Poems from the 12-Hour Couplets Contest: Gag Ordered, Frances Boyle

Frances Boyle is a noted Canadian poet and fiction writer. Her poetry collections include Openwork and Limestone and Light-carved Passages.

Gag Ordered                        

The blank page awaits; it’s time for a poem

I can read them, critique them, think that I know ’em

 

but the slippery old words slide just out of reach.

Why won’t they fall in my hand like a low-hanging peach

 

not hide among brambles like the worst kind of berry?

Is it hard to write humour?  You might say so. Very.

 

It’s not that I’m trying for a veritable saga

or rhymes that will twine endlessly like a raga

 

just a snippet of verse with lines that ring true

(oh, and something that’s funny, I need that part too).

 

So I give up and press save on this fine piece of doggerel

―just don’t mention, I beg you, that my dog is a mongrel.


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