He nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth,–Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesie

Louis Menand started out as a poet, too,
though Sumerian tablets weren’t for no fishbowl.
So Def Leppard, so caj, so Brooklyn.
Literalizing the trope, I reach for my remote.
The envelope may be postmarked 600 B.C.E.,
but when you open there’s a letter jam-packed
with a woolly mammoth wheel of Jack n’ Jill’s
moldy cheese left out on their hill in the sun.
And it is just for moi and us in the clear of
Tom Cruise’s broken crown sexual equipment
where rock ‘n roll eventually beats pail of scissors
then papered-over smiles clobber tumbling stones.

Gerard Sarnat was nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize. He has authored four collections, and is widely published.