Nursery Rhyme
by Ann E. Michael
Here is the crooked man,
his house collapsing slowly
upon its crooked lot.
The path he’s walked,
though full of steeps
and turns, was straight
enough for him. And for
the lopsided hound
who now limps down
the skewed oak stairs
to greet him at the mangled
gate. She waits, wags
her broken tail as he
checks for mutilated mail
in his car-struck postbox.
What forces pulled his fences
to and fro, a wracked row
of splintered posts—
quake? hurricane? deep snow?
The crooked roof,
the crooked stile, he wills
himself to smile (a crooked
smile). That sixpence
won’t begin to pay the note
his crooked banker wrote
so one more burden shifts
his backbone further
out of whack. What was it
that made him so slant,
shoved spine, hip, and knee—
Experience? or gravity?
Gyroscope Review 31
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