Maureen Seaton

 

Mantoum

(Note: All six men are mentioned in this clue.)
Gary and White both ordered lasagna.
Bob, King, and a man who ordered ravioli all ordered one item in common.
Frank didn’t order minestrone; neither he nor Pinza ordered ravioli.

Gary and White both ordered lasagna.
Neither Ed nor Frank is Veery.
Frank didn’t order minestrone; neither he nor Pinza ordered ravioli.
Andy chose a piece of candy before Bill, who isn’t Baker.

Neither Ed nor Frank is Veery.
Lou’s last name is not Gardner.
Andy chose a piece of candy before Bill, who isn’t Baker.
Vic lost his cat.

Lou’s last name is not Gardner.
Cooper and the owner of #4 planted flame trees.
Vic lost his cat.
One of Nelson’s trees was a plumeria; his neighbor in #3 planted a papaya.

Cooper and the owner of #4 planted flame trees.
Baker planted a lime and a cherry.
One of Nelson’s trees was a plumeria; his neighbor in #3 planted a papaya.
One of Hubbard’s trees was a pomegranite, the other was not a papaya.

Baker planted a lime and a cherry.
Joe, who was not involved with the tan pet, did not adopt an animal.
One of Hubbard’s trees was a pomegranite, the other was not a papaya.
No one lost or found a white dog.

Joe, who was not involved with the tan pet, did not adopt an animal.
The person making the cheesecake asked Frank and Andy which flavor they like best.
No one lost or found a white dog.
All the salads were made of some combination of apples, bananas, cherries and grapes.

The person making the cheesecake asked Frank and Andy which flavor they liked best.
Bob, King, and a man who ordered ravioli all ordered one item in common.
All the salads were made of some combination of apples, bananas, cherries and grapes.
(Note: All six men are mentioned in this clue.)

Note
Completely collaged from The Dell Book of Logic Problems #3, 1988.

 

Queen of South Beach

Everything is not civilized, she said, humans go back to salt like anyone else.

Sorrow made headway along the channels of the steamed sea.

Mystery, like fishers in a storm.

I got depressed when we drove from Starbuck’s to Starbuck’s, faking fun.

I procrastinated senseless worry that crashed in around noon and has not left me.

King Blozo. Spindly doctrine. Queen of the Vandals.

Queen of the Visigoths.

Evil doesn’t mind, she said. It’s rarefied, like money or transistors. Icy: the heart surrounded by a conch shell.

The jaw-snap of sand fleas. Lonesome detritus. Skanky incubation.

There were men as well, five or six in a row like ducks at South Beach, two tall, but most short as women in boots.

Piranhas flicked by. Mangroves ovulated.

For years before her birth she wore a costume of red crepe.

She fell, fool and slick, history and concrete, a sea bean of possibility.

Not even that, not really, not a thought, not yet, not any pre-planned thing.

 

Cereal Monogomy
Maureen Seaton / Terese Svoboda

A bagel chipper in Excalibur!
A simple flan exfoliated

sets off. Tis Hunts hunting rabbits,
starched, a-steamed, and poofed,

soft and sticky, tis milk.
Preggers of glips of crispy.

Melody remote as island
juggery, brewed buggery

beckons. Rising depthwise,
an expletive from itchy tits,

the bread-noughts frame the sun
slanting like a line of brow,

which, sinking, they Arizona
the e-motion, an electric

wheedling kettle, a kind of
pulse from brain to tongue-tip.

Hun-shunned and Birkenstocked,
biscuit-toned and floatable,

impregnable, shuckable
and incorruptibly

eerie in milkdom, a big
bumble bowl of blah blah

breakfast food saves several,
saves the toppled highchair.

A shadow from bottom,
an omphalos, a take five.

Hear the cheerio, the Quaker
breathing in air? Who can blame them?

The wheat, the golden spoon.