15-5

I Heard a Ringtone

with a nod to Emily Dickinson

I heard a ringtone—when I died

Aunt Sue was calling Mom.

My brother Tom was texting Sis

"Come qkly to the rm."

Sis texted back, then shed a tear

and searched boneyards.com

to find my final resting place

somewhere not far from town.

I willed my iPad, Kindle, phone

and laptop to my kid—

unfriended all my Facebook pals

made my last eBay bid,

Just then the bedside monitor

began to beep so loud

and Windows failed, but not before

it saved me—to the cloud.

by Patrick Cook

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Patrick Cook used to work for the post office. Nothing so glamorous as carrying mail or serving customers at the window. No, he drove the forklift on the loading dock, emptied elevators, sorted letter trays. The mundane nature of the work is what inspired him to write poetry. It's the same instinct that drives a prisoner to cultivate a flower. Of course, parodies are a fairly low form of poetry, but who cares?

14-35

Finding Golf Clubs on a Rainy Evening

with a nod to Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

They're the clubs of our local pro;

This morning as he played a round

He felt he'd never sunk so low.

One fairway shot was never found.

He hit two long drives out of bounds.

He double-bogeyed eight and ten.

His cursing made the hills resound.

The laughter of the other men

Made him forget he'd ever been

Happy to play this miserable game.

He fretted, fumed, turned red and then

All his excuses sounding lame,

And having no one else to blame,

He flung his clubs in anger and shame,

He flung his clubs in anger and shame.

by Patrick Cook

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Patrick Cook lives with his wife, Valorie. They are both retired postal workers who live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is listed as the 33rd cloudiest city in the United States. This figure is highly suspicious. They believe there is a conspiracy among statisticians to underrate their city, fueled by bribery and corruption on a national scale. They demand an investigation.

14-26

Lines on a Used Book

The man who sold this book to me
said, "The book, it comes as is."
Standing before the college library
it became my possession, leaving his.

Whoever owned this book before me
broke its spine and wore it worse
as they read this poem repeatedly,
leaving pencil lines beneath the verse.

But whoever owned it prior to me
marked every foolish passage and
made notes I don't want friends to see
and think them written in my hand;

or that they note importance, in this poem, to me,
because the chosen parts are worn and trite,
including parts I don't want friends to see
that I've re-underlined, because they're right.

by Gordon White

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Gordon White lives in New York and is a connoisseur of good beer, terrible haircuts, and tasteful plaids. Although his poetry has appeared around the Web, the last time he read an actual printed journal was at his mother's house over the holidays. She also doesn't know how to use her iPhone and she still gets her internet from AOL. She hasn't seen The Wire, either. Get a clue, Mom! Anyway, to visit him in a world without limits (well, character limits), check out www.grizzlyspectacles.com.