Have you heard?

After Reading Too Much Verse One Night, a Young Poet Struggles to Compose Something Original

I sing the bard eclectic,
quoth the shaven troubadour
on his IBM Selectric.
And what's more, so much
depends upon a dead
white chicken glazed
for whom the dinner-bell tolls.
It tolls for cheese.

Glory be to God
for dapper things:
the little lame saloongal,
the sunflower wary of mime.
Had we but whirled enough
the pedals on our wet, black
bikes, we could have overtaken
the best mice of our generation.
April is the crucial month,
when the center cannot hold
the rain-soaked football.

Typist, typist, burning bright,
whose words these are
I think I know.
A pomegranate should not
mean, but become the light
around the bodyguard.
To beam or not to beam,
that is a quest to shun.

Should I get harried?
Should I be good-natured?
My name is Ozzy Mantis,
thing of things. I spent
a season in Helsinki.
Into the alley of debt
strode the sex hunters,
muttering over and over:
I have wasted my life-savings.

by Cliff Saunders

in volume 4 issue 1

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