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  three poems from Glass Eye Dialect by Chris Jackson

 

The problem with the two girl scouts

began the month before the myna bird
died which had been a birthday present
from the butcher with the small

family meaning he and his clean wife
had made dwarfy children all dumb
as the more inbred dogs the breeder

tried to sell for the most money to
herself because she had had no
customers for years and only a few

pups and less live ones certainly no
pups any children would cry to own
no matter how small nor how much

they were made fun of at school
stumbling running home on stubby
legs to their mother who hated

religiously the stains the butcher
collected and kept as he chopped cow
after pig who gave myna birds

as presents because they spoke even gave
one to me on my twenty-ninth birthday
despite our problems with money though

it died less than a year later the poor thing
the poor inbred myna bird whose only
spoken words were cookies and pictures.

 
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