Look: action figures of the Fantastic
Four! Ah, but the Hulk’s head has been screwed off,
--about as useful as those eight plastic
roof-top reindeer without any Rudolf.

Want five tarnished snaggle-toothed dessert forks,
or a single spoon for tossing Zen salads?
No? How about Kipling’s Collected Works
minus his Kim and Barrack Room Ballads?

Wait: on our cheap-skate interstate dump date,
a pirate bookend without a brother!
Belay him. Someday we’ll find him a mate,
as one day we lucked upon each other.

"How well they go together!" some will say,
of two odd lots that others sold away.

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In 1985, Frederick (Rick) Lord was hired as a security guard at New Hampshire College, eventually becoming, when NHC became Southern New Hampshire University, the Assistant Dean of Liberal Arts. A collection of his poetry, What I Made Instead of a Life, was published in 1996. Lord also teaches English and serves as a poetry editor for Amoskeag, SNHU’s literary magazine. He is a recent graduate of New England College’s MFA in Poetry.
E-mail: f.lord at snhu dot edu  

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summer 2007 | kaleidowhirl
books and chapbooks from authors in this issue