Language Burier

Certain pronouns, once in splendor,
Now offend the female gender.
Distaff side says we would be
Happier if He were S/he.

But the neuters stand and shout,
“Animate pronouns leave us out!”
So they compromised to fit
Neuters in the pronoun—S/h/it!

It Doesn't Matter What You Do

After Philip Larkin

You fuck them up, your girl and boy.
It doesn’t matter what you do.
The latest theories you employ
Will make them flaming assholes, too.

And then, to maximize despair,
Greedy daughters and selfish sons
Repay your fine parental care
By breeding Young Republicans.

by J. Patrick Lewis

J. Patrick Lewis is the author of over sixty children's picture and poetry books from Knopf, Atheneum, Dial, Harcourt, Little, Brown, Chronicle, Scholastic and others. His adult poetry has appeared in the Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Dalhousie Review, New Letters, Southern Humanities Review, new renaissance, Kansas Quarterly, Santa Barbara Review, Fine Madness, Sycamore Review, Light, and many others. He lives in Westerville, Ohio.

Once You Allow Swallows to Wallow

There are those who like swallows.
There are those who like sparrows.
There are those who like neither.
There are those who like cats.

There are those who like bluebirds.
There are those who like blackbirds.
There are those who like no birds.
There are those who like bats.

There are those who like roses.
There are those who like ragweed.
There are those who find flowers
A pain in their noses.

There are those who drink cognac.
There are those who like rotgut.
There are those who like a moral.
Which this poem has not got.

by Edmund Conti

Edmund Conti doesn’t have just Quiblets to his credit. There is also Greatest Hits from Pudding House Publications. The fact that another eleventy thousand poets also have similarly titled chapbooks in this series does not diminish its importance. At least not to Edmund. Or to his fans. Both of them.