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  1. A DIALOGUE ON COURTSHIP

    That humming sound from a small creature amazes me, Stick.
    Huh? Ham? Hum, humming? It’s that show-off revving off
    on his re-tooled Vespa bike, I’m sure. What’s for breakfast?

    My peripatetic guide to the absent world of the sleep-deprived
    goes off tangent as soon as I pick it up from the porch floor
    where it fell with nary a clunk to disturb its wooden universe.

    It would have been an open-throttle hum but for the flutter
    behind the lilac bush, and a choked call like that wheezing
    bike careening then suddenly fuel-clogged over cobbled strada.

    Ah, the Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone! Or, is it Roman Holiday?
    The Stick turns into a revived cineaste, and defines the scene
    as if these flirting hummingbirds were a Mr. Grant /Miss Hepburn

    tandem, and I demure: was it not Mr. Beatty and Miss Wood
    carooming around oblivious of the splendour on the grass or even
    the glory in the flower? But I am no movie maven, after all.

    Is it the bird’s Romeo revving it up like a toy mower chewing
    tall weeds, and its inamorata, unimpressed, humming away
    from the lilac bush like a Juliet singing: wherefore art thou?

    No, milord, it is the East, and the sun is rising. Wake up,
    sip your tea and leave these silly humming creatures be.
    Stick, bewildered by my sudden grasping of its neck, groused.

    Defending my sullied memory, I mumbled: Shut up, Stick!

    —Albert B. Casuga
    06-14-11


    1. Dave, (Line check, please)
      The 5th line (see second strophe) should read:
      goes off tangent as soon as I pick it up from the porch floor
      ( it sted of him–for consistency). Thanks, amigo.
      (:–0)



  3. I’m chewing in the weeds, this pinecone, prying out its nuts
    My short sharp joyous teeth


  4. I’m chewing something in the weeds, some pinecone, prying out its nuts;
    My short sharp joyous teeth are clicking, gnawing at the casing.
    My beady eyes are darting here and there,
    I sense some foreign presence
    Sitting up above me on the porch.


  5. How I love the small engine with the open throttle.


    1. I wasn’t exaggerating, either. Even if you can’t see them rocketing back and forth in parabola-shaped flight, you can tell by the low roar that that’s what they’re doing.

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