Matt Posner's Blog: You've Been Schooled - Posts Tagged "astonishing-poem"

Back in July 2014, I was planning to perpetrate an April Fools' hoax on my students by telling them to analyze a ridiculously bad poem. I wrote the bad poem and created a goodreads posting to legitimize it. As it turned out, I never played that joke on my students. The original unused post is below. I am the actual author of the poem.


Someone has just emailed me this poem. I hadn't heard of author Melinda Fragonard Sittingstar before. Apparently she is a student of Naomi Shihab Nye. Please comment. If I get enough comments, I will look up Ms. Sittingstar and interview her.


The Dustbin of History
by Melinda Fragonard Sittingstar

The mazy musky mongrel marks the muffin
With a thin stream, a yellow stream
Piffling like steamy stark spray.
Hast thou that muffin of doom?
It doth strike with gaseous aplomb.
O mongrel! O muffin!
Pfft!
And beside that doom Momma wept, her tears streaming,
streaming,
O Momma! Gingham Momma!
Thy heart is a dark hat. Muévase!
Le Pan Perdu. Ich bin Berliner.
Culling the herd, in the shady corner where sunlight
is omnipresent equipoise.
Ay the mongrel he doth wish
to move yon stub of tail O swish! O! Swish!
I shall be telling the tale ages
and ages and (cotton) and
ages and ages and
ages and
Enough of that. Mongrel mongrel mongriel.
Pied mongrel, velveteen mongrel, felt mongriel.
Delta-strewn musky bulbous daughter of
the silk-sown sky's stark bastard
(no, not that one, the other one)
momma muffin mongrel Weltzschmerz
O!