Appetite for Headlines

Fate, that dark purveyor of rank art
feeds the daily hunger of that tart,
that dissolute — old Curiosity —
a cranky, witchy part of me
that hovers over calumny and fire
like a lover with unhealthy new desire
for something crude and rude and rough
for someone else's tragedy, the stuff
that crams the edges of each page
and gives me appetite with which to gauge
the horrors and the sadness of the world
contained within this paper hurled
against my door, my morning call
to watch the world, to watch it fall,
before my other senses wake to celebrate
my eternal victories over morbid Fate.

How to cut chicken wings

Perhaps I should have opened that e-mail.
One never knows when one might be handed
a whole chicken, preferably already dead—
and plucked— and then need to know
how to cut, and start with the wings,
why not, they are pokey things,
always stabbing at you as you
move the carcass this way and that—
I really must pay more attention
to these subject lines
before deleting as though
I knew everything there is to know.