"Question" (1922), by Langston Hughes

"Grant Park," by Langston Hughes

"Retrospection," by Charlotte Brontë

"Interim," by Lola Ridge

"The Fiddler," by Lola Ridge

"Apocryphal Couples"

Attila and Heidi Hun are making an RV run
from East to West.
Captain and Margo Ahab peddle pleasure-crafts
on the Gulf Coast.
Gregor and Donnie Mendel enjoy amateur
entomology in their spare time.
Sisyphus performs the boulder-roll
at Cirque de Absurd in Vegas,
where his girlfriend, Missyphus,
deals blackjack.
Matsuo and Yoshi Basho run
a very successful outdoor-adventure
business in Colorado and Chile.
Pancho and Vivienne Villa
just signed with a cable network
to do their own Reality Revolutionary
show. Exciting!Huck Finn
sells insurance for a firm
owned by Jim X in Chicago,
which he finds to be a might cold.
He and Becky Thatcher
have been seeing each other.


hans ostrom 2014

"Sonnet on Approaching Italy," by Hans Ostrom

"No Greatest Country"

Nobody lives in "the greatest country in the world,"
which is a phrase, not a nation.
Nobody and Plato's hologram.

Wouldn't a good nation cherish its skeptics,
partly because politicians and other
propagandists don't?

No one's more patriotic than a dictator:
fallacious reasoning, sure, but
nonetheless worthy of a cautionary pause.

Often I listen to a voice in me
that recoils from appeals to patriotism
because they feel like extortion.


hans ostrom 2014

"Eternity," by William Blake

"November Night," by Adelaide Crapsey

"The Dead," by Rupert Brooke

"Soldier's Dream," by Wilfred Owen

"Wisdom," by Siegfried Sassoon

"Fall Sticks in the Craw," by Hans Ostrom

Fall sticks in the craw like the n
in autumn.
It's the season of anxiety attacks,
layoffs,
ritual remarks about leaves and
crisp air, unholy holidays:

Halloween's become an anomalous
appendage,
Thanksgiving a clot of travel and a
ghastly food-orgy.

The cafes start serving
goddamned pumpkin-milkshakes
they still
call "coffee-drinks."

I shouldn't be so negative.
Or I should be
more negative: indecision in
post-equinox days.

True, it's a good time
to get food
to people who have little,
so that's an opportunity.

"The Dog Ate the Eucharist," by Hans Ostrom

Bob reported that a dog
had gotten into the parish kitchen
and eaten the eucharist-bread
that some members of the parish
had baked, special.

The incident caused some alarm
and may have raised theological questions.

One imagines Jesus
liked dogs, which
do right by poor folks,
for instance.

Of course, Bob wanted
to know whose dog it was.


hans ostrom 2014

"Jet Mesh Piety," by Hans Ostrom

eat jet mesh torture titanium
sputum bomb narcotic venture
diablo diablo marble
cock monument founding fodder
napalm rape scorch truth
lacerate rain birther denier
two-way radioactivity prison
for profit arrest race excuse
blast joke smug supremacy
handler a good citizen is
a surveilled citizen a
notwithstanding militia drive
hate lynch beat quiche white wine
burn bomb
lie flag diablo diablo

how long, how long? shit slogan
teeth monster informant
invade under cover infiltrate
threat-level sizzle children
scream laugh joke shiv spike
puke piety spit gooooooooooood
god market share percentage
dow jones up on news of hell
vomit poison oil remain upbeat
a good citizen thank our men
and women in uniform yeah-right
thank them how? flesh kill grin
suck murder waste policy foreign
domestic crisis domestic violence
domesticity loathe diablo
gotta keep on through it all gotta
keep on gotta. gotta


hans ostrom 2014

"Big Ol' Teeth," by Hans Ostrom

Several decades old, he finds it hard to believe
that a dentist proposes braces for his teeth,
to make money, of course, but technically
to close up those gaps, the ones that apparently
terrify strangers (but not children or animals)
when he smiles, laughs, or snarls. For fun,

he attributes his big, relaxed teeth
and the enormous smile (quite vulgar, actually)
to a Viking heritage. He wonders if it's
a berserker's grin. Important detail:

he hadn't asked the dentist about braces,
and the teeth are in good shape. Typical.
He has always received unbidden advice
about his teeth and everything else.
(The general heading for filing
such advice is, What the fuck
is wrong with people?)

One of his aunts had teeth
behind her wisdom teeth.
He suspects something atavistic
lurks in his DNA. Sabre-tooth
cat? Hyena? Shark?

War, famine, poverty, racism, etc.
go on, so he's not about to spend
excess thought on his teeth, which
work fine, fantastic omnivore-tools.

"Do you floss with rope?" a pretty girl
once asked him at a college party.
Not a bad joke. Apparently his big ol'
teeth transfixed her, for she stared.
Her teeth were suburban straight and white,
as all Americans are supposed to be, right?

He provided deep background. "My parents
asked the dentist when I was ten if I should
have braces. But the dentist said my tongue
is too big and would just push the teeth
out again, and the gaps would come back."

"Really?" she said, attempting to look
inside his mouth, as if he were about
to run in the Derby. She was thinking
about his tongue. He was, too,
in a roundabout way.


hans ostrom 2014

"The Constant Lover," Sir John Suckling

"The Treasure," by Rupert Brooke

"These Annual Bills," by Mark Twain