for Mallarmé
From the grand fountain
Of fonts and gilded calligraphies
Uncial and Old English
Italic and the irrepressibly
Fecund Batarde
Frolics forth the letter F
My favorite scriven as a schoolgirl
For it was foliate with serifs as a forest
Fraught as wrought iron
As the fauna and flora
Who flock to and flummox
The four-letter faultline
Resonant as well with forenoon’s
Flautist of a faun
Composing a lullaby for his newborn
Among the bluebelled woodlands of ambient Albion
An infant who will grow
To freckled and feckless adolescence
Farouche as fornication
Fickle as Fortuna or pianoforte
All foghorn and fippleflute
Unfettered and fascinated by the unprincely frog’s
Amphibian tongue resplendent
With a dragonfly dinner al fresco
By Chef Fitzhugh “Phoenix” Terwilliger
His newest culinary creation
Polliwogs and Firebirds Au Fromage
Near the frond-swollen pond
An art as unforesworn and unforeseen
As the diaries of the demimonde
A force to be reckoned with.
My name is Aletha Irby and I have been writing poetry for over fifty years. My personal library includes books of poetry, mysteries, ghost stories, novels, and histories. My work has been published in Main Street Rag, Lady Blue Literary Arts Journal, VOLT, Shot Glass Journal, Palo Alto Review, Tiny Lights Online, and many other journals. I am very grateful to have been granted this time, on this planet, to spend with the English language.