Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Do ICE Agents
Teach Sunday School?
A furore monstrorum glaciei libera nos Domine
Now I lay me down to sleep
But in the night the ICEmen creep
I cannot sleep; I’m still awake -
I fear the ICEmen will come and take…
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
We are All Pretty Much Exiles, You Know
We are all pretty much exiles, you know
We scribble verse to reconstruct our home
That half-remembered never-seen mystery
Within our hearts, sailing beyond the stars
Half-worlds threading from chewed-yellow-pencil leads
The sharpener says, “Now this may sting a little”
As cedar spirals down to the kitchen floor
Poor pairs of rhymes that never find each other
They’ve gone and closed the Main Street picture show
We are all pretty much exiles, you know
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
While Repairing a Widder-Woman’s Door Locks
A widder-woman
Drove her car (crash!) into mine
She doesn’t know why
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Certain Ancestor
Yes, sir,
When God made him
God broke the mold
Most angrily
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Hugo Boss Swastikas Have Been Replaced
And I am one silent cry
over the many thousands of the buried
-Yevtushenko, “Babiy Yar,” in Yevtushenko: Selected Poems
Trans. Milner-Gulland and Levi, Penguin, 1963
The Hugo Boss swastikas have been replaced
By another bit of cloth with squiggles
But the torches are the same
The fashionable lies are the same
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Grilled Mongolian at the Barber Shop
An Overdue Haircut
from Miss Tasha
While I was
being shorn of excess hair
V: “Make me look like a young Robert Redford, please”
R: “We don’t do miracles here, Mr. Hall”
A lady
enthroned a few chairs over
Mentioned
the menu at The Mongolian Grill
“What the h***
is this?” she quoted herself
I thought I might ask if the plat du jour
As served
was a lightly grilled Mongolian
But
Wednesday had already made that joke
About Girl
Scout cookies and real Girl Scouts
So thoughts
of topics carnivorous I let pass
And
admired myself in Tasha’s looking-glass
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
An Execution for the
Common Man
I will not watch the coming execution
But when the regime comes for me –
I’ll catch that one
