RIZZ ON RISE

by DeWitt Henry

Got rizz? The actor Tom Holland claimed to have none, sending the internet into a tizzy and inadvertently propelling the slang term to victory as Oxford’s Word of the Year. Photo: Araya Doheny/ Getty Images via The New York Times, December 3, 2023

Credit...Araya Doheny/Getty Images via The New York Times, December 3, 2023

Newly listed as noun
from cha-RIS-ma.

The power to captivate,
charm, compel, lead,
sway, stir, and attract 
mass followings.

Jeepers, creepers,
where’d you get those eyes?
How they hypnotize!

Personal magnetism.  It!
Grace.  Magic.  Presence.  Genius. 
Brand.  Whiz of a wiz 
in the sleight-of-hand biz.

Pot-bellied roue, quarterback,
or material girl. Swami
or clown: media messiahs,
though diz-dained by Orwellians,
have become so common
that abbreviation names 
their rise, claim, and fizz.

DeWitt Henry’s recent books are Restless For Words: Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2023), a new U.S. edition of Foundlings: Found Poems From Prose (with art by Ruth K. Henry) and Trim Reckonings: Poems, both from Pierian Springs Press in 2023. He was the founding editor of Ploughshares and is Prof. Emeritus at Emerson College.

ON BARS

by DeWitt Henry

Source: Cagle

A.G. Bill Barr
should be disbarred
and/or spend time
behind bars or
drinking at them,
both earnest and glib.
doing biddings of
our worst President,
bar none.

For lack of Barack,
step up, be heard;
raise the bar of expectations.
Climb the barricades.
High jump, pole-jump:
clear the bar.
Cross the bar.

Nearly half of us
fear barbarian hordes,
beards and all (unless
us is them).  Seek to
bar the gate, build barriers.
Keep us over barrels, where
barrels are meant for
storing and protecting,
e.g. over Niagara;
or for shooting fish,
or empty ones for noise.

The BAR man sights down
his ungainly weapon
(though Browning Automatic Rifle
has nothing to do with “baros,”
Greek for weight).

Bars of gold, candy, or soap.
Bars of music and rank.
Barcode.  Bar-
gain.  Crow, salad,
barbell and barometer.
Stars and bars forever.

Barbed.  Barred.

Democracy amok.

DeWitt Henry’s most recent prose collection is Sweet Marjoram: Notes and Essays (MadHat, 2018).  A new collection, Endings and Beginnings: Family Essays, is scheduled for 2020 from MadHat.  Poems have appeared in Ibbetson Street, On the Seawall, Plume, Muddy River Poetry Review, Constellations, and Woven Tale Press.  Henry was the founding editor of Ploughshares and is Prof. Emeritus at Emerson College.