Sunday, August 4, 2013
Sunday Poetry
“Pregnant Man Gives Birth to Twins”
Headline in a tabloid newspaper
With love and tender joy he felt each toss
and tug within his fecund cavity
And so, with happy heart he told his boss,
“I’ll need paternal leave for my maternity.”
Beneath his three-piece suit he grew and grew
as month by month his secret blossomed forth.
Each morning he arose and threw and threw
his breakfast, sickened by a twinning girth.
The Mrs. gave him sympathy and care
and coached him on his breathing and his pant.
She told him, “Fear not, Love, I will be there,
unless I have to work late, then I can’t.”
Love’s labor’s never lost when life begins,
and brave men, such as these, give birth to twins.
--S.K.
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6 comments:
What fun! It almost sounds like me in one of my more whimsical moods.
Thank you for placing a garland of laughter 'round the neck of an otherwise sober Sunday afternoon.
(Do you suppose there could be any Freudian significance to my almost invariably typing SINDAY, when I mean SUNDAY? Glad I caught it in time!)
You may already know this piece, Ms Shaw, but nevertheless, I think it belongs beside your own equally delightful sonnet:
__________ Purgatory __________
And suppose the darlings get to Mantua,
suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin
with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a
displeasing cockerel, there’s egg yolk on his chin.
His seedy robe’s aflap, he’s got the rheum.
Poor dear, the cooking lard has smoked her eyes.
Another Montague is in the womb
although the first babe’s bottom’s not yet dry.
She scrolls a weekly letter to her Nurse
who dares to send a smock through Balthasar,
and once a month, his father posts a purse.
News from Verona? Always news of war.
Such sour years it takes to right this wrong!
The fifth act runs unconscionably long.
~ Maxine Kumin (1925 - )
Oh Dear!
Would Romeo and Juliet really end that way? I never would have imagined it so!
But it was very nice of Maxine Kumin to imagine it for us!
How delightful, as is "To a Daughter Smitten," which is just as clever as Kumin's sonnet.
Thanks for posting these.
WHOOPS! How clumsy of me! I wanted to delete the duplication of Purgatory, and zapped To a Daughter Smitten, instead. Shame on me! Especially after you said such kind things about it.
With your kind indulgence here it is again:
_____ To a Daughter Smitten _____
Desist, my darling dimwit; do not wed
On impulse born of weather fair this June.
No one should be by sun and roses led.
Only till you’ve weathered a typhoon,
Tornado, or at least a spate of sleet,
Will your prospective mate reveal his soul.
Easy times glide by, deny, delete
Demands that demonstrate a nature whole.
Intoxicated by the scents of spring
No common sense could nonsense overwhelm.
Joy seems imminent, yet blistering
Unhappiness might well be at the helm.
None a nun would have you be, and yet
Eden is not ours to gain, my pet.
~ FreeThinke (1995)
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