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By Stephen Dunn

To hold a damaged sparrow
under water until you feel it die
is to know a small something
about the mind; how, for example,
it blames the cat for the original crime,
how it wants praise for its better side.

And yet it’s as human
as pulling the plug on your Dad
whose world has turned
to feces and fog, human as–
Well, let’s admit, it’s a mild thing
as human things go.

But I felt the one good wing
flutter in my palm–
the smallest protest, if that’s what it was,
I ever felt or heard.
Reminded me of how my eyelid has twitched,
the need to account for it.
Hard to believe no one notices.

I love poetry written with a) humor, and b) reference to fairy tales. This one is by Denise Duhamel and was found in the McSweeney’s Sestina collection. See also this extra poem, for feminist poetry lovers.

In the 30s, A-cup breasts were called nubbins,
B-cups snubbins,
C-cups droopers, and D-cups super droopers.
In the 50s, a bullet bra could make a bombshell
of most women. Pointy torpedo cups
had every Hollywood starlet hooked.

But Tinkerbell was only a 32-A, flitting past Captain Hook,
Peter Pan admiring her nubbins
as he cupped
her in his hands and snubbed
adulthood. When he dropped a bombshell—
that he wanted to be a boy forever—she drooped

in his palm, wishing for a padded bra, her eyes drooping
too.
Snow White was a respectable 36-B, just enough to hook
the prince without being tawdry. Snow was a bombshell,
though, to the dwarves, little nubbins
of men she snubbed
without meaning to, filling their tiny cups

with grape juice instead of wine. A couple
of times she even mixed up their names.
Cinderella drooped
until her fairy godmother found her the right bra. Snubbing
her flat-chested stepsisters, Cinderella hooked
herself into one sturdy 38-C underwire and two luscious nubs
emerged through her ragged blouse. The bombshell

of the ball, she was afraid to drop a bombshell
on Prince Charming, that she’d be cupping
well water and cleaning cinders by morning, nubbins
of pollen and feathers stuck in the straw of her droopy
broom.
Sleeping Beauty almost looked like a hooker
with those 40-D knockers which seemed to snub

the Evil Queen’s saggy cleavage. When the Queen’s mirror snubbed
her in favor of the younger “fairest of them all” bombshell,
Evil cast her spell and Sleeping Beauty was off the hook
(at least when it came to housework). She lazed around, her cupped
hands solemn across her waist. All the tulips drooped
towards her to whisper into the pink nubbins

of her ears: Never snub your dreams, drink from the cup
of your bombshelled unconscious, where para-droopers
unhook nubbins of meaning as you snooze in your Maidenform Bra.

by John Berryman

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry’s side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don’t see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.

___________
Because I don’t feel much like writing. Nevertheless, I’m starting the week with a poem and capping it off with everyone’s favorite irritant, the Friday Random Ten. Ahoy!