Art and poetry on page and stage
13
Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton
“A is for Alpha” and Other Axed Sesame Street Songs
A is tops, alpha, a known quantity in algebra,
but why? Why is bush-league B always second to
cousins who can't cut equal corners of cake for C and
doesn't D deserve all the deliciousness of real dairy
even when Ethan Hawke insists D remain a vegan?
Forget the hierarchy of the Food Network, forget
gastronomy and gourmet or any of the ghastly
hegemonic and homoironic horror hits
inciting irritation! I, for one, am an insurgent,
juggling joy and Jurassic extinction at Jiffy Lube.
Kick me. Or kick a Rockette. I love the letter K!
Love when those la la's and lampposts and lightbulbs
morph into Monarchs and Blue Morpho Butterflies.
Never mind the inadvertent narrator who knows
one is only in it for the story. Or the octopus. Oh,
Pluto knows me better than you, Pansy Popular.
Quickest to the crime scene at Quality Inn, you
resuscitated the robber whose acid reflux rendered him
Sid and Nancy. Either way, someone shady saved
the least popular letter, T, and there you totally go.
Univision's movie version Pansy y Nancy was
voted most likely to sequel. Verily, verily, I say
WTF? Sometimes I say: Mrs. Wiggins, why wait for
x-finity when finity is so x-otic on its own?
Yin yearns for Yang in a New York yellow cab
zigzagging traffic, their hands at each other's zippers.
Denise Duhamel was born in Rhode Island. She and Maureen Seaton currently live in Hollywood, FL where Duhamel teaches at Florida International University. She is the author of numerous books and poetry collections including her most recent and aclaimed Blowout.