Lord Maroon Can Meow! Canst Thou?

O! The wonders of my lord Maroon do abound! He’s a walking menagerie of wondrous sounds.

The Muslim Ban

The Muslim ban is not a Muslim ban.

Kate Cat Caught a Moose

I wrote this 193-word poem for my summer ESL class on phonics and accent reduction. It includes about a large number of minimal pair vocabulary words highlighting continuants and stops (esp. /s/ and /t/ endings), as well as various vowel sounds. It corresponds with Unit 10 of Judy Gilbert’s Clear Speech, 4th Edition. Enjoy, and […]

Bookstore Present/Baseball Tryout

I wrote this 298-word poem for my summer ESL class on phonics and accent reduction. It includes about a dozen pairs of vocab words highlighting syllable stress of two-syllable verbs versus nouns, as well as compound nouns. It corresponds with Units 3–5 (particularly Unit 5) of Judy Gilbert’s Clear Speech, 4th Edition. Enjoy, and feel […]

Brug Thugs Fear Pugs

Here’s another poem I wrote for my ESL students. We did an activity called “Seuss Sleuths,” in which we read excerpts from a Dr. Seuss book (One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish) and I challenged them to figure out the meter, rhyme scheme, themes, and other patterns employed in the book. Each of […]

I Hope to See the Forest

I wrote this 279-word poem for my summer ESL class on phonics and accent reduction. It includes about a dozen pairs of vocab words highlighting syllable count and long vs. short vowel sounds. The words came from the first two units of Judy Gilbert’s Clear Speech, 4th Edition. Enjoy, and feel free to share and reuse […]

Fortress of Solicitude

I want to be an insular community. Like, I want every man to be an island. Do you know what I’m saying? Sometimes, what I really want is for my heart to be an enclave. That would just be really nice, you know? I haven’t read any Superman, but I think I understand the concept […]

Celebrity Intervention

You know, I’ve always wanted to know… What would my baby look like with a Celebrity™? What would a Celebrity™ look like with my baby? What would my baby look like with a Celebrity’s Baby™? What if I had a baby with a Celebrity™? What would it look like? What if a Celebrity™ had a […]

The Oregon Trail is…Life, Death, Love, and Dysentery

I’ve got a new article up on http://www.rantgaming.com. It’s a reflection on what Gregory Sherl’s book of poems, The Oregon Trail is The Oregon Trail, means for the future of literature. Also, there are a lot of free poems in the article that I wrote myself. I mean, I wrote the poems myself. And the […]