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.

More Poetry

The cellar room

Tightly drawn curtains in the windows. Clay pot planted with balsam fir. Hung with glass balls, walnuts, apples ...

From “Pink, Curved Thing”

We are not as elegant as marble But we are trying Living our fantasies together In public parks The erection of ...

The Genus Nabokovia

Taste of tangerine.
Blue as Tuesday.
Wings, the texture of powdered sugar

Novelists are serious about taxonomy–
the blur of color and text on labels
of blue butterfly genera.