Bill Yarrow

The Learning Curve

There’s always something negative to say:
that’s what she’s learned by listening to her
bereavement and exercising on the heads of

pins. In silence, she bakes zucchini bread
and reads The Lancet a lot. There are days
she opens the valves of her attention

to the sprawl of phlox and felicity,
but she’s blind to the creeping peevishness
of stevedore philosophers. Doesn’t

she understand the reactionary
pessimism of the local helots?
What she needs is a hot shot of Cedar

Rapids, a close dose of liberation
biology. Look up! Look up! She-wolves
are eyeing the somnolent underclass

while the bearded Cialis bankers hawk
municipal treachery, sip Arnold
Palmers, and feed on underdone seabirds.

Bill Yarrow teaches literature, writing, and film at Joliet Junior College.  His poems have appeared in Central Park, Berkeley Poets Cooperative, Confrontation, Poem, Mantis, erbacce, Muse Apprentice Guild, Cabaret Voltage Online, and other literary magazines. His aphorisms can be read online at the websites Authspot, Socyberty, Writinghood, and Relijournal.