By: Mantz Yorke

Some win their tussles with your scholarship,
but I’ve not yet found the key to turn the lock.
Googling words I’ve never come across,
I can’t tell whether I’m scratching up
intriguing fragments of ancient pot
or crazed shards of discarded household crock.

Though I appreciate your plays on words
and deft half-rhymes, you’re writing not for me
but to display to fellow cognoscenti
a well-wrought wit. Got up – as admirers see –
in new imperial clothes, your chattering goes on and on and on,
as if a Siberian harshness is biting deep into your bones.