(for Russell Edson)
A woman gives birth to a word.
When she tells it to her husband
he tells her it’s a dirty word.“Are you accusing me of infidelity!”
she yells at her husband.“Is it a bitch or a bastard?” he yells back.
Just then, the word begins to fart continuously.
“No word of mine would do that!”
says the husband as the mother holds her fingers
over her nose and repeats, “You made me do it.
You made me do it. You made me do it. . .”
Jeffrey Zable was publishing poetry and prose in magazines and anthologies while you were still in diapers and throwing pabulum onto the floor. He’s published five chapbooks including “Zable’s Fables” with an introduction by the late great Beat poet Harold Norse. Present or upcoming work in Mas Tequila, Subliminal Interiors, Literary Juice, Yellow Fox Quarterly, Epigraph, Boston Literary Magazine, Owen Wister Review, and others. Check out more of his work here.