Box of Sticky Rice by Thad DeVassie

No Scones

Noah Berlatsky

We wanted to buy the British Vogue with Timothée Chalamet on the cover.
But they did not have the British Vogue with Timothée Chalamet on the cover.
The day is sexless and without glamour.
The lumpy pit bulls cry at the door because they are not greyhounds.
The classical guitarist plays a mournful song on a guitar that is not even blue.
The Queen is dead and we have to read the Vogue memorial edition
and nothing else
out here on the patio that is too small
out here with large-eyed pigeons who do not comprehend
why they have been scattered on the pavement like discarded feathery things
beneath a sky so sconeless.

Noah Berlatsky tried being a poet some twenty years back and failed miserably. So he’s trying again. He won an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest, which was encouraging. He tweets too much at @nberlat and scribbles longer at Everything is Horrible! (noahberlatsky.substack.com).

Thad DeVassie is a multi-genre writer and fine art painter who creates from the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of SPLENDID IRRATIONALITIES, which was awarded the James Tate International Poetry Prize in 2020 (SurVision Books), and YEAR OF STATIC, a chapbook containing original paintings and micro prose (Ghost City Press, 2021). More of his written and painted works can be found at www.thaddevassie.com.