Thaddeus Oaf ties worms
in a knot,
knowing full well
he really ought not,
but they haven't a face
which haunts him in dreams . . . .
dear Tad is amiss in the head,
so it seems.
Dennison Hyde
sits cross-legged
in a box
(It is a large box, for at forty
Mister Hyde is fully-grown.)
and wonders
about the stuff in snow globes.
Is it toxic; they do so tempt the children.
He purposely broke one once
just to see
and was appalled to find St. Peter's Cathedral
no bigger than a thumbnail.
This startling revelation drove the Fear of God
out
of him.
Nathaniel Funderbuck
is a large man,
a stout man prone to night sweats.
He lives alone
and dines on boiled turkey necks
bought in Family-size packages.
His off-hours are spent
in exploration
standing before the display cases
of whalebone dolls
and miniature harbor villages
at the Museum of All Things Nautical.
My hand could squash the town, he thinks.
Mister Funderbuck growls menacingly
when the afternoon tours of gummy-fingered school children
come too near the cases.
He has been warned
by those in white shirted, name-badged power
to stop doing so.
Why, my hand could squash them all!
Home at night, he practices authoritive frowns
facing the bathroom mirror.
Frowning, you see,
is silent.
Mrs. Nesmith paints
only on grey days for that is when
she is most productive. She
wishes
and
wishes
every day could be a Grey day.
Perplexing when you consider
Mrs. Nesmith paints
in scalding tones,
great licks of bold to scorch
the eye and heat the temper.
When it's sunny
out,
she stays
in
to sketch colored-pencil miniatures of family,
friends,
and Past Transgressors.
These she clips carefully into paper dolls
and holds court on the drawing room floor.
Entranced by memory (or perhaps a bright! idea),
she holds the scissors a tinsel width away from her jugular
for long slices of time
before returning the flat figures to their satin-lined shoebox.
Every now and then, she cuts off their legs.
Mr. Polydoro is a poet, though unknown
and altogether unsuccessful
because Hardedge, Mollycoddle & Filament
define his work as
Neither
slash
Nor
and are hesitant to publish him.
They label him a Dadaist
because Mr. Polydoro writes disjointedly,
tossing in nouns were HM&F expect
adjectives to be.
He speaks of Christmas ornaments
in the same poem as
majestic mountainry
and overuses THUD!
confounding the esteemed Publishers
who will never understand
either
Dada
or
Mr. Polydoro,
who thrives in spite of himself
by eating cans of generic baked beans
he has purchased 3/$1 and petting
stray cats.
Petronilla Dubois journals
on pink floral paper
given to her on the occasion of her graduation
by a thoughtful/unthinking great-aunt
who has cataracts
in both eyes
blinding her to the fact that Petronilla
does not possess a single feminine trait
in her entire big-boned body
other than uncommonly small feet
.
Petronilla schedules her suicide regularly
but cannot take herself seriously when drafting
farewell notes
on pink paper.
Her allowance is spent on the men's oxford shirts she wears
with the sleeve's cuffed up.
The world is Grim
and grey works
better for some than others.
Author of the chapbook, "Stroking Castro's Beard," Patricia Gomes was named the First Place Winner in iVillage's Annual Poetry Slam in 2002 and 2003. She was awarded second Place in 2004. Recent works appear in Literary Potpourri, Shadow Keep Magazine, and Dark Krypt. Last fall, her short story, "Illegal Aliens" was included in the anthology "Other Worlds: Alien Alerts."
Creator of the Octologue, an eight-line, syllabic form of poetry, Ms. Gomes is the assistant editor of Adagio Verse Quarterly and an interviewer for Lily: an Online Literary Review.