CNBC

We’re going to King Lear tonight.
I’ve ranked the daughters’ merits.
I’m betting fifty dollars that
Cordelia inherits.

by Steven Kent

“NASA tracking asteroid that could ruin Valentine’s Day in 2046”
—The Guardian

From science, now some gloomy expectations:
In years to come I’m fated for frustrations.
All dashed, my hopes of intimate relations;
I guess I’ll call and cancel reservations.

by Dan Campion

“Meta to Lay Off 10,000 More Employees, Mark Zuckerberg Says”
—Variety

Who’s “Meta” in my universe?
I’ll keep my goggles on!
Dear Zuck will smile and fill my purse,
We’ll sail the Amazon,
Piranhas all around our boat,
But he won’t play the slob
By dunking me to keep afloat:
I still will have a job.

by Alex Steelsmith

“Code compliance official finds alligator in North Carolina attic…
‘The workers having lunch… kind of laughed at me when I told them…’
[the official said].”
—UPI

Happily, snappily,
skeptical contractors
saw the official as
someone to mock,

certain his finding was
non-crocodilian—
though they considered his
story a croc.

Munchily, crunchily,
lunch-eating laborers,
lucky they hadn’t been
chewed into shreds,

chewed on their sandwiches;
unmetaphorically
speaking, the story was
over their heads.

by Chris O’Carroll

“Enshrined in DeSantis lore is an episode from four years ago: During a private plane trip
from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C…. DeSantis enjoyed a chocolate pudding dessert—
by eating it with three of his fingers, according to two sources familiar with the incident.”
—The Daily Beast

Ron eats pudding with his fingers.
Where he touches, his mark lingers.
You may find his prints the next
Time you read a history text—
Book with yummy chocolate smears
Blotting out plantation years,
Shielding Florida’s white youth
From the unsweet taste of truth.

by Steven Kent

“King Charles gives Prince Edward ‘Duke of Edinburgh’ title”
—The Guardian

Prince Ed will never sit upon my throne,
So he deserves a dukedom of his own.
The job description’s really not exact—
No work’s required of any kind, in fact.
(These titles we invent as we see fit
And tell ourselves the world might give a spit.)

by Jerome Betts

“A former [government] adviser… has sparked anger after saying sheep ‘have got to go’
from the UK’s hillsides. … [Among other things, he notes that] ‘Sheep are not native to Britain.'”
—The Independent

Yes, ban the toxic bleaters,
These woolly herbage-eaters
Not native to wet islands
But sprung from arid highlands.
Crank up the propaganda
And send them to . . . Rwanda?

by Clyde Always

“Radiographic camera containing radioactive material still missing in Houston…
Authorities believe the device… was taken from a locker in the back of a construction vehicle.”
—Fox 26 Houston

A camera containing
some radioactive
material vanished
with nary a trace.

Good news for the bandits
avoiding detectives:
What’s highly unlikely?
A break in the case.

by Steven Urquhart Bell

“Great apes deliberately spin to become dizzy, say researchers”
—BBC News

It’s sort of what we used to do at school:
You birled round and round until you got
So dizzy that you wobbled and collapsed,
A helpless heap of giggles, on the spot.

I’ve never been nostalgic for my youth—
The passing of it doesn’t make me blub—
But if I was as unselfconscious now,
I’d save a bloody fortune in the pub.

by Kevin Ahern

A time zone for the moon, it’s said
Will sync their clocks to chime
But will they turn those clocks ahead
For moonlight saving time?

by Julia Griffin

“Giving the Middle Finger Is a ‘God-Given’ Right, a Quebec Judge Says”
—The New York Times

When God made Adam out of dirt,
He did not make him linger
But kept directions quick and curt:
“This is a middle finger.

“I’ll give away your favorite bone
(I’ve got a special rivet),
But as for this, it’s yours alone:
It’s up to you to give it.

“This central digit lets you see
(And seeing is believing),
That giving now and then may be
Still better than receiving.”

by Philip Kitcher

“‘Ridiculous’: opponents pour scorn on Boris Johnson’s plan to knight his father”
—The Guardian

Large donations to the nation
should receive a rich reward:
elevation in your station
to become a Knight or Lord.

Dad deserves the highest honors,
every Briton should agree—
he outstrips all other donors
with his greatest gift … that’s ME!

by Alex Steelsmith

“[Octopuses] were caught on camera throwing shells, silt, and algae… [Targets included] the underwater cameras.
This is the first time throwing behavior has been reported among octopuses. Though scientists aren’t certain of the
motivation, it may have something to do with ‘the octopus equivalent of personal space’…”
—National Geographic

Tentacle-tentative
octopus researchers
aiming their cameras are
shrewdly repelled;

breaching the spaces that
octopi occupy,
over-inquisitive
humans get shelled.

Suddenly-thuddenly,
curious scientists
met with projectiles are
shocked and alarmed,

having discovered in
nontheoretical
terms that the creatures are
very well armed.