Mastering the Art of French Cooking
If Oscar Wilde
had met Julia Child,
would he have learned to make
tarts for tarts’ sake?
Lip Service
Our German teacher thought us flip
if any student called him “Lipp.”
“Show some respect!” he’d scold the kid.
“Call me Herr Lipp.” And so we did.
Decline and Fall
Now that my friends, through spills and slips,
have had a rash of broken hips,
I tell them when I write or call,
“I hope you have a lovely autumn.”
Susan McLean is a professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota. She has written a chapbook and two books of poetry, and has translated a collection of over 500 Latin epigrams by the poet Martial.