Lois Marie Harrod
Karl's Rhubarb—or Carping the Old Slurp
Karl was a slob but he planted rhubarb
and handed his stalks over the back fence,
Here, cook this, he said, low carb, and though
he was garbed in a stinky himmelfarb t-shirt,
he was a heart-throb among the old ladies
who longed for rhubarb pie and rhubarb tea.
What I am saying is there was something
about him that even I loved, the jam I could make,
though I knew poison in those spargelkraut leaves.
What I am saying is that I kept
my cats from perturbing his dog,
I kept my sickles from his sheaves.
Bio
Lois Marie Harrod's latest collection Woman was published by Blue Lyra in February 2020. Her Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks; her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016; Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. A Dodge poet, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Shot Glass Journal to Zone 3. Links to her online work www.loismarieharrod.org