Hoax Epigrams

by Brett Rutherford

1
Memed, with a blue-sky
background, the unsigned
platitude soars.
Unclicked, unshared,
let the gilded pig
wallow.

2
Glad-handed and hugged
by a stranger, beware.
Winged wallets fly
when least expected.

3
Your grand-son calls.
Robbed and left stranded,
he needs some money wired.
You have no children.

4
I have made so many happy.
I gave the buxom Russian girls
who look for husbands
the millions I got
from a Nigerian plane crash.

5
Called time and again
with offers of above-ground
burial in some
purported mausoleum,
I finally blurt out, "Look,
we are already dead here.
Nestled in native earth,
we are vampires."

The Bachelor

by Brett Rutherford

    After a note by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1836

I, unmarried and alone,
am the undertaker’s bane.

You, with your dozen offspring,
     have paid in advance
     for a dozen funerals.

With luck, what’s left of me
will feed only a solitary worm.

Free Will Is Best

by Brett Rutherford

     After a note by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1838

Explaining her ever-
attentive spouse
to a friend-confidante:

It was quite some years ago,
you see — the two of us,
one at each end
     of the house, and one
at the other — my kitchen,
     his book-piled den.
Iron-willed we were
     in mutual detestation.
He might have taken an axe;
     I might have learned poisons.

Then quietly, discreet
as only a Boston lawyer knows how,
we were silently divorced.

So here we are.
He lives at his club.
He brings me gifts,
I give him favors.
Each day is a first —
     at will, the last.

It’s a great deal of fun
and keeps both priests
and hangman away.

Look, here he comes,
grinning with expectation.
Is that ruby? And only one?
I might just feign a migraine.
Look none the wiser, my dear.