Juvenalia I
They are the poems you found leatherbound
in a cedar drawer, decades later
dedicated to their 'only begetter'
the girl (where is she now?) you took to the senior prom
in your fathers' fancy, foreign luxury car.
Inhabited by Circes, Aphrodites, Maeves,
influences you never knew you had
none, mind you, awfully bad
employing every Italian form known
to occidental man, perfectly rhymed and sad.
some quite good and none, I stress, especially bad:
sonnets, odes, epodes, a tearful sestina
one parsed-out in queasy terza-rima
(English being a rhyme-poor tongue)
one boldly comparing love to influenza. (!) (?)
Nor are there French influences wanting-
viralays, rondalays, rondeaux:
there in the walled garden blows the tall rose
of Ronsard, beside the pretty orchard
of yellow pears ahanging.
poem by Morgan Michaels
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