Sometimes when I'm teaching a poetry workshop
or even if I just have a lit class
I give my students an assignment to take
a comic form, a limerick, a double dactyl, a clerihew
or something like that, and try to write a serious poem
within that form.
Because I think it creates interesting tensions.
So the next poem comes out of that idea.
And it hearkens back to the anthrax days of 2001.
"Snow, Nor Rain."
"Higgledy Piggledy, name not released as yet,
handled the envelopes 20 odd years.
Anthrax bacillus spores paid on delivery
killed him on Saturday.
Send him your tears."