Lobbying for Compromise
by Bill Yarrow

  1. Dip me in pollen and pour on the bees
  2. (the steaming water turns the honey hot)
  1. Anoint my boiling head with boiling oil
  2. (the mind has acquaintances but no close friends)
  1. Lead me to the still waters and push me in
  2. (to curry false favor with the gods)
  1. Stupidity is baffling only to intelligence
  2. (the dull squint when innocence bestrides surprise)
  1. I've seen the sun set silver over a river
  2. (and maneuver the sacred distance the battered heart eschews)
  1. I have cancelled my daily subscription
  2. (the foetid newspaper arrives anyway)
  1. I fall upon (ouch!) the thorns of poetry
  2. (some things just can’t take a hint)
Packingtown Review – Vol.9, Fall 2017

Bill Yarrow, Professor of English at Joliet Junior College, an editor at the online journal Blue Fifth Review, and seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of The Vig of Love, Blasphemer, Pointed Sentences, four chapbooks, and the poetry CD Pointed Music. His poems have appeared in Pirene's Fountain, Poetry International, RHINO, FRiGG, Altered Scale, Gargoyle, THRUSH Poetry Journal, PANK, and elsewhere.

  1. Jennifer Newhouse
    The Human Rootpoetry