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O magazine says about Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends: "Vital energy and a boundless appetite for risk give these essays their electric charge." Get the book for $5 off its cover price in our online store.

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D O N E   I N   P E N :
T H E   P O E M S   O F
N E W   Y O R K   T I M E S
P U Z Z L E   E D I T O R
W I L L   S H O R T Z .


BY KEVIN GUILFOILE

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SONNET, MAYBE?

Start of verse,
More of verse,
More of verse,
More of verse,
More of verse,
More of verse,
More of verse,
More of verse,
More of verse,
More of verse,
More of verse, with "The"
More of verse,
More of verse,
End of verse.


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HAIKU, E.G.

What the wind will do
The noise a frog makes, sometimes
A non-sequitur


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ODE TO A CRUTCH

Ara, always Ara,
Never Woody, Bo, nor Bear.
When I'm boxed into a corner
Coach, I know you're always there.


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HOMOPHONE NO. XXXIV

This 911 is no joke
Destitute George B., or Quint at the end of Jaws
Jan Brady's lament, in Merchant of Venice:
          "________! ________! ________!"


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DOES ANYONE DO THE JUMBLE?

Does anyone do the Jumble?
Are they so lacking skill and wit?
If you must know what I think it is,
You can just unscramble THIS.


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LIKE SOME LIMERICKS

Tim Daly on Wings, for instance
York or Sargent, capable of reaching one's mouth
Clean one's mentum
Speak gaily
Intimacy with one's own auditory canal, colloq.

 

 

OTHER McSWEENEY'S STORIES:
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A Report on the Habits of the Sexually Ravenous Single Women of New York, Who Also Have Jobs By Neal Pollack
Back-to-School Week: Ideas For Yet More Film Adaptations of Classic Novels, Updated and Set in a High School By Keith Bunin
Back-to-School Week: Hazing Rituals to Be Inflicted by Me, Assuming That I Now Attend a British Boarding School By Mike Sacks
Back-to-School Week: The Goddamned Trial By Ben Greenman
Back-To-School Week: Errata By Andrew Grossman

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Memories of Amanda Davis

 


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