Kate Fetherston
The Use of Humor in Poetry
All humor is poetry if
applied with a vowel instead
of a trowel. Or, you could say
humor in poetry’s chocolate, sometimes
sweet, sometimes savory and dark. Not everyone
relishes it in any form, although in that
sad case the so-afflicted are clearly
fevered and should be offered
succor or shown
the door. Dig up, if you will my sorry
excuses for that slant
jibe I launched over coughing
mouthfuls of creamed
corn and mole at your
great-aunt’s august Sunday dinner. No way
was I referring to her cooking when
I did the striptease in iambic
skintameter. There’s nothing worse
than a joker at the table but
also no use living without whatever’s
funny and the poetic floating rib
to find it so. Pass the sauce.
Inciting the Invisible to Riot: A Bedtime Argument
If insomniac excitement was what you craved, why
didn’t you marry an acrobat you could keep
plumped with a bicycle pump? Go ahead—
pout behind that newspaper, bone
up on how Chinese authorities inoculated
fourteen billion chickens--anything rather
than engage your wife apropos the gallbladder
attack visited upon our conjugal bliss. You blame
philosophy. “Sophism’s a narcoleptic, not
an aphrodisiac,” you kvetch.. Ok, I admit
my urge to unravel the meaning of internal
objects begs a swift karma sutric
boot in the pants, but when Wittgenstein
says in the case of a miracle, we imagine also
god—doesn’t that twizzle your short
hairs in the cosmic breeze? Even when
you whine, you incite me to libidinous
riot, my wondrous darling--all I want
is an answering seriousness. Ah, glance
my way and I’ll shape- shift—shazam!—into
a torque-defying trapeze artist who’ll nibble
your paradigm shift down to bare boned
pixels of pleasure. Yet, since the last
paragraph of that mystery novel you insist
on tucking under your pillow reads:
“Oh Beulah,” he breathed, rummaging
in his pocket for the pearl handled
straight razor, “it’s always been
you.”---I’m still a bit leery of falling
asleep first, know what I mean?
Persephone and Pluto at Dinner
He said, “There is no rain here below
so you can dream of wild horses. You’ll quiver
in my arms and not be wet.”
She said, “How thoughtful, but I need
rain and dirt, wind and trouble. Your rubber
plants punish me with their sad
glances, the neat carpet around their pots
is too much to bear”.
He said, “There are fourteen ways to calculate
seduction. Five methods of triangulation
for surveying distances. You can’t tell me
you don’t love me.”
She said,” I crush you to my breast like a magnet
soldered to the lode stone. I’m lost in your bed
between true north and your three-day
beard. But there’s no hiding in the day. I loathe
the day and its traces of blame.” She said, “I’m not
complaining. I barely notice the scars”.
He said, “You never told me you were a nympho
or was that supposed to be a compliment, keeping
me up till all hours? Distilling our relationship
has become my alchemical destiny. At least
bleeding’s no longer a cure.”
She said, “You don’t need a cure. You need
a hot date at the Holiday Inn with room service,
and no more on your mind than the weight
of my hands mincing the mambo up your thighs “
He said,” Now, I dig that.”
She said, “But listen, hell-boy, don’t try pleading
the Twinkie Defense if I’m too much
for your cave man self ---I’m a five star three ring
circus from heaven. Simply snorting in my direction
induces light to shatter in our pleasure.
He said, “That’s the dream I’ve been having of wild
horses in the rain. Now, get that pomegranate
out of your teeth, and let’s boogie.”
Setting the Muse on Fire: A Comedy of Recollection
I’m lying face up in traffic, asphalt
digging into my tush, head fuzzy
as a 16 wheeler swerves barely
missing my phantom pink
pedicure, when I spy
the muse punching the walk sign and he
shouts, “Enough with the drama!”
“Who
do you think you are!” I shout back,
easing onto skinned
elbows, “Where’ve you been,
anyway, out on medical
leave? Trying to scam Social Security?”
“You’re getting the two of us
mixed up,” he snaps, “I’m not some 900
number fantasy you call up and dump
after you’ve wrung out one of those
soppy tropes you’re so fond of.”
“Those
are odes to natural beauty,” I sniff.
“Bullshit,”
he growls,” what a crock! Nature’s
up to its eyeballs in pus and the religious
right and you just want a cheap
vacation---Well, don’t
plan on using me to get out of your
crummy dog eat
dog world.”
“Woof,
woof, fuckstick,” I spit
back, “your self esteem’s
catapulted off the monkey bars
at the peek-a-boo stage. If no one
chased you around the desk anymore, you’d be
blaming the Internet, and my left
nipple for your disappearance
from the lexicon. So cut the high
and mighty, you need
me.”
“Oh, all right,” he concedes, helping
me up, “ Lose that tatty
number you’re wearing and let’s crawl
between the sheets with a couple of beefsteak
tomatoes, my Ouiji board, and a match.”
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Kate Fetherston’s poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Hunger Mountain, Nimrod, and Poetry Miscellany. She co-edited Manthology: Poems on the Male Experience and Open Book: Essays from the Postgraduate Writers’ Conference. Kate won a Vermont Council on the Arts grant for poetry and holds an MFA from Vermont College. She is a classical singer and psychotherapist in private practice in Montpelier, Vermont.