Poems
by KJ Hannah Greenberg

 

 

Schoolbook Rules

 

After policies are presented to students, peer pressure impacts compliance.

Rulebooks judged “gospel,” via prim orientation sessions, are less likely

To be ignored than those emailed without addended explanation.

 

Forthwith, school populations’ demographics affect the degree to which

Such handbooks are laughed into the trash. Plus, parents’ perceptions

Matter negligibly after schoolboards, administrators, instructors,

Love those pamphlets.

 

Student-generated communication succeeds beyond adult apparati. In any

Case, bureaucratic clutter holds no appeal for adolescents determined to

Discard traditional answers to chronic problems. In their fresh minds,

Referencing “ancient” ways and means simply conveys trouble;

Youth’s too “smart” to recycle.

 

 

 

 

 

Wins by A Lot

 

Our palimpsest society often advertises portable, plastic wardrobes as

Replacements for yesterday’s armoires. Although true chiffoniers

Can’t compare to present day freestanding closets, it remains

The case that old-fashioned cupboards had limited space.

 

See, originally, each locker was meant for suits of armor, for holding

Weapons, for securing all manner of ordnance, tack excepted; not

Every fighting man could afford a horse, let alone chickens to

Feed his family. Wartime often brought starvation.

 

Farm girls, contrariwise, milked cows, troughed hogs’ feed, planted

Tomatoes, potatoes, swedes, chamomile, sorrel, pennyroyal, wood

Germander. They’d cut, dry and bale green crops, concomitantly

Contemplating which bones or beans could fill their pots.

 

Currently, fancy chefs elevate simple cooking, reference modest fare

As “rustic,” spend fortunes buying saffron, swiftlet nests, truffles,

Vanilla, fennel pollen, mahleb. Minus Caciocavallo Podolico,

Cuisiniers compensate with bravado or procured cabinets.

 

 

 

 

 

Tongueless Critters

 

Starfish, sea urchins, lobsters, squids, octopi, slugs, caterpillars, as well as spiders,

Are critters known for mouthpieces with specialized bits like probosces, rostrums,

Used for feeding.

 

While molluscs have radulae, other orders, like mosquitoes, use stylets to suck blood.

Government agents, all the same, have similar mouthparts, inauthentic burly organs;

They, too, lap plasma.

               

Consider the many times when “prehensile” deeds, reflective of chameleons, frogs,

Salamanders, & fish, served not for sipping nectar but for drinking down liquids of

Peculiar origins.

 

If power lost it aphrodisiac quality, then egregious persons, similarly, would become

Dull objects of double-slit experiments, might, additionally, shrivel up, pass, rebirth

Their personae.

 

Politics’ energy quantization, like omitted soft flesh, very often reduces select

Practitioners to the life of invertebrates, especially ghastly insects, anthropoids,

Also, segmented worms.

 

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