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Anyone But You
The phone may ring;
The call will bring
__Anyone but you.
The mail will come;
It will be from
__Anyone but you.
A text may buzz;
I’m sure it was
__Anyone but you.
Oh, this is dire;
I don’t desire
__Anyone but you.
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Crunch Time In the Kitchen
From putting off till the eleventh hour
What was a daunting, though a pleasant task,
Cleaning while cooking’s now too much to ask –
There is no time to wipe or scrub or scour.
The oven fills the room with desert heat;
The stovetop’s surface glows like tropic sun.
The moment that one recipe’s complete
I whirl about to start another one.
The pots form growing towers—a junkyard heap—
They fill the sink, and on the floor below
An egg has broken, smashed by fatal leap.
Flour, cocoa, sugar, a tricolored snow,
Lie scattered, and in places mark the track
Traced to and fro by hasty, frenzied feet.
The chaos here resembles bear attack
Or fierce tornado’s wake. Ah, but the mess
Itself’s a monument to my success
Which I shall tackle momentarily—
But not until I rest, enjoy a treat,
And sip a steaming, hard-earned cup of tea.
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Darwin’s Cafe
As you dine on some fine macaroni,
Watch Eohippus turn into a pony!
__The primordial soup
__Is unsavory goop,
But it comes with a side of baloney!
.
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Frustration
“Ah, what a stupid variable!” I cried,
But then my prof corrected, “No, it’s dumb.”
“I know the difference,” shamelessly I lied,
“But how then does it help to find the sum?”
“Without the dummy variable,” he said,
“The integral is tricky to compute,
But if you use this little ‘tau’ instead,
It takes away that troublesome square root.”
“But still the coefficients are unknown.
I don’t know how to find them,” I complained.
He said, “Look in the book. The proof is shown;
The coefficient formula’s explained.”
“The book makes no more sense than you!” I yelped.
“I know to you this stuff is plain to see,
But I’m afraid that I just can’t be helped—
These variables are still all Greek to me.”
.
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Anna J. Arredondo grew up in Pennsylvania, where she fell in love with poetry from a young age. After living in Mexico for six years, during which time she met and married her husband, she returned to Pennsylvania for one more decade. An engineer by education, home educator by choice, and poet by preference, she relocated in 2017 and currently resides in Westminster, CO with her husband and three school-age children. Anna has recently had poems published in The Lyric and Time of Singing.
Anna, every single one of these delightful poems is admirably crafted and highly entertaining. The first two are my favorites… the first one for its neatly wrapped pain… I’ve been there and you say it so well. The second, for its beautiful realism. I have a kitchen that resembles your superb poetic description… the only difference is, it takes something a little stronger than a cup of tea booster after my travail. It’s so good to read your fine works. I wish you a happy and poetic New Year. Thank you for the Boxing Day treats.
Thank you, Susan! High praise coming from you is especially meaningful, and I’m glad you enjoyed the poems. I return your wishes for a happy and poetic new year, virtually raising my mug to your glass. 😉 Cheers!
Anna, I remember a time when a broken egg on the floor was the culmination of kitchen disaster, but even after a good cup of tea, I wrote no poetry about it. Truly, the mess and the poem are a monument to your success. “Darwin’s Cafe” is an even better poem, as a limerick with real intellectual content and hearty wit! Enjoyed “Frustration” too, but am I seeing a joke or a mistake in “tao”? If you mean the Greek letter, it should be “tau,” but if you are mocking the speaker by having her think her professor speaks of the Chinese character “tao,” that is funny in a rather complex way to any reader with math and language skills to recognize the joke.
Thank you for your feedback, Margaret.
Regarding the kitchen poem, I can assure you I didn’t compose it immediately after that cup of tea! In fact, I recall that it only began to take shape some time later, after I read Frost’s “Evening In a Sugar Orchard” a few times…
Thank you for pointing out the tao/tau confusion; sadly, it is indeed a mistake (it should be the Greek letter). The poem dates back to my days in college when I would pass the time in my math lectures doodling, dozing, or writing poems in my notebook. I’m sure I wrote the actual Greek letter in the original, and when I subsequently typed it up I didn’t bother to check the spelling — my oversight. Once corrected, “still all Greek to me” will make more sense!
I love the very vivid description of your kitchen; and the unusual metric scheme of the first poem, as well as the humor of “Frustration”. Thanks, Anna!
Hi Anna, I love your poem and would like to write a song using it as lyrics for a music class in high school. We write a song, perform it in the class, produce it later and post it online (but not sell it!). Do my bandmates and I have permission to use this?
Hi Cian,
Thanks for your comment. You can contact SCP at The Society and request my email address from them, so you can contact me privately. Thanks!