Poems ✍️

CLOWNS DYINGFIVE circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told
their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an
undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red
lips and powder-white face.
STEAMBOAT BILLWhen the boilers of the Robert E. Lee exploded, a steamboat
winner of many races on the Mississippi went to the bottom of the river and
never again saw the wharves of Natchez and New Orleans.
And a legend lives on that two gamblers were blown toward the sky and during
their journey laid bets on which of the two would go higher and which would be
first to set foot on the turf of the earth again.
FOOT AND MOUTH PLAGUEWhen the mysterious foot and mouth epidemic
ravaged the cattle of Illinois, Mrs. Hector Smith wept bitterly over the
government killing forty of her soft-eyed Jersey cows; through the newspapers
she wept over her loss for millions of readers in the Great Northwest.
SEVENSThe lady who has had seven lawful husbands has written seven years for
a famous newspaper telling how to find love and keep it: seven thousand hungry
girls in the Mississippi Valley have read the instructions seven years and found
neither illicit loves nor lawful husbands.
PROFITEERI who saw ten strong young men die anonymously, I who saw ten old
mothers hand over their sons to the nation anonymously, I who saw ten
thousand touch the sunlit silver finalities of undistinguished human glory-why do
I sneeze sardonically at a bronze drinking fountain named after one who
participated in the war vicariously and bought ten farms?