Friday, November 17, 2023

Men of Letters

 

The Post Office is gated, guarded, barred.

Each citizen may bring a single page

To be reviewed, then stamped, if shapely in

Calligraphy and spelling. Homonyms

Are disapproved, ambiguous, like frocks

On sailors or hard rain on sunny days.

Postcards were okay last week. This week, though,

Implying other places, they are less

Bland, so the young and paleolithic old,

Who don’t know what they're doing or are done,

Attempt them, but with bogus names and towns.

Postage expensive, paper products rare,

Ink, it turns out, is nothing more than mud

Thinned to the point of near transparency.

Return addresses? SASEs? No.

Corporal punishment, defunct, this spring

Envelopes crime: the grave, the good, the gone

Cannot petition. Sign language alone

Conveys too little of their superscript.

Rumors of nibs cannot be verified,

And cartridges descend on public squares.


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