OTHER PLACES WE MIGHT WANT TO DUMP SOME CHICKENSH*T

by Melissa Balmain

The southern Swedish city of Lund spread stinking chicken-manure on the grounds of a central park to discourage a public celebration there on Thursday. It’s traditionally a big festive day among Swedish students and youth. Gustav Lindblad from Lund’s environmental committee told Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan that “we get the opportunity of fertilising the lawns in the park and, at the same time, it will stink and it may not be so nice to sit and drink beer in the park.” The city says up 30,000 people from different parts of Sweden—mostly students from Lund University—have in previous years gathered to the Stadspark to celebrate Valborg, a spontaneous festival that marks the arrival of spring for Swedes. AFP Photo: Gardener Robert Nilsson gets ready to fertilise lawns in Lund’s Stadsparken park with chicken manure on Thursday.  —The Weekend Australian, May 2, 2020

On beaches and bistros in Fla.
and on barbershops down in the Peach State;
on rib joints in Texas that (wha…?)
soon will be in an easy-to-reach state;
but mostly on anyone who
doesn’t care if his countrymen sicken
for the sake of a Dow point or two,
and tweets sh*t like a flatulent chicken.

Melissa Balmain's poetry and prose have appeared in The American Bystander, The Hopkins Review, Lighten Up Online, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She edits Light, a journal of light verse.  

WAYS TO AVOID BEN SHAPIRO'S TWITTER DISDAIN

by CL Bledsoe and Michael Gushue

Reinvent Mozart as a swastika.
Assert the superior caste of privilege-filled eyes,
while never mentioning your stigmatism.
Beige as the new black.
Be goddamned sure about something.
A hammer called reason to subvert any consideration,
Moral assumption as a knife to cut through the gray.
Go back in time and give Mohammed a hickey.
Dress all seed-vessels in the finest birthing habits.
Never look directly at those who rule us,
but use a mirror to avoid being turned
into stop motion playdough. Recite
The Pledge constantly under your breath:

There is a light that never burns out. I carry it 
under my tongue. When I stand on tiptoe, it will guide 
the unwashed through the wilderness.

CL Bledsoe is the author of seventeen books, most recently the poetry collection Trashcans in Love and the novel The Funny Thing About… . He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter and blogs, with Michael Gushue, at https://medium.com/@howtoeven 

Michael Gushue is co-founder of the nanopress Poetry Mutual Press, and he co-curates the reading series Poetry at the Watergate. His work can be found in journals such as Indiana Review, Third Coast, Redivider, Gargoyle, The Germ, and American Letters & Commentary and his books are Pachinko Mouth, Conrad, Gathering Down Women, and—in collaboration with CL Bledsoe—I Never Promised You A Sea Monkey. He lives in the Brookland neighborhood (“a shabby and decidedly unhip neighborhood” —New York Times) of Washington, D.C. 

TURMINOLOGY

by Max Gutmann

"What are your genetics, sir?"    

--Ben Shapiro to Ms. Zoey Tur on Dr. Drew on Call July 16, 2015

To refer to Ms. Tur
With a “sir,” I aver,
Is a scurrilous slur
We should learn to deter.

You infer it's a blur?
That the burden's on her
To insure, as it were,
That her herness is pure?

Use the term she'd prefer,
Not the grrr of a cur.
It's like cursing, I'm sure.
Be a person; defer.

Why be churlish? What fer?
You would certainly err
If you were to refer
To Ms. Tur with a “sir.”


Max Gutmann has contributed to Light Quarterly and other publications.