Host: Paco Marquez
Nothing Ode Unto the Sun
We limericists and sonneteers
Salute each day with hearty cheers;
With hearty cheers and verse we greet her,
And seasonings of rhyme and meter;
With meter, rhyme, alliteration,
And substance, too, in moderation.
If meaning’s mean, we see no crime
In falling back on facile rhyme,
But if it’s fancy stuff you want,
Synecdoche and enjambment
Are used. (You see? We like that trick;
A staple of prosodic shtick.)
Of each new day, we poets sing,
Yet need not say a bloody thing.
Carlos Alcalá
Danse Russe
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,–
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,–
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
William Carlos Williams
