THE BAKER, THE CAKE, AND THE CLIENT

by Dorothy Baird

Image source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek

I bake cakes—
pound, fruit, layer, sheet—
for birthdays and tea breaks.
Wedding cakes, my greatest feat.

A merger of moist, delicate cake
with frostings and fillings of sweet.
Art and skill create a keepsake
with flowers and furbelows neat.

Oh! But wait!
two grooms will not eat my cake.
Neither a cupcake nor a pancake
will I make.

I have standards, you know.
My baking is conditional
on their being traditional,
then I’ll take their dough.

Dorothy Baird lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her poetry has appeared on line and in print in TheNewVerse.News, Iodine, Kakalak, and other anthologies and journals, and in her book Indelible Ripples (Kelsey Books 2017).

FACT CHECK

by Dorothy Baird

generosity suffocates
under the weight of incivility
the tongue bludgeons
with fudged facts and loud voice
slips like reality from smiling lips
snippets of sound bites
recast a person’s words
gives the crow’s croak
to the nightingale
the cloak of honesty
does not conceal intent
nor does it disguise
the will to mislead
fraudulent films damage
before they’re found out
editorials emerge as rants
headline news stories
turn print yellow
truth sacrificed
to emotions unrestrained


Dorothy Baird has taught writing and literature in both high school and college. After frequent relocations took her family zig-zagging across this country, she considers herself a corporate tramp. Now happily settled in Chapel Hill, NC, she is busy with poetry.