Poem of the Month
Feel Happier in Nine Seconds

By Linda Besner

Published on December 15, 2017

I learned the secret of serenity
by waterboarding daffodils.
My Buddha is landfill.
My mantra choked

from a bluebird’s neck.
It’s ruthless, the pursuit
of happiness. Eighteen
seconds have elapsed.

My happiness is twice
your size, gold-chained
to the lamppost. It strains
its waistcoat as it grows.

Flog a sunbeam, harness
a cloud. You should be feeling
five times happier now:
the world is your Kleenex.

It’s been a long sixty-three
seconds in Attawapiskat,
but my happiness digs
diamond mines, slobbers

parasol knobs on the Rhine.
I sweeten my cantaloupe
with stolen breastmilk.
Peak joy is at nine

times nine – saddle up, dear.
An asteroid of happiness
is blasting through
the atmosphere.

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Postscript(s)

The fall of ’47 I was 25 and still living in Viluta. What made me stay so long? What made me linger in that nothing place, that hamlet of ten houses?

The Ritualites

We live on an island
I mean I don’t know all the history
It’s never ...