Karen Greenbaum-Maya, retired clinical psychologist, German Lit major, and Pushcart nominee, no longer lives for Art, but still thinks about it a lot. “Real Poem” received Honorable Mention in the 2013 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Contest. Kattywompus Press publishes her collections Burrowing Song and Eggs Satori. Links to on-line poems can be found at: www.cloudslikemountains.blogspot.com/.

Lit Major Grad School Blues

Karen Greenbaum-Maya

I dreamt that Vikings sacked and pillaged,
razed to coals a conquered village,
 
sailed home to set about tradition:
successful raids deserve coition.
 
An orgy in the village square
is treasure everyone might share.
 
No one plans to play for keeps,
and languid limbs stuck out from heaps.
 
Friends and neighbors lie entangled,
or, so Chaucer says, embrangled.
 
Off to the side is one whose brain
convinces him he’d best refrain.
 
Perplexed, perturbed, he stands apart:
It looks like fun, but— is it Art?

Lives of the Poets

Ernest H. liked his cats polydactyl,
yet he’d scritch and he’d scruggle their backs, ‘til
            exploding with scratches 
            they’d strike in cross-hatches
with scarring approaching the fractal.
 
At sweet Brendan Constantine’s reading,
the host pulled him over for speeding.
            She demanded, “Explain
            your aesthetical vein.”
He just smiled, “You’re not drowning:  I’m bleeding.”
 
Because of his hairline’s retreating,
wise Ovid declaimed, Life is fleeting,
            but Art, she lasts long.
            This he put in a song,
and found it improved with repeating.