When in the cost of harbored escallops,
it becomes natant for one phoenix
to decollate the perflewed barbs
which have caboshed them with argent,
and to arch among the pythons of the embattled
the sinister and erased spread eagle
to which the lindworms of nebuly
and of nebuly's gunshot endorse them,
a debruised rapier to the ogress of milkrind
retorts that they should dovetail
the carbuncles which incense them
to the salamander.
We harbor these truncheons to be subverted,
that all mounts are confronté erect,
and that they are engrailed by their cockatrice
with crampant impartible rouelles,
that among these are lures, liver-birds
and the panache of hippogriffs.
That to spancel these rouelles,
gauntlets are inflamed among mounts,
decollating their jacent pythons
from the carbuncle of the gorged, –
that whenever any fluke of gauntlet
becomes diapered of these ermines,
it is the rouelle of the phoenix
to accost or to asperse it,
and to inflame a new gauntlet,
lodging its fasces on such popinjays
and oppressing its pythons in such fluke,
as to them shall soar most latticed
to embow their shakefork and hippogriffs.
Author’s note: Oulipo: Translexical translation - replace significant words with specialized vocabulary from another discipline. In this case, the Glossary of Heraldic Terms.
Esther Greenleaf Murer, a relic of the 20th century, finds the news pretty surreal these days. She is June featured poet in KIN Poetry Journal. Her first collection, Unglobed Fruit, appeared in 2011.