Annunciation

A pregnant teenage girl isn't rare, never has been,

nor are the frantically perplexed parents who can't

explain certain events. She's been such a good girl, obedient,

as religious as a 14-year-old can be. Her fiancé is

as amazed as the parents, hurt and confused

that his intended has violated his trust and their commitment

to each other. When they can finally talk, when all

the gossip has died down, they confess to each other

what neither can believe.

Angelic messengers now are

co-conspirators with teenagers.

His friends doubt his sanity and her explanation.

He could have done better, they say.

She always did have a manipulative streak.

Her family don't know what to think, finding

this delicate balance of belief, incredulity, and reality

impossible to manage, so improbable that

it must be holy, separate from all others

but so similar to the holy improbability

of any child's birth.

Poem on a narrow piece of paper

How deeply can even a poet

go on a piece of paper only

two inches wide? No room

for large images, the kind that

take up the entire camera

view. Reader, you will have

to work harder, because the

poet is squeezed by its

format. Williams did a lot (or

did he?) with "The Red

Wheelbarrow," and then there

are the cute and louche

limericks that barely take up this

width. But for us of less

ability and lower

imagination, there is not

much room to work. In the

name of obscure scribblers

everywhere, though, I am

giving it a go. Just don't get

your hopes up too high.

Forget about enjambment.

Imagine rather that this poem

is full of the fine detail that

wider poems have; an easy

meter that sounds natural,

internal rhyme that is scary

for its surprising appearance,

and a conclusion.

The Home-made Gum Case

I complained to my children that someone

had taken all the gum out of

its tidy packaging and deposited it in the canister,

thus removing from it any form of identification. “Is this

Fruity Blast or Wintergreen? Who knows?” Probably

I said too much, maybe too hard. Anyway.

By the next day my cannily-artistic middle child

had unbidden made for each family member, out of index card

and scented marker, a gum carrying case, personalized,

its flip-top lid secured with Velcro.

Problem mostly solved. And the part that isn’t,

what can you do but give it over to grace, to thanks

that your children see a chance for redemption

where you see only chaos? What matters,

they say to us with their offerings of greater understanding,

is that we know what each other needs,

and that we see to it by including ourselves in the transaction.

You will have a small funeral

The idea sounds so sad,

only a few to see you off, the last remnants

of those who knew you at your fullest, their numbers

drained by the swamps of old age, accident,

illness, even violence. Say you live to be

a hundred, as so many will in the age of

nanomedicine and robotic surgery, and having gone

away from northern states' snows, are now in Florida,

or New Mexico, or even Texas,

and there you come to the end. Shipping's

expensive, either for your remains or for those

who would see you buried, so the southern locals will

attend to you, they who knew you for a mere

twenty years or so, and they don't go to many

funerals, since there will be so many to choose from.

Hopefully, the lead pastor will be there, not just her

assistant, out of respect for your cockeyed contributions

to the church, and likely appearing will be

your wife if she's up to it, and the self-proclaimed

fogeys who drank coffee with you on cool mornings.

It will be a sunny day -- that's why you had moved there --

and the temperature will be on its daily rise,

so the service will be brief,

and everybody will go back to the church for

fruit salad and turkey sandwiches. The church will be empty

by two, the mourners counting their blessings and wondering

how many more they'll see before

their own. Yes, you will have a small funeral,

yet it will be larger than the time

they rolled in place the stone of a borrowed tomb,

not knowing then how silly a funeral really is.

Top Ten Country-Western Song Titles for Bread Loaf School of English

10. “D-E-C-O-N-S-T-R-U-C-T-I-O-N”

9. “My Heroes Have Always Been English Metaphysical Poets”

8. “I’ve Got Friends in Ivory-Towered Places”

7. “Take This Job and Shove It Into Tenure Track”

6. “All My Exes are Existentialists”

5. “Bubba Shot The O.E.D.”

4. “Good-hearted Person of Uncertain Gender in Love with Socially-irresponsible Person of Indecisive Gender”

3. “I Never Promised You a Favorable Review in the Times Literary Supplement.”

2. “That’s My Unreliable Narration and I’m Sticking To It”

1. “I’m Going Back to a Better Class of Neurotic, Self-doubting Literary Wannabes”