MR. MURDAUGH’S RECIPE: SIFT AND STIR SLOWLY

by Earl J Wilcox

Up close, Alex’s savoir faire

Kicks in—winsome smile, hair

To die for, smart sentence syntax, 

Precise mixture of faux nasal drip

And eye moisture to churn a jury,

Capture the AI red bulb of a robotic

Camera feed for TV’s ripe audience.

Two Kleenex tissues, Perry Mason

plot to sway one juror’s heart.

 

 

Earl Wilcox writes from South Carolina, where Mr. Murdaugh is on trial. The news from the low country is riveting.

CAROLINA CALLING

by Earl J Wilcox

Around noon

A balloon

Not from a party

Not from a parade

In full sunlight, it made

Our Carolina palmetto

Shade its eyes,

Smile in surprise:

Chinese February

Fireworks.

 

Earl Wilcox lives in upstate South Carolina where the Chinese balloon was visible from his balcony on February 4.

FOR GERTRUDE STEIN

On the Occasion of Her Birthday. Born February 3, 1874

by Earl J Wilcox

Dear Ms. Stein, Ms.Stein:

After all these yearly years,

(148 to be exactly exact)

We still adore, do adore

Your overdone style style

Especially the way you gave

Us the glory of the rose,

(is a rose, is a rose, is a rose).

A rose is still a rose. And

To you, Ms. Stein, we deeply

Appreciate, still appreciate,

Your honest eye, strict

Causes for literary finesse,

Always and forever, and

Ever after, this Rose for you

On your One Hundred Forty-Eighth

Birthday.

 

 

Writing in South Carolina, Earl Wilcox recently published some baseball poetry, plus poems relating to his memoir, and the weather. He has about 60 years left to catch Gertrude Stein. 

BASEBALL LOCKOUTS AND WINTER DREAMS

by Earl J. Wilcox

Baseball labor talks to end the lockout resumed Thursday for the first time in 1½ months with little evident progress during a bargaining session that lasted about an hour, jeopardizing a timely start to spring training. Major League Baseball imposed the lockout on Dec. 2 as soon as the five-year collective bargaining contract expired, a few hours after talks broke off. —Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2022

Your tinny voice throws me off.

You stand slightly slumped holding

 

a baseball bat. Your face is a bit

out of focus though my macular

 

eyes make most pictures seem dim.

I have trouble figuring where

 

you and I are: a ball park, a small

dugout, perhaps just a dirt yard,

 

the kind I know well from childhood.

We sit very close. I see the bat, its

 

stark beauty of slightly tanned oak

or is it maple or some wood I see only

 

in my dreams. We chat, but I cannot tell

what we say. Man, your quirky smile

 

radiates warmth through shaded

teeth of twilight in dreamland.

 

You talk a lot about a pitcher’s

knuckleball you once hit. I mumble

 

a reply and just want to know more

about Enos or Gibby—and the lockout.

 

You shrug then take a sliver-looking

candy bar from your pocket. You put

 

the bar in your mouth, blow, cheeks

slightly puff out. I feel & hear a wail

 

sounding like Wabash Cannonball

or an old gospel tune clearly off-key.

 

My Alexa gently nudges me with music

and some NPR news, mid-January morning.

 

Baseball lovers all will have no trouble puzzling out who appeared in Earl Wilcox’s dream.

A STEPH CURRY HAIKU

Photo: Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry celebrates after breaking surpassing Ray Allen's NBA record for most career three-pointers. (Mary Altaffer/AP via The Washington Post)


A poet of several styles, Earl Wilcox find the art of haiku poetry fulfills special needs for sports moments.

 

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NEW YORKER CARTOONS?

by Earl J. Wilcox

From the current issue of The New Yorker. 

Once, they were not just cutting edge,

They were the edge. Timely, clever,

Witty, observant of contemporary politics,

Our mores (for better or worse)—

Fresh, unique, without peers in other

Mags. (I could go on listing adjectives

Suggesting their demise, but you get the point.)

 

Was it the pandemic? A change in editors at

The storied mag? Perhaps all the good cartoonists

Died or became so out of touch or old or both

They no longer know what’s funny and what’s

Just a quaint take on our times.  I long for a return

To those good old days when The New Yorker 

Made me smile out loud at least three times

Each week. Or is it just me?

 

When did I stop seeing humor in politics and people,

In our pain and our poignant moments, our sass,

In all that’s worth seeing in human nature, even

Occasionally cruel jesting at our sores and warts,

our meanness. So many sexy innuendoes in those

Cartoons one could publish a book (as the mag’s

Editors have done several times over!) Such

Terrific and precious or precocious punch lines.

Is such pleasure taken from us forever?

Is this the way the world may end, not

With a SHAZAM but a New Yorker

Cartoon blaaah?

 

 

Earl Wilcox discovered The New Yorker cartoons about seven decades ago.

A SATURDAY MATINEE OF SELECTED SHORT SUBJECTS

BILLIONAIRE SPACE(KU) DEUX

by Scott C. Kaestner

Cartoon by Marian Kamensky Tweeted by Advaid അദ്വൈത് @Advaidism, July 14, 2021. 

(1)

Shoot them into space

And redistribute their wealth

To heal our planet

(2)

Orbit the greedy

To build a brighter future 

For all of us here

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and forgetful mind magician who can’t find the rabbit or his hat. Google ‘scott kaestner poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

In a Nutshell

by Melissa Balmain

Detail of a cartoon tweeted by Jim Carrey @JimCarrey, November 10, 2018.

“Big Jake, the World’s Tallest Horse, Dies in Wisconsin” 

—USA Today, July 6, 2021.

“Untethered to reality, T***p lies over and over about the 2020 election at CPAC” 

—CNN, July 12, 2021.

The biggest horse is sadly dead and gone.

And yet, the biggest horse’s ass lives on.

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America's longest-running journal of comic poetry. Her newest book of verse is The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults (Humorist Books).

Ohtani of Oz

by Earl J. Wilcox

 

No hidden  smoke screens

No sticky stuff  in his glove

He pitches. Then hits. Bam!

 

 

Earl Wilcox—amazed at Ohtani’s wizardry—lives in South Carolina.

NOTES ON LEAVING A HOUSE AFTER 50 YEARS

by Earl J. Wilcox

“Puff of Wind,” painting by Tonya Schultz.

By some ancients’ reckonings

Five decades are a puff in the wind

A tick in the tock of time.

Summing up by comparison needs

Too many tropes to catalogue—

As Milton or Whitman might—

A few more than Miz Dickinson

Did nearing the end of her years

In the same house, rooms familiar

To her as butterflies or gentle poots.

My leaving this house feels more

Like Frost traveling to Florida

Near wintertime or south to Boston

On occasion—journeys which

Beckon or intrigue may satisfy

The urge to know what lies

Ahead more than gone before.

 

 

While it is not true that Earl Wilcox has been sending poems to The New Verse News for 50 years, he has contributed about two dozen in the past 15 years.

ECHOES OF MERCY, WHISPERS OF LOVE

by Earl J. Wilcox

In a back room of the home nestled

among pines and dogwoods—bam bam

 

bam—shots over and over, bullets 

felling grandfather, grandmother, 

 

two grandchildren. The fescue lawn 

shaded but ready for a Carolina summer 

 

held in its red clay care two others hit 

by the bam bam bam bullets. Echoes

 

from silenced beautiful lives fill 

the patient pines. The ER will not 

 

receive nor save these lives or

the shooter’s. Nothing in this world

 

can soothe the pain in the hearts

of those of us left behind, our faces

 

racked with tears and fears for 

a world where—over and over and

 

over—guns break the silence among

hollow pine trees, our consolation

 

in each other, hopeful that one day

a brave new world answers our prayers.

 

Earl Wilcox is a friend both of the family of those killed in Rock Hill, SC on April 7 and of the family of the alleged shooter.

OLD GUY AWAITS VACCINE

by Earl J. Wilcox

 "Time waits for no man,” watercolor by SuayaArt.

So far I have outlived whooping cough, measles, mumps, shingles,

strokes, dementia, the Apocalypse, the Rapture, three years eleven

months of the T***P madness, perhaps one Kardashian, zombie

uprisings, my dear mate of six decades, three siblings, one child, eviction,

twenty-four Marvel Universe movies, hundreds of episodes of Friends

and Big Bang Theory, dear Alex Trebek, bankruptcy, cancer, plus

millions of maladies and diseases about which I am totally ignorant.

If I live another few days or weeks, perhaps the vaccine will find me

and my generation still optimistic we can add Covid-19 to the lists

of days and hours of this world we miss.

Earl Wilcox in his late 80s awaits the vaccine in South Carolina.

CAROLING AND CAJOLING 2016

by Earl J. Wilcox

Our noisy, family klatch huddles
in foggy shadows from yellow
porch lights. A somber pine cone
wreath hangs on a weathered door.
Over nog, mincemeat pie, nuts,
we have harangued, sneered, shouted
both about donkeys and elephants not
in the room tonight, intense beyond
scavenger hunt passion. Time comes
to venture into a cold night, proclaim
joy and peace, three kings, a little town
in Bethlehem, the virgin, a manger.
My vociferous uncle, between sniffles,
hugs me close, though ten minutes
earlier he and I stood face to face,
our political galaxies eons apart,
colliding beyond reconciliation.

Earl Wilcox is a member of  two families who have been singing carols together for the past forty-five years.

PLAYBILL FOR ROBIN

by Earl J. Wilcox    

While it is true
all this world’s a stage,
our space was too small.
The lines we gave you
Inadequate,
mere noises, too calm,
too quiet, seldom shrill
enough nor adequate
to swell the sounds
already fading
before you could
exit.


Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.