Topical Acrostic Sonnets

 A Ruddy Shelduck

  A ruddy shelduck is, in Buddhist lands,
  Revered. In Italy, this duck is deemed
  Untouchable. In Donald Junior's hands,
  Ducks have to be shot dead to be esteemed.
  Don wasn't sure what bird he had shot at,
  Yet bragged it was incredible to shoot
  So rare a waterfowl, implying that
  He'd bagged it, on Venetian game-pursuit
  Estate lands ... Then he learned the duck implies
  Legalities: to shoot it was a crime ...
"Do you have proof I bagged it? Other guys,
  Uploading buckshot at the selfsame time,
  Confound the issue!" Don says now. "Though we
  Know someone shot it, who can prove it's me?"

 (First published on 17th March, 2025 in
  Oddball Magazine. Story here)
 Mouse To Mammoth?

 Mutations' permutations are the stuff
 Of evolution: if effects in mice
 Upscale to pachydermal size enough,
 Siberia becomes a paradise
 Enjoyed by mammoths, prophesize the guys
 That grew a golden fleece of woolly hair
 On quite colossal but non-mammoth-size
 Mouse guinea pigs. The scientists declare
 A hope: a mammoth calf is born in three
 More years of tinkering, if genes for fur
 Manipulate the hairless pedigree
 Of elephants ... From mouse to mammoth? Were
 They mammoth brains or woolly thinkers?—they
 Have only mice with woolly DNA!

 (First published on 31st March, 2025 in
  Oddball Magazine. Story here)
  Oil On The Canvas

  O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie the C-
  In-C to see himself as others do:
  Less presidential than Barack, Joe B
  Or Dubya, and all predecessors too.
  No portrait can distort him if it paints
  The truly worst: oil on the canvas did
  Him justice, and his clamorous complaints
  Extol the artist capturing his id
 (Commissioned for the space his idol hung
  Awhile in). But her skill at portraits can
  Not match the gloss of portraitists among
  Vlad Putin's circle, who made MAGA Man
  Appear a thing of beauty ... O, wad he
  See what we see, resign, and set us free!

  (First published in Light on 31st March, 2025 as
  one of the Poems of the Week. Story here)



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